Gillian Crow
Embarrassed
Do you want to see
The garrulous gulp the air,
The office gossip
Turn Trappist?
Tell them your doctor suspects
That sun-kissed mole’s
Malignant.
Watch their confusion as you wait
For test results.
The optimistic, reassuring voice
Whispers a different message
Behind your back.
The envious spew sour grapes,
Recalling your postcard sent
From radiant shores
While they endured a Blackpool summer.
The climber eyes your job
While handing out obligatory false comfort.
And come your hospital appointment
They peer intently after lost pens,
Search the stores for superfluity of stock,
Anything to avoid a meeting
With a living icon of
Their own mortality.
I’m going to die.
Maybe this year, maybe next year,
Maybe, the doc says,
Not for fifty years -
But never from this harmless mole,
And never from embarrassment
Like you.
Page(s) 10
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