Ian Pople
3 Pearces Terrace
Is a pencilled address on an uncashed cheque,
an hour spent sitting in my Aunt's thin kitchen
with a silent woman known in Thurles for the craic,
who is now in my wallet, sitting on a pale lambretta -
floral pattern, puffy hands, bulbous nose, white bun -
laminated to a cartoon Sacred Heart with Christ's fingers
held in benediction beside his pallid face.
The other Grandma gazes from beneath a sailor hat.
In her fifties she took in a son who didn't know
till he was drafted, what was not his birthright.
Grandpa Joyce stands always with a trout, plus fours,
lath rod, his sepia moustache, the urban background view.
When I picked clover from my father's parents' graves,
one leaf and florets from that Ontario steeltown hill,
the other in Suffolk from the marble's milk tea swirl.
I pressed them both together in a book that I've since lost;
in his buggy I brought my sleeping son to those worn turves,
and placed a single rose where it would rot to rust.
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