Derrick Buttress
The Dictator’s Apple
A snapshot, 1935
The man with the comic moustache
lies on a bank of grass peeling an apple
with a folding pocket knife.
He clutches the handle of bone,
cuts the peel, a wriggling strip,
as if this trivial act
must be performed to perfection.
He’s alone, peeling his apple.
Now he’s slicing the pure white fruit.
This slice is the Sudetenland.
He pops it into his mouth. It is sweet.
This slice is Poland, and the next is Russia.
He chews the fruit seriously.
When he has eaten the whole of the apple
he wipes his knife on the grass,
tests the sharpness of the blade
with the ball of his thumb,
stares into the cold blue metal of the sky
as though he’s dreaming.
Derrick Buttress is widely published in magazines and his poems have been broadcast on Radio. His three collections of poetry are: Spiking The Boss’s Gin (Mo-Saic, 1998), Waiting For the Invasion (Shoestring, 2002) and My Life As A Minor Character (Shoestring, 2005).
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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