Annemarie Austin
Alphabet Soup
Should A Corpse Tell? was the title
along the spine of the book on my head
that made me keep my chin level
and back straight. I puzzled out its
hieroglyphics turned around by the mirror.
Reading is too complicated. And besides,
when I sit in bed and try to do it,
the print moves about as it chooses,
like birds inside a flock changing
places.
Here is a photograph of someone.
It’s your sister or it’s me. And this one
is my grandmother in her pony trap.
She’s still alive, you know. Tell me
how my grandmother died long ago.
She read the Daily Express aloud to me
right through. All the murders and police
digging up corpses in back gardens,
the Japanese earthquake. I went to sleep
quite sure the earth would eat me
in my bed in the house in the night.
Do you like this room? I have others.
Perhaps my favourite is the bedroom.
I fill two hotwater bottles and then
retreat there — even after breakfast,
once the girl has gone.
My children are
scattered all over the world but here.
Some of them are older than I’ll ever
get to be. Like rune stones by the roads
in Sweden, they are a mystery to me.
Page(s) 63
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