Robert Hamberger
The Other Woman
After work one night my mother felt so tired
she dozed on our settee, her head
resting in the lap of the married
man who visited, wined and dined her, made
her sweet and bitter for years in equal measure.
While Nina Simone sang ‘The Other Woman’,
that record they played for maudlin pleasure,
I watched him tie tiny knots in her hair one
by one as she dreamed. I didn’t stop him.
When she woke and fingered her hair
he and I laughed it off together: his whim,
her disappointment, while Nina swooned her
voice round French perfume and a lonesome queen
crying herself to sleep, spending her life alone.
she dozed on our settee, her head
resting in the lap of the married
man who visited, wined and dined her, made
her sweet and bitter for years in equal measure.
While Nina Simone sang ‘The Other Woman’,
that record they played for maudlin pleasure,
I watched him tie tiny knots in her hair one
by one as she dreamed. I didn’t stop him.
When she woke and fingered her hair
he and I laughed it off together: his whim,
her disappointment, while Nina swooned her
voice round French perfume and a lonesome queen
crying herself to sleep, spending her life alone.
Page(s) 14
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