Liz Atkin
Head Transplants
It was hidden amongst
the Weddings and Diamond Teas
in the rusting Peek Frean tin,
a ten-by-eight shock
of my late grandparents’
familiar smiling heads
transplanted atop two aged
stark naked bodies:
his body sagged rickety astride
the wattled sac and flopped neck
of a decapitated turkey;
hers was propped alongside,
nipples hanging like loose buttons,
one hand a broken fan
on an unironed abdomen.
They stood on sand and pine needles,
a high corrugated iron fence
with sea-blue horizon
painted on its undulations -
I wanted to be young enough again
to take some fat wax crayons
and quickly colour their ghosts in,
staying within the lines.
Page(s) 7
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- Iota
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- Lamport Court
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- Magma
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- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
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- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
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- Poetry Salzburg Review
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- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
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- Shearsman
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- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
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