Michael Tolkien
T.O.P.S.
Total Oral Protection from Sainsbury’s
if you buy the lot, including picks,
and metres of floss, and start with
the ultimate anti-plaque mouthwash.
But what sticks in the mouth is nothing
to the stuff that comes out. As I learned
when I was eight, swearing packed
a punch in playground politics,
and parents didn’t wait at the gates
for teachers who made good their metaphors.
Mrs Gray warned mine I’d become a big fish
in a little sea and my mouth needed a wash.
A lesson her posse of top girls saw to
one hot breaktime when I boiled over.
They could dip sheep, lift bales, cuff
the squeal out of a pest. No bother then
to bundle me by four limbs head first
into the cloakroom sink, force my lips
and grate carbolic through clenched teeth.
‘Enough for now’, the teacher barked. I cleaned
up and faced the wall while others did choices.
Bastards! Bitches! These days I’m strapped
for words, but you’ve caught me at the mirror
staring daggers as the toothpaste froths.
Page(s) 63
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