Graham Clifford
Part Two
Sparrows gasp around the floodlit clearing.
Mobile phones get confiscated into a postman’s sack.
Cricket’s cancelled. There aren’t any planes. In or Out.
A weird weather front whisks sand
and clever aphids up from the Sahara,
little dunes drift over double yellow lines.
Then work is stopped.
The cockles rattling from taps
are not good to eat. Then school is closed.
The battery in the kitchen clock runs out.
Tissues run out. Old folk perk up,
they sit forward a lot. They don’t want to die
until they know for certain what’s what.
This is beginning to sound
like the best story they ever heard.
Mobile phones get confiscated into a postman’s sack.
Cricket’s cancelled. There aren’t any planes. In or Out.
A weird weather front whisks sand
and clever aphids up from the Sahara,
little dunes drift over double yellow lines.
Then work is stopped.
The cockles rattling from taps
are not good to eat. Then school is closed.
The battery in the kitchen clock runs out.
Tissues run out. Old folk perk up,
they sit forward a lot. They don’t want to die
until they know for certain what’s what.
This is beginning to sound
like the best story they ever heard.
Page(s) 16
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