Bridesmaid on the Beach
Alone and the night has begun. Neatly drunk,
there is something in her life she cannot reach.
The fabric itches and the shoes are killers.
For once, beauty has taken her to itself.
She stumbles away from the light along the beach.
She walks a little further before losing the shoes,
further still and shimmies out of the dress.
The water is erotic, the brown sugar sexual
between her toes. Bridal laughter carries
from the hotel's tobacco smog. After seaweed
and unforgiving shingle, and discarding tiara
and garter, she finds her feet without a murmur,
the stockings next, gloves, then the underclothes
which struggle in her wake, dance incoherently
and are gone. The burning has stopped
as has the need to do anything...
The deeper water is cold, more pushy;
she loses the floor, her uncertainty, and starts
to swim to where she can be herself,
without frills and poses, sluicing off
the flirting, long-range perfume and sex talk.
The salt stings the wounds left by the thorns
of the drifting bouquet. The last encumbrance
is the cups and gullies of her collapsing hair.
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