" title="Brittle Star Julia Bird
Time, Ladies, Please
A woman walks into a bar.
She is not followed by a belly laugh
or a playful punchline to the upper arm:
but picks a seat where she can see the door,
racks up a trayful of dead and empties –
glasses smeared with pink air kisses –
and plays her own version of beer-mat tricks,
patience and tarot, mats splayed out then stacked.
Behind her, a round of blokes gets the Guinness in,
sloppy flowers doodled in the froth,
and the fruitie delivers a shrapnel jackpot
for the jukebox or Durex machine.
In the Ladies’, the woman queues, while a girl
mops with bog-roll the dregs of a crying fit
brought on by jealousy or too much gin.
It’s in the timing, like the telling of a joke,
the moment between early doors and chucking out
you choose to stand, or be stood, up and go.
Page(s) 12
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