Off to School
Give mummy a kiss and be good at school.
I imagined my sons inside the room,
Taking turns to be kissed. Odd solicitude,
For she had not roused herself in months.
In the corridor outside, in spite of all
My heart quickened. Mummy coming round?
She must have raised herself in her bed,
I imagined, to speak at all, gesturing
Somehow, half apology, half farewell.
Eager to get away, my sons came out,
Hurrying in a sombre sort of way
Down stairs always ill lit in that house.
My turn then, but nothing in it for me,
Not even one of those grim abstracted nods
With which, each day, she’d greet the dawn or me.
I imagine now that some time later,
Mid-morning perhaps, she rose to dress –
Shower perhaps, fastidious to the last? –
And, painfully ready in her painting clothes,
Abstracted still, sought out that basement room.
I imagine her almost dead by noon:
Paracetamol, whisky (The Famous Grouse).
Page(s) 20
magazine list
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- Lamport Court
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- Magma
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- North, The
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- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
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- Poetry London (1951)
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- Poetry Salzburg Review
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- Private Tutor
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- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
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- Shearsman
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- Staple
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