I Got Long Legs
By the Lanchester I clenched my fists
and cried, held by that manacle
my mother’s hand, prickly-eyed
and piping up while my brother and his dad
strode up the Wrekin.
In shorts and scabby knees
my wet cheeks chafed by mother’s breath
Stop all this fuss.
She was an uncomfortable bed
I could not get out of.
I had to sit beside her on a blanket,
endure her absent silence,
while I scraped my face with Izal toilet roll
blinded by tears but staring, staring.
I must have lied five times at least
that I could see them waving back at me.
I left the stuffy combe at last
to scramble up the screes and look for him
to prove my legs were long enough.
I found him stumbling back
his eyes white with cataracts
his body shrunk with ice and age,
but he could still use words that stuck in me
like barbs inside the egg-shells of my eyes.
Page(s) 8
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