The Guilt Trip
Our favourite. We’d bang our fists
on the breakfast table and call for another.
(Mother scraped the cold scrambled eggs
from our plates into the dustbin.)
A lifetime’s work, no stops for a pee
or sightseeing, a lightning round
the world tour of reverse charges
from New South Wales, teachers and miners
on strike, the terrible years in your twenties
that no-one thinks to prepare you for, overwatered
rubber plants, out-of-body experiences before
the real deaths, wills, the scatterings that happen,
but we’re all still up for it, and with incredible
concentration we further the journey,
knowing that a phonecall cannot break
the spell, that we are not to be side-tracked
by insider information concerning the lost joys
of distant cousins and ex-neighbours,
no, just the silences and the meaningful looks
out of side-windows all steamed up
with condensation, sweet-wrappers on the floor,
securely strapped in, as the signs for known turnings hurtle past.
Page(s) 52
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