Paul Groves
Here it comes again
The supermarket trolley is full to overflowing.
There are mistletoe and holly and soon it might start snowing.
Homes seem glowing islands with wonderful effects:
television violence and television sex,
another roaring season of fruit and nuts and plenty
of wind and indigestion. The Christmas cognoscenti
are stuffed like any turkey across the western world.
From here to Albuquerque it’s all the same. We’re hurled
headlong into pleasure to toast the Virgin Birth
before the countermeasure to trim the widening girth.
Despite our rigorous diet each year turns out the same.
We rarely feel disquiet. Three cheers for Bethlehem!
It gives the perfect alibi for heedless self-indulgence.
From Pimlico to Paraguay revellers pay allegiance
to gluttonous behaviour. Mammon Rules OK.
Forget the tiny saviour sleeping in the hay.
Page(s) 16
magazine list
- Features
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- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
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- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
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- Dream Catcher
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- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
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- Global Tapestry
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- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
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- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
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- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
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- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
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- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
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- Poetry Salzburg Review
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- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
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- 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