a hot day in the park
The sky is blind with glare as, ambling,
I squint at strangers and shade eyes to
stare at squadrons of coot and swan and duck.
On the struck lawns men are flat out,
newspapers tented over faces,
while by the lake I stop to gape as
a girl strips to let her body burn.
Trees are stunned with sun. Beyond all this
the urban mess, with cars a distant
anger.
In the cactus house the air
is still and spiked with eucalyptus.
From the roof an iron chain holds a
banana tree in place like a hung slave.
It sprouts fruit the size of fingers, and
green, green. Here plants and people merge in
deep miasmas, all movements die to
sighs and barest breathings.
But outside
vast clouds muscle in and heat builds up
to detonation point. The parkland swells,
paths melt, trees crack, and at a stroke the
sky splits to its quick and rains hiss. Through
the streaming glass I see people run,
distorted, become amoeboid blobs.
Shouts, cries splash across the park; around
me breathings quicken, the captive plants
grow restless in their foreign beds. Lost
among strange leaves I kneel, submit to
change, wait for the storm to blow over.
Page(s) 11
magazine list
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- Agenda
- Ambit
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- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
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- French Literary Review, The
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- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
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- Matter
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- Monkey Kettle
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- North, The
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- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
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- Poetry Salzburg Review
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- Private Tutor
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- Quarto
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- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
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- Shearsman
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- Staple
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- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
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