Peter Sansom
Sestets with fruit coda
I woke in the Book of Amos, later Job,
but went out anyway, to make some money.
There was a blueprint in my head: Manchester.
When I drank myself out of a job: kayis,
a pun on summer fruit and the end.
The knock said 'I'm here.' A voice said enter.
He was a small man, as if surprised peeling
a satsuma with his one hand. His desk
was huge and made of money. I sat this side
as directed, put my feet up as not
and unwrapped an orange, two being able
to play that game, the air pleasantly citrus
like banter or the grove whose shadows played
across our faces in a foreign language.
I've come, spitting a pip, about the job.
A segment lay like Hebrew on his tongue. You've got
a nerve / no chance sunshine / a deal.
We raised our glasses. There was a waterfall
to walk to and a villa brilliant in the dusk,
so many windows to admire or put through.
My love, he, said, do this one task
and later I did, drunk on being able to,
blind though we were to it, the two of us
including him only by his absence.
By then it was a clementine, a check table-
cloth, Winchester, a lake at sunset
with me the idle rich, a plum in my mouth
in the form of words. And it was Judges 2,
the verses about disobedience and defeat
in which none of us was able quite to believe,
like a scent I mean or disagreement or like a task
involving water and the language of commerce -
gather, collect, harvest, reap and so on.
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