Christine McNeill
Victor Hugo House, Villequier
From the Grey Room - his daughter
Leopoldine's - the Seine appears as wide
as a lake.
No hint of the freak current
that capsized the boat,
drowned her and her husband.
Visitors read his poem 0 Souvenirs.
Click their cameras in front of
the bed until restrained by a
finger-wagging attendant.
She wonders whether any,
now so eager to frame history,
will find these items worth mentioning
a month from now.
Outside on the gravel path
a father is calling his child
at the riverbank.
Her own father's hands
slip into the oasis of that sound;
how as a child
she tugged at his conversations;
her feet rotating
on words so big
that she almost stumbled
while he
slid out into smooth water,
trailing his hand (playfully? sadly?)
over the edge.
magazine list
- Features
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- 10th Muse
- 14
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- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
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- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
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- 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
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- 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