John Daniel
When my father made toy trains
When my father made toy trains
the house was alive with engines and carriages,
red, blue, yellow, green.
All the kids in the alley drilled wheels
in a shower of gold. We were going places
at sixpence an hour,
perhaps to a boarding-house by the sea
although my mother refused to cook or make beds.
It’s all right for you just talking to people.
Next a Chinaman
ran down our road pulling a rickshaw.
Cheaper in Woolworths with a cactus inside
and lastly a telephone table, classy
with flecked oak and glass reflecting his dreams.
Underneath the directories packed with his customers.
Monday morning again, he’d say,
snapping the bike clips round his ankles
like manacles.
John Daniel is published in a wide variety of magazines. A Winner of the Exeter prize and commended in last year’s National, his poems have also appeared in anthologies - 23 British Poets (Swallow) and Faber Introduction series. A volume, Missing the Boat, was published last year by Etruscan Books.
Page(s) 10
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