Laurence Scott
Investiture
It's 1968, I'm eighteen,
walking with mum across Horse Guards.
She's in her new hat from the Co-op,
I'm in my old school blazer,
stitch-marks where the badge used to be.
Up-ahead dad has parked the Anglia,
not in a side street as mum would like
but in the Mall itself, where it sits,
renegade blue in an ant-trail of black limos.
He's posing for photos,
six-foot-six of Moss Bros,
teeth shining like milk on fire,
skin like polished coin.
Then it's back to the car, police waving us on.
Sensing one of their own,
dad gets offered a smile, mum says
Uniforms are a man's best friend.
I gaze out, wordless.
Sun shadows the crowd, paper remnants
tumble-weed down St James's.
Then we're through the gates, and in.
Laurence Scott is a bookseller in London. Poems
in Other Poetry, Magma and the Word for Word
anthology (forthcoming).
in Other Poetry, Magma and the Word for Word
anthology (forthcoming).
Page(s) 13
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