John Haynes
Accompanying
i.m. Mum and Dad
If anything went wrong she would sing Bill,
as she had done at Margate once when midway
through her act, the lighting went. A swill
of faintest breakers came in as they slid
a side door back and someone shone car head
lamps in over the seats and hats and stark
white faces turning in the flecks. She said
‘Bill,’ speaking as if speaking to the dark
in which whatever she did he would follow:
key change, pause, eyelids closing to elongate
a phrase - ‘I love him...’ A summer show.
A mishap. His blind hands and her voice wracked
with passion in a sentimental song.
Yet love itself could not be more exact.
John Haynes has published two volumes of poems, one from London Magazine Editions, one under a Nigerian name from RAG Press, Nigeria. A selection from his book length poem, Letter to Patience, about a township bar in Nigeria, is due in a forthcoming anthology from Enitharmon.
Page(s) 100
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