Ultrasound
In those days there was no monitor
with a trapped fish twitching,
shrinking from the noise;
only mystery, uncertainty
and knitting, feet up on a sofa,
fine white wool cross-over vests
for a chest too small to believe.
I fed you on liquorice allsorts,
Walkers ready salted crisps,
Appletise, Granny Smiths, Wensleydale
and sharp red grapefruit.
I lined drawers with tissue paper,
laid the carefully folded garments down
softly, as if afraid of waking them.
One day, lying on my back
on the bedroom floor, rehearsing
disengaging my diaphragm
while singing Yellow Submarine,
I felt a practice contraction
and saw, through hardened flesh,
your heel, too small for any bootee.
And I knew that all the names
I had pored over in books,
whispered on buses,
even tried shouting aloud
in the infant school playground
one night under the stars,
would make very little difference.
Page(s) 50
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