Mark Gallacher
Confessions
The last place anyone should confess anything is a nightclub
my friends there on a bender
where to go anyway drunk as we were that homecoming, find
women good-looking as they were.
She talked and never minded my hand on her thigh or let it
there so I wouldn’t move.
Maybe she picked me hoping I hadn’t changed since school
still cared even.
Remembering that night now: only her mouth moves, her
breath sweet, her eyes still.
I watch her tongue glance over white teeth, red tip sharp
squeeze her thigh.
Absolutely nothing sexual in what she says but I’m so
crazy. Nod and nod. Not
hearing what matters, not connecting her griefs to reality.
Her eyes shining the way
fear looks out at a world, the way the world looks back.
I remember she went home at last
with nothing I’d slurred any help for her except, perhaps,
my dad’s death still hurt.
Page(s) 45
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