Robert Etty
Exploring the loft on the day after millenium day
Behind the suitcases, these odds and ends
whose uselessness the decades have confirmed:
some Sunday supplements and postcards, prints
and catalogues, newspaper clipouts and,
inside two slit-edged plastic bags, the family
bible that Grandmother gave to Mother
so that she could store it in her loft and
pass sometime to me to store in mine.
Brass-clasped and -cornered, tooled in stars and arcs,
its leather feels much touched. The slab of gilt
its pages form splits open where someone
slid bookmarks, pressed a rose, or saved embroidery
commemorating what means nothing now.
The family register's left incomplete,
Joe's death at seventeen unmentioned, George's
sailing off to Canada missed out.
In Genesis, brown ink fades on a card
that dates the baptism of the baby who
will father me. Veins in crepe petals show
which rose bloomed pink as flesh, and which one red.
whose uselessness the decades have confirmed:
some Sunday supplements and postcards, prints
and catalogues, newspaper clipouts and,
inside two slit-edged plastic bags, the family
bible that Grandmother gave to Mother
so that she could store it in her loft and
pass sometime to me to store in mine.
Brass-clasped and -cornered, tooled in stars and arcs,
its leather feels much touched. The slab of gilt
its pages form splits open where someone
slid bookmarks, pressed a rose, or saved embroidery
commemorating what means nothing now.
The family register's left incomplete,
Joe's death at seventeen unmentioned, George's
sailing off to Canada missed out.
In Genesis, brown ink fades on a card
that dates the baptism of the baby who
will father me. Veins in crepe petals show
which rose bloomed pink as flesh, and which one red.
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