Danielle Hope
Amwell Cemetery
Approach behind the church
scale moss stuccoed steps.
Thighs ache. A place for silence.
Earth once disturbed grasses over.
A pot of lemon primula
blooms for this season.
From within the divided yew
a sparrow pipes.
The dead
lie under their inscriptions.
Last greetings to Arnold
beloved grandfather, father, husband.
Gladys Jane, sister. Some died
but most fell asleep, passed
away, passed on, went home.
Departed this world. The
manner of death unimportant
except for Kate - lost at sea -
Alice run over by a motor vehicle
Frank succumbed to diabetes.
A place for silence.
Steps dull - no steel staircase
or rapid heels. No rattle
of breakfast or cindered
toast, no rank of beds, each
under different instructions -
nil by mouth, awaiting X-ray
coal-tar dressing, light diet only.
Alcohol restricted. Visitors
come and go. And all night Cathy
pipes ‘who stole.. who stole..
mother’s silver cutlery’.
Headstones huddle like shoppers
under a bus shelter in rain.
Those who never spoke are head
to foot. With inscriptions faded
the old dead make space for the new
dead, stack against a wall.
Among plastic flowers
a scarlet rose trails.
Page(s) 123
magazine list
- Features
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- 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