F.M. Brown
The Green Party
or Verde que te quiero Verde
1) Bile beans looked like sweet-
ies but they made my mother
moan in privacy.
2) A girl I envied
was burned with acid. I think
that I was sorry.
3) We would try to buy
a dress but always took home
a smart olive suit.
4) The nearest ever
I came to the Nile was an
Agatha Christie.
5) I’d have liked to feel
for myself the soapiness
of jade. I might yet.
6) Gin and lime smelled like
lavender water to me
in my innocence.
7) I moved to London
just in time to get lost in
the last pea-souper.
8) Tumbleweed and sage
brush were illusion till I
saw America.
9) ‘Acapulco Gold
is the best grass you can get.
Why don’t you try some?’
10) Breath stops in my throat
when I hear a certain line
from ‘Lincoln Duncan’.
11) The ground was frozen
and the leek we did not plant
would not be pulled up.
12) Shoals of little fish
in the sea off Perpignan
nibbled at our legs.
13) I can still feel the
wet moss on the dripping trees
in Ted Hughes’ Rain Horse.
14) A wine bottle with
crustaceans on the label
used to mean a lot.
15) A brown leaf squirrelled
in a hollow then dog-foll-
owed me up the slope.
16) I will inherit
an emerald ring that does
not fit my finger.
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