Interrogative Pressure
Then, one day, after decades
of risk and tearing up of tickets,
you snaffle a small prize
in a raffle –
a teddy,
as it happens, rather too late
and think, on the spot, why me?
Followed by its interrogative
corollary – the one Dusty
Springfield posed when confirming to a journalist
she had cancer – me, why not?
If the prize
had been the latest Saab, would the question
somehow have been larger?
As conceivably on that day
you didn’t catch the flight that didn’t crash
but might have if you with your long-term tendency,
ditto you and you and you, to be the world’s
great loser, been on it –
making either rhetorical
query at 20,000 valuable feet above
the Pacific Ocean and fast
declining, imminent history.
But you are safely here now,
living in the slipstream
of a win, and feeling lighter
of heart and mind, the universe
– a dog-eared Aristotle on the table –
having contrived, in its unlimited
priming of probability to load,
for a couple of bucks, your dice.
That bear is more than a mere yellow teddy –
whichever fated kid you favour
with it is going one day to sit
an exit exam in metaphysics.
Years earlier, she’ll wake up,
having named, loved, then
outgrown him, and faced
with a compulsory hearty breakfast
before her classes – one
or two of interest – she, the smart arse
will ask any dumb adult within
hearing, once and for all
– after localised whydidyou interrogations –
for the sheer bloody-minded
hell of it, the subliminal
conundrum, and the looks
it must darkly bring to her folks’
lived-in faces, Why –
why is there anything?
Page(s) 12
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