Last Seen
I saw a pair of Hook-a-Ducks
in plump plastic, features outlined
in grime, with simple rusty
question marks screwed into their skulls
bobbing down the wide Tyne,
leaving a lifetime of going clockwise
every afternoon and evening
in the fairground hubbub
jostling with siblings
beneath string loops swooping
for an easy prize every time.
Who had lured them,
ever buoyant but buffeted
by boat wakes and tide,
to hear the distant anxious cry
of the car alarm bird
and feel the cold, unseen nudgings
in the black below, no longer
painted blue and two inches deep?
Now youths strain from jetties
well out of reach, so throw
stones and half bricks,
and as they reach the open sea
past fishermen gathered
round the piss bottomed lighthouse
who try with telescopic rods
I imagine their smiling beaks
are still firmly fixed as they wonder
where the quiet secluded duckpond
they were promised is.
Page(s) 34
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The