Leonard Orr
Family History
My people hail from Macchu Picchu and Vladivostok
And my great-grandmother was half coyote.
She was famous for howling at the moon
In the backyard, well into her eighties.
Uncle Zheng, baffled and battered by political swings,
Was in the end fired from his job at the spermbank.
It's so hard to take up a new career, one-legged,
Given to visions, and three feet and half feet at the shoulder.
Every fall when the geese formed their great Vs
Mother sneaked down to the docks and ran off to sea.
A congenital condition, salmon or sea turtle genes,
while Father found consolation with yoga and tai chi.
She returned in May in her worn yellow slickers,
Reeking of fish, showing off her tattoos and scars.
Please don't ask about my sister with her Hopi husband,
and about my aunt's coven, my lips are sealed.
It's true I haven't been all I should have been
and my relatives are embarrassed when they see me.
But you, with your big toe stuck in the bathtub faucet,
shouldn't laugh at me at all, you shouldn't laugh at all.
Page(s) 34
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