Angela Cooke
Romantic Encounters of a Dreamer
Oh how she longed to be a slim young girl
with hair like tongues of yellow flame
licking around her heart-shaped face.
Him to be well-built, trim
and for the evening to enfold them
like a scented shawl
made of perfumes of the summer day.
But she was a skinny bottle blond.
He was fat. His hair thin grey fingers
grimly clinging to his sweaty head.
(The evening was yet another slab of boredom.)
That day, she had romantically bought
some bulbs from Woolworths.
In big letters it had said
DO NOT EAT THESE BULBS, THEY ARE POISON.
She had called then at the library
to find a book about bees
that would visit her early spring bulbs,
the ones she must not eat.
She rustled in her bag for her library card.
The library girl's thin lips
quickly turned to a mean slit.
'Neither your blood group, though rare
nor your organ donor card, nor even
your tatty copy of the 23rd psalm
have anything to do with Stockport
Leisure Services,' she said.
Next she had popped into the museum
expecting history, some beauty-
a little mystery. There she found a piece
of ancient coal, the foot of a seal,
ten bottled reptiles and a stuffed racoon.
That night in bed the woman whispered
to the man 'The moon is a crescent
of white ice cutting the night into a million stars'
'Don't be daft,' he said.
magazine list
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- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
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- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
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- Iota
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- Lamport Court
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- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
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- North, The
- Oasis
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- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
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- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
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- Private Tutor
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- Quarto
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- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
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- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The