Anhedonia
Pleasure dried up
like a pink worm on a slab.
Pleasure could no
longer be touched.
My tongue could
not taste the stale air.
Someone played
music on the radio
in the helplessness
but I could not hear it
my ears had been
hollowed out.
This was Hitler’s bunker.
There would be no escape.
There were no birds outside,
just vermin pigeons,
queuing up to see
the evil.
And I lay in a corner,
to have my brain
scooped out and eaten.
I didn’t smile.
I didn’t laugh.
I couldn’t cry.
Everything was being monitored.
I was pathetic
preferring
desperate suffering
to sudden
annihilation.
So I lay on my bed and prayed.
I prayed to a God
I’d never seen and didn’t believe in.
Word after cowardly word
and I waited
for my cup of black medication.
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