Janet Fisher
Last Dance
I'm taking one step forward, two back, trying to work out
what it was that made me - 'A' stream, Latin and Greek,
and university a fixed mark on the horizon I was
steering my boat towards - fall in love with a brickie who'd left
school at fifteen and who on the night I dumped him downed
thirteen pints with whisky chasers and ended up in a skip,
who used to take me dancing, mumbled the Drifters in my ear,
the vibrations so strong after forty years they buzz down my spine
to parts my mother never talked about but I was only too
well aware of as we shuffled groin to groin and he pressured me
not to forget who was taking me home, a place I escaped from
two years later, and from him too, though I sometimes wonder
when I read about his chain of executive housing estates
if I made the right decision.
what it was that made me - 'A' stream, Latin and Greek,
and university a fixed mark on the horizon I was
steering my boat towards - fall in love with a brickie who'd left
school at fifteen and who on the night I dumped him downed
thirteen pints with whisky chasers and ended up in a skip,
who used to take me dancing, mumbled the Drifters in my ear,
the vibrations so strong after forty years they buzz down my spine
to parts my mother never talked about but I was only too
well aware of as we shuffled groin to groin and he pressured me
not to forget who was taking me home, a place I escaped from
two years later, and from him too, though I sometimes wonder
when I read about his chain of executive housing estates
if I made the right decision.
Janet Fisher is co-director of The Poetry Business in Huddersfield
Page(s) 82
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