Morgan Kenney
Last Will
The money caused no problem
Allotted to the years of love and affection
The quiet moments of unglamorous, trusted happiness
When occasion made a star
And attentions beamed that simple message
Impossible to say, easier to show
But the photos
Lifeless, vulnerable to the unknowing eye
Flattened against indifferent backgrounds
Mummified moments of high-spirited fun
Celebrations to honour those now dining away
Formal dress to establish importance
Shoulder to shoulder impassive faces
Highlight little happenings in tiny lives
The round small-featured face of five
The lengthened nose of thin eighteen
The features stamped success at forty
The pouches sagging with seventy years
Life’s picture parade of wrenching time
No place for these within a will
Depersonalised pieces of shiny paper
Outlining shapes sucked dry of substance
Empty shades now passed by
The protected dead are buried away
Their image exposed to uncaring eyes
Carelessly turned by dirtied thumb
Or piled on dampened lawn for auction
Shreds of someone’s discarded life
Allotted to the years of love and affection
The quiet moments of unglamorous, trusted happiness
When occasion made a star
And attentions beamed that simple message
Impossible to say, easier to show
But the photos
Lifeless, vulnerable to the unknowing eye
Flattened against indifferent backgrounds
Mummified moments of high-spirited fun
Celebrations to honour those now dining away
Formal dress to establish importance
Shoulder to shoulder impassive faces
Highlight little happenings in tiny lives
The round small-featured face of five
The lengthened nose of thin eighteen
The features stamped success at forty
The pouches sagging with seventy years
Life’s picture parade of wrenching time
No place for these within a will
Depersonalised pieces of shiny paper
Outlining shapes sucked dry of substance
Empty shades now passed by
The protected dead are buried away
Their image exposed to uncaring eyes
Carelessly turned by dirtied thumb
Or piled on dampened lawn for auction
Shreds of someone’s discarded life
Page(s) 54
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