Anne Berkeley
La Boheme
First in the queue
for the diva,
she’s been camping out
here for a week.
She sings in the dark
to keep cheerful,
in a voice like
the wind on your cheek.
Under her
cellular blanket
she hides her
cellular phone -
she’ll use it to call her
stockbroker
when she thinks
she is really alone.
Under her dressings,
her body
is smooth and as firm
as a girl’s
and she binds
both her ankles with bandage
so that men will not
faint as she twirls.
She’ll check in
her things at the cloakroom
(she’ll have drunk up
her thermos of tea).
Under her fur coat
her jewels
will sparkle like
light on the sea.
She’ll take her
champagne in the crush-bar,
settle down in her
comfy red seat
and wait for
the curtains to open
on that scene that still
thrills the elite ....
But right now she
keeps a low profile
and her singing is
private and low,
and the audience step
carefully over her
as they button their
coats in the snow.
Page(s) 4-5
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- 14
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- Chroma
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- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
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- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
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- Lamport Court
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- Magma
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- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
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- North, The
- Oasis
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- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
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- Poetry Salzburg Review
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- Private Tutor
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- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
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- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
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- Yellow Crane, The