Tim Robertson
Kiss
We can’t remember our first date,
exactly when it was or exactly where.
There were four or five nights around that time
in spring 1997
when we met for drinks in West End bars,
got our bottled beers from the muscly barmen
and pushed our way through to a corner table
near the piles of Boyz and flyers for night dubs.
I was easy-going, confident, pleased.
(It was later I panicked, when I found how deep I was in.)
You listened and said you were shy and slow,
laughed and kept just out of reach.
When we ran into friends, they’d tease us
for courting, and you’d steer us on to a different bar.
At the end of each night, you always went home,
refused to come back to mine.
“I’ve no idea how to introduce sex
after the first date,” I warned.
But then there was the time you kissed me goodnight
on the corner of Tottenham Court Road.
Your 73 turned up and you took me
by surprise. Rushed; soft; quite sure.
A marvellous kiss. Our first, I suppose.
I stood where I was as the bus pulled away.
It stretched out its wings and lifted off
in a gradual climb and curve up over the shops.
Page(s) 8
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