Philippa Collingwood
In a Newcastle Café
Poppy-seed cake - a thousand full stops crammed
into one sentence of pastry base and sponge top.
Each gritty vanilla sub-clause translates
on my tongue into German. I am fifteen again,
in Helga’s lounge surrounded by saddened relations
and friends of the grandfather, who had lived upstairs.
Excused the service, left behind to mind a carry-cot,
I had watched with wonder black plumes, black horses
stepping out of the past to collect the old man.
Afterwards, too few words in my mouth, I substituted
the caterer’s pastries: glazed twists and whirls
whose seeds lingered between teeth and gums.
In Bonn, new flavours at the Eiscafé froze my tongue.
I blackened it for life with slices of pumpernickel;
sharpened it on sauerkraut; rolled it round circles
of Bierwurst, busied it on Brötchen: ja bitte.
At the end of two weeks I returned full,
my experienced tongue now unstoppable.
Page(s) 7
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