Steven Waling
Poem (Abandoned)
Weeds between sleepers, abandoned.
Wind insinuating, abandoned, through
the bricked-up abandoned windows
in the station-master's head. Abandoned.
The tea-urn can't stop whistling,
abandoned, and passengers abandoned
on platforms are not about to step
through carriage doors, abandoned.
Paperbacks locked in the Waiting-Room
(Ladies), abandoned at Page 52,
with the kiss and the handshake
abandoned on the slotted metal seats.
And the diesel engine stationary,
its journey curtailed, and its driver
shunted to a branch-line to the east;
and here's the station-master's cap,
abandoned: the wrong place to start from.
Wind insinuating, abandoned, through
the bricked-up abandoned windows
in the station-master's head. Abandoned.
The tea-urn can't stop whistling,
abandoned, and passengers abandoned
on platforms are not about to step
through carriage doors, abandoned.
Paperbacks locked in the Waiting-Room
(Ladies), abandoned at Page 52,
with the kiss and the handshake
abandoned on the slotted metal seats.
And the diesel engine stationary,
its journey curtailed, and its driver
shunted to a branch-line to the east;
and here's the station-master's cap,
abandoned: the wrong place to start from.
Steven Waling's Calling Myself on the Phone came out recently from Smith/Doorstop. He has published extensively in magazines and currently teaches creative writing in Greater Manchester.
Page(s) 98
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