Hilary Sheers
When I grow up...
When I grow up I shall listen to the government
And find a role model who will be all my fictions
Rolling into one magnificent Grand Dame
Reverting to my English upper middle roots
That I have already dyed red to go with my purple
Fingernails and thigh-crushing trousers.
I shall be Graham Greene's aunt, taking tea
That I have grown myself on the conservatory
While my toy-boy butler, black and beautiful as ever
Caresses the Rizlas as he has done for fifty years
And my memory for last night is not good
Plus ça change.
I shall take Harpic to their parties and blow them all away
Driving my anal grandchildren round the bend
Snorting my allergies at their speeding substances.
I shall buy a five foot bed with room to stretch
My stiffening bones and keep the crosswords
Condoms, cups, a plentiful supply of fags and wine
And call it a work of art in media mixed
With video, filming something male and sinewy
In permanent installation at my feet, kept
Gracing golden silky sheets cast carelessly aside
Flung, neither with bang nor whimper, but with style.
Plus ça change.
Hilary Sheers is a translator and poet. Her first chapbook collection, Uncertain Age, is being published by Manifold this summer.
Page(s) 65
magazine list
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- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
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- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
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- Fabric
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- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
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- 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