Barbara Bentley
Mary Mary
When I'm sure my wife is dead to the world,
I slip on my robe and stand by the curtains,
binoculars round my neck. Then I wait
till next door's kitchen light floods the garden
and Mary appears, pushing the Qualcast,
ready to mow stripes under the stars.
Windblown shells spit from whirring blades
as Mary walks the lengths of the lawn.
My lens tracks her to the compost heap
where grass and cockles are tipped from the box.
She deadheads overblown silver bells, and
in a wandshake of glitter, she rakes up the rest.
What I like most is the way she prunes spruce,
coaxing girl-shapes out of the boughs. I watch her
trim a lip, a lobe, or sculpt a deep-green cleavage.
Sometimes I lose her, but then I glimpse shears
and her magnified funny-bone up so close
that I could make it tingle with a touch
and sometimes I wish I was bush: leafshined,
greenfingered, taking shape in her hands;
made perfect while my wife dreams.
I hanker for her. To be quite contrary with Mary,
Mary. The light goes out when she goes in.
I put the binoculars back in the case
on the shelf next to Scrabble and Senokots.
The mattress dips as I get back to bed.
With her back to me, my wife is all elbow.
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