Sue Butler
Wrapping presents
During the years leading up to Stalin's death,
when every political commentator
was attempting to predict his successor,
not one of them mentioned Kruschev.
Even after the last breath
was strangled from Stalin's body,
news bureaux found no evidence
that this fat and funny son of a miner,
provincial as his homely wife, would emerge
from the welter of blood and dust
which surrounded the exit
of Molotov Beria and Malenkov.
And with this as a template,
surely inexperience is excuse enough
for having failed to recognise
the unspoken element of our conversation.
That accumulation of detail,
which should have prepared us
or the way this table
now dominates the room,
for how close we have to stand
to secure the shiny paper,
the way your finger bends
to flatten the ribbon,
and above the twist and turn
of the perfect reef knot, this gentle,
deliberate, drawing in of the bow,
tighter, then tighter still.
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