Stuart Henson
The Way It Happened
The luxuries were easy - CDs, television...
When the lines went down, a bucket or a kettle
fetched more than a fax machine. The strain
began with the personal things: Rosa’s silk
lingerie, her father’s suit, the football medal.
The first time I cried was when we packed
the Lego, the train with its flashing lights
and the little people coming and’ going at the station.
They went on smiling as we took apart
our children’s future brick by brick.
Winter closed in. The family next door just
disappeared. We sold our books for paraffin.
I sawed the roof of the extension joist by joist.
The last to go was Peter’s table - and that
wept too as the flames licked at the varnish.
In the end the dealers stopped calling.
The soldiers left. Nobody came,
not even the newsmen with their cameras.
I turned the bathroom mirror to the wall.
At thirty-eight I knew that we were very old.
Page(s) 30
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