Val Doyle
Blitz
Remember that old news reel clip
so often shown -
of firemen,
bent over plying hose,
against St. Paul's curved dome
as it soars
outlined against a stark incendiary sky?
A drama of the war,
filed under 'history',
along with Drake, and Henry and his wives.
Or so I thought,
until after the funeral,
clearing out boxes
full of theatre programmes,
letters,
hats with little veils,
scarves, still redolent with 'Blue Grass' from Lizzie Arden,
the scented junk of seventy years,
I found a piece of metal
in an envelope,
marked in the familiar hand:
'Shrapnel, extracted from my side
in June, 1941, at St. Thomas' Hospital.'
Hunkered down among my mother's detritus,
I felt a sharp metal sting my hand,
and sharper pain,
that she, who loved to tell a tale,
had never told me this one.
Page(s) 26
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