Philip Burton
A feathery tale
When I was young and me tongue hung out
me mum used to say, You’ve lost your starched gloves
you, and the feathers will grow on your bum
and they’ll throw
copper coins at it through the bars, me mum
said. But when I got younger and dafter
and tuned into Uni. she’d bake and bring loaves
on the number nineteen, and she’d hum,
Go, go, go
you bum, at the bursar, the dean, and such stars
me mum did. The grain of it all is that she missed
her Love,
the wild saucy oarsman who’d beat her drum.
Don’t you know
me with bracts at the back, don’t you, me mum
then, now I’m a gent with a long letter tail
and me pantomime paunch, and the rest of me, shoves
me weight in affairs of The State, me mum?
Don’t you know
me? Well me tongue still hangs out, just for you, then,
me mum.
Page(s) 38-39
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