The Afterlife Club
Back then, we trawled everywhere for proof.
Obsessed with connecting to the spirits
we’d pedal after school to the riverbank.
Press-ganged Sadie, grabbed her by the wrist,
laid her horizontal on the Alt’s damp verge.
‘She looks pale, she looks pale; she is pale’.
Six of us tossed rose petals on the ground,
slid the body towards the next world.
‘She looks ill, she looks ill; she is ill’.
The a cappella chant’s low and panicky
as far-off thunder; and there she lay.
‘She looks dead, she looks dead; she is dead’.
Twelve palms held her limp frame, weightless,
a balloon we offered to the sky in prayer.
‘Rise to heaven! If God exists, claim this girl!’
Page(s) 11
magazine list
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- Chroma
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- Lamport Court
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- Pen Pusher Magazine
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- Poetry London (1951)
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- Poetry Salzburg Review
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- Private Tutor
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- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
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- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
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- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
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- Ugly Tree, The
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