Lorraine Mariner
Please
If you must touch me on the Inter-City service
why just a hand always resting on my knee?
Why not throw me backwards across a window table
until a trolley steward asks us to move our legs?
Once we reach our destination, unpack our suitcase,
by all means lead me along Blackpool Pier
but not with that awkward arm across my shoulder.
Put me on your shoulders and carry me its length.
When queueing for ice cream, no bottom enfolded
by fingers jammed in the back pocket of my jeans.
Does some man selling postcards, surrounded
by inflatables, need to be shown that we’re in love?
After we retum to our room with sand in our shoes,
touch me in ways that make the Gideon’s pages curl.
Like a rubber ring reached for drowning in an Irish Sea,
touch me to save yourself, to hold on tight, to breathe.
Page(s) 7
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