Dean Parkin
Memory Loss
When the family were absent
and unaccounted for
his older sister’s friend
was teaching him French,
pomme is apple,
pomme de terre is potato,
an apple in the earth
she laughed. Uninterested,
he decorated paper with doodles.
She started to talk
about schoolteachers
he would come up against,
still talking
as she casually shed
the yellow floral print dress.
He couldn’t remember any knickers
but there was a bra
she disconnected from her back
before untying her ginger hair.
Don’t be afraid of your body
she said and his eyes were drawn
suddenly over so much skin
that he could only think pink
and though he often tried to recall more,
it was only her face he could focus upon,
a face he found years later, now almost
hidden in this woman,
spilling out of a vest and shorts,
cawing children flapping about her,
giving herself
to an ice-cream, a strawberry one,
melting fast.
Page(s) 17
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