Sam Gardiner
What Samantha Does After Dark
What Samantha does after dark
is not for agnostics. No one who sees
her drag an irate dachshund round the park,
the turbulence left by her striking girth
and voluminous draperies
drawing bewildered butterflies
into her wake, suspects the truth
Nor do Sunday gardeners charting her progress
with mock alarm, “No church today?” she cries,
to which the stock reply is “No,
afraid not. I have to cut the grass,
and besides, it grows on Sunday.”
“It does not,” she snorts. “It stops while you go
to church.” No one would ever guess,
as she billows boisterously away
to creak a pew, that Samantha alone
at night enjoys her greatest happiness.
Feeling her body all over for lumps,
blotches and tumours of the bone
(as shown in “Illness made Simple”),
she knows too well how the heart pumps
this life away. And knows the remedy:
with every possibly fatal pimple
or twinge she sinks massively to her knees
and prays eagerly, “I’m ready,
Lord, take me now. Take me now. Please.”
Page(s) 9
magazine list
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- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
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- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
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- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
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- 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