Derrick Buttress
A Short Prose Reader
As the man said:
If you want a big story
read a billboard.
Personally, I’m a fool
for short-legged prose.
I yearn for the epiphonema
on beef-cube jars
and packs of Nibble Sticks.
I’m the man who halts
the pavement’s flow to read
the note on opening hours
and a pair of boxing boots for sale
stuck on the window
of Leonardo’s Hair ‘n Nails.
And I just love
that rain-stained Henry James
lost-in-a-fog prose
tied on a lamppost to warn
of a future excavation on Main Street
to search for a gas branch
lost since nineteen fifty-three.
Whenever you feel the void
beneath your feet,
and not a single pill of happiness
left in the jar, the read
the message on your till receipt
from your Happy Grocer.
Scan that flyer forced
so rudely in the hand
that tells a tragic tale
of bankrupt leatherwear and suede
for sale at suicidal prices.
These short-prose writers love you, friend.
All they wish is the briefest visit
to that little corner of the brain
where poetry lives, eking out,
eking out the words.
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Page(s) 25-26
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