Kerry Andrew
fireflies
We were best mates,
me and Alice.
She made me shine,
with her crazy firecracker hair
and fierce eyes that glittered
at her own inventions:
the stories she magicked
as we splodged in our wellies
through woods that ignited into
outlaw camps and witches’ circles,
ice-age caves and war zones.
She was mad, fizzing mad.
She once ate a spider for a dare -
picked it to pieces leg by leg,
smacked her lips.
Boys buzzed for her,
fidgety in her shadow;
she just flung her hair at them
and whirlwinded away, eyes dimming.
One day in the woods,
she had bruised cheeks.
She’d trodden on the brush
of a broom, it had catapulted
flat-bang black and blue
into her face, she told me,
lip-tips curling, eyes sparking.
She was clumsy, for all her
quickfire retorts and wild plots.
She would clang into radiators,
slip on morning grass, claw-fight
the cat, walk awkwardly.
Some weekends she camped
at ours, shook the place up.
When she caught on that
my brother was smitten,
she shrunk away and didn’t stay.
I found out she was dead at 24.
Dead, luminous in blood, with a note.
I’d seen her last a year before -
the zigzag hair lopped off,
the ferocious eyes faded.
We sat, scratching for words,
unable to discuss men or
her family, trying to reminisce
on our trampings in the wood.
We never had a cat,
she told me, too kind to accuse.
Page(s) 117-118
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