Bonnie Yuill
Divorce in those days
No one talked about divorce in those days -
just, ‘He died in a Coventry hospital’ -
a phrase that killed the actual loving bedside wait
above their tidy tobacconist’s shop,
and cancelled the long hours in hushed enclosure
as his second wife
linked him by her hand to life.
And twice a day, the doctor’s footstep up
the narrow passageway to ‘keep him comfortable’.
His striped pyjamas drew the colour from his face,
through yellow fingers pointing at the wall.
Family records missed out Lillian May, my Grandad’s second wife,
for didn’t he deserve a lonely bitter death,
a grudging metal hospital bed and hatred in the hereafter?
Divorce just didn’t happen in those days.
Page(s) 73
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- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
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- Poetry Salzburg Review
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- Second Aeon
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- Shearsman
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- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
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- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The