Martina Thomson
Marion
You’d moved your bed down and now slept among
the spades and buckets - beanpoles, trowels, baskets -
there the new commode and, yes, the glass door to the garden.
You sat bolt upright on the crumpled sheets
and when I greeted you I found your cheek
was wet with tears: ‘Forgive me if I don’t get up’,
your eyes without your specs so intimate, so bare.
A letter had arrived. ‘The second drawer
up in the tallboy, you’ll see it, bring it down’ -
a letter spun of accusations. ‘So what d’you make of it?’
‘I want to put my arms round you, that’s all.’
‘Well then -’, and now your tears were hot.
Your heart-beat stayed with me when you drew back;
there was a stillness in the room and dusk;
the gardening tools lost contour, substance -
shadows of a chorus closed around us
and you now with the wicked lightening of your smile,
the tilted head: ‘I think that’s drowned that letter.’
Ready for the whiskey, we raised the tumblers eye to eye.
You told me you’d found words, end words, for your chapter
which made the book complete. We toasted it
on this last night. O Marion, you wanted me to stay
but then said: ‘No, come see me when it’s day.’
Page(s) 16
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