Ann Dancy
Felix
For you the pavement is sparklers and smashed puddles
your breath halos, you dance, grimacing
two-stepping dogshit, late for school again.
Your sister is too snooty to even glance;
her shoes remain unscathed. You career
from gutter to railings, I-spying fantasy
letters we can never guess.
C for condoms, you shout and search my face,
To do with kissing, something for girls.
You kick the wreckage, shuffling flaccid skins.
I start distracting, steering you away,
A party. Soon. Ask your friends, to celebrate
when you were born…the shock of your red hair
and you, piercingly alert, eyes like frost
behind a tearing caul….Like plastic, you suggest,
Like clingfilm, so I’ll never drown or die.
More like these, I think, For safety and for luck.
Dickhead, your sister whispers in your happy face.
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