Emma Danes
Retaking EC1
And I had thought only this: thin-lipped
streets taking long slow drags of traffic,
voices pressed up against the hubbub,
stale-beer city rank in evening hair. Instead
I found my father, tangent-eyed, plotting
the passage of the sun across lunchtime
churchyards and hidden squares where roses
unfurled like sails; patiently mastering
the cartography of buses; taking
coffee as though taking leave of dry land;
or slipping below campaniles signed
with Lenten ash; reflecting an anchored
shipshape London in his calm depths. I should
have known from our south-west years: his forbearance
as I ridiculed the cricket commentary,
the way his quiet disapproval stung
like a smack I couldn’t heal, or how he stood
in morning grey and spoke of grateful
privilege as he gave me away. So now
I open my A to Z and names fall
softly from the pages like endearments,
or the disposal of light on water:
Roseberry Avenue, Clerkenwell Green,
St John Street, Goswell Road, Northampton Square.
Emma Danes has worked as a writer, editor and teacher. She has been published in Magma and Poetry News.
Page(s) 9
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