Gerda Mayer
Balloon with Message
A small orange moon, a footloose balloon,
Has hopped over the hedge - a pippin, a boon.
It now lies in the well of my plastic black pail;
I’m loth to dislodge it, while it’s wishing me well.
But its skin’s growing puckered, it’s looking quite knackered,
It has run out of breath, in the pit of my bucket.
Yes, each day it’s diminished: I fear it is finished.
It’s no longer a full moon, but a waning one vanquished.
Old windbag, deflated, you one-time-elated Floater-on-Air!
Come, let us construe as entirely true the message you bear:
A Happy New Year.
Gerda Mayer is currently writing her autobiography, excerpts of which have appeared in New Writing 10 (British Council/Picador) and Writers’ Awards 2001 (Arts Council of England / Waterstone’s). Her latest collection of verse is Bernini’s Cat (Iron Press, 1999).
Page(s) 95
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
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- 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