Splitting up
One day the books all whirled into cardboard boxes
Suits flapped out of the wardrobe like wind-driven crows
To huddle in suitcases. Snug private things,
Vests and pyjamas, all snowstormed the air
And had to be crushed up and stuffed into corners.
The mantelpiece was bewildered without its clock
A table startled and naked stripped of its cover
Bare walls dirty and tearstained as a child’s face.
Dust panicked at each gust in the empty bookshelves.
All the everyday things that are happiness vanished
Forever. The vase of flowers. The frying pan
With its broken handle. “That shoe polish of yours
Seems determined to polish the floor.”
Wine as it’s Friday - Saturday - Sunday.
Across the lips barred gates slammed closed
Eyes were shuttered for safety’s sake
A thigh once fondled was chill as dead meat.
And a wind of fingers whirled in from outside and everything
Whisked oft out of doors and away, blown
Anywhere, helter skelter, uncontrolled flight
Down the street and round bends and along the long roads
Leading elsewhere. Arriving
They all blew in where they ought not to be
Debris in the hail, litter on the sofa,
The summers wreckage upstairs right into the bedroom.
Whirl in the middle of everything down a well.
Sort it out. Tidy up.
Sit for a rest. Stare back up the tube
At a blank disk of sky.
Page(s) 52-53
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