Kathryn Simmonds
The return to lipstick
I'm wearing your old jeans, no make-up and
a cardigan that's big enough for two -
I'm giving Oxfam shops a helping hand
but anyway, who's looking now? Not you.
I'm far more desperate than a life of crime
and all my wasted days are Guinness black,
I'm drinking like a drunk at closing time
as if I'd find a way to drink you back.
But you have gone, so I must sober up
and wash you from my long-neglected hair,
go home, put on a dress and raise my cup
of tea to toast the last night of despair.
I'll coat my lips with Damson in Distress -
they miss your mouth; one day they'll miss it less.
Kathryn Simmonds has poems in the new Reactions anthology published by Pen&inc, University of East Anglia.
Page(s) 53
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