James Sutherland-Smith
An autumn laundry
You are laying out our winter clothes,
Folding them, replacing them on wooden shelves
Sweet with the smell of soap and jars of potpourri,
A different colour, a different essence
For sweaters, shirts, blouses, underwear.
This is not a task I am allowed to do.
I turn from writing to watch you work
And wonder if I might catch your scent.
Outside is everything you hate;
A brawl, fumes rising as neighbours roast a pig,
Beyond them clouds sharp-edged as splintered timber
Signalling a storm when you will hide your head,
And beyond that perhaps your unlaundered past,
A cousin, boy next door, classmate, the argument
You never wed who might have blemished you
With those resentments in which discolour lives almost
Imperceptibly until the stain is permanent.
You remain serene and cold to this as winter,
Your landscapes immaculate as linen.
Inside is everything you do not hate.
I am your rough weather, your dirty blanket
Laid on the earth between the stalks of maize,
Your blazing row. I have caught your scent.
Outside the pig crackles on a spit while pure colours,
Browns, reds and lilacs, lift tumblers of sour wine.
Page(s) 38
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