Anne Berkeley
Home from Home
Dead place of words, I never loved you.
Tank of stale air. Never there when I wanted you.
And when I found you in, you’d turn your face away,
under the fluorescent light.
Always some fine to pay, some sniff of disapproval
at my choice of words.
Dust dry on the electric fire.
You’d take my offering and scold.
Cramped welcome. Rituals of hush and disappointment.
And always him in the corner with the parish magazine -
hawking from winter and the long difficulty of the hill.
Brother. We barely nodded.
You and your dog-eared exhortations to public duty,
yoga-classes, sugar-craft!
Pinboard of unclaimed bookmarks,
how hard I looked to find myself:
I did not fit
in Gardening, Family Saga, not even Romance.
You filed Man Made Language under Health.
Brass latch with the broad thumbplate,
click-snick and Briton doorcloser,
swirl of leaves on the heavy-duty carpet,
you are History.
Leave me be.
You never really loved me. You winked and fussed
for the virtuous. I was demanding, overdue.
You had to summon me by letter, issue warnings.
My bitten apples, lobbed at targets.
Your neat rack of handcuffs, roses, guns.
Too late to say
I should have visited more often.
No doubt your other, grateful children weep.
And I nurse
a wordless absence
every week.
Page(s) 4-5
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