Martin Sonenberg
Outlander
Crawled from my bed today to make my first coffee,
went to the sink and spat white as cotton,
stared from the window at the bus stop below.
Saw the same bearded woman in headscarf and boots,
but buses came and went and she never got on.
Got dressed, went downstairs and sat beside her,
saw her squinting at the sunshine, patiently waiting,
like so many days before, didn’t like to ask her why.
Through the slits of her eyes, saw the skeleton of a cow,
the wreck of a cargo ship, broken on the shore,
an empty four-poster and a cupboard full of clothes,
a rusty spiral staircase, open to the sky.
Saw her smile to herself as she hummed an old tune,
a few remembered words in a tongue I didn’t know,
like a dialect of the dead that only she recalled.
Wanted to go back inside when a bony finger prodded me,
and the voice of a child, quivering and hoarse, said
Mata nay gola, karash nageya,
The candle’s gone out, no light, no light.
Page(s) 73-74
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