Jade Smith
Children's Museum
Whilst sipping tea in a tarpaulin café
I watch the little boys
delivered from the children’s museum
run round and round and round,
some chasing pigeons.
Round and round and round,
pigeons from a loft flying
over dirty mining towns
choking in soot that gathers on their wings
clogs their lungs, silts their eyes;
boys dipping to the ground to grab a tail of a wing,
pigeons deftly on stick legs pivoting a quick step,
escape by the wisp of a feather.
Biting into my sandwich,
a watchful pigeon weaving nonchalance for a free crumb,
with a shrug of its shoulders pirouettes, flies across the lawn
plenty more where that came from.
Round and round and round they run
boys freed from technical cages
where glass screens feed them morsels of a world
they might fly in, fly from their parents,
primary coloured rucksacks of fear;
from which they inelegantly flutter
once a day to learn English, Science and Maths;
twice in the holidays - if they're lucky,
to visit the children’s museum.
Page(s) 92
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