Alexis Evans
Home from Outpatients
My breath contracts and snags
in the jam at Hammersmith Broadway;
the quick fix from the chocolate bar
has ebbed and left me empty.
I bear the scars of travelling
to and from hospital
under winter and summer skies.
I fidget at the lights;
as they change I ease into
the snarl that skirts the flyover.
Each vehicle a platelet,
traffic trembles on the Great West Road,
clots, then slides towards the east.
Stop, start. Two young men stagger
and shout, drunk at 5 p.m.
on this warm, wet January day.
Glad that the metal exoskeleton
of the car shields me,
I slip back into real time;
medicine runs on its own hours,
blood idles into test tubes,
X-rays split into computer fragments.
Headlamps catch a silver birch,
and thin bone dances in the beam.
The hatchback fills with sweating dark,
I inhale damp air. My lungs unravel.
If I lose the logic of this journey
I might never come again
Page(s) 33
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