Maria Jastrzêbska
That Sunshine
You were that sunshine
long-awaited, needed
to make the sky see-through again.
They dropped on all fours
scrabbling in ash
for embers, pocket-watches,
albums, scraps to show you.
Old songs and hooch
had kept them warm at night.
Glancing up, they walked dragging
suitcases. Laboured to find
what they no longer had.
You were a ray of weightless
colour bundled in white,
bounced on every knee.
You cried with the sheer rush
of air in your lungs
the slap of warnings too hard
as they crowded round you,
mother’s mouth, father’s eyes,
hunger barely disguised.
Of all the cautionary tales
they told, why did no one
explain? Column after column
moved closer, shadow-thin –
an army of the dead
already at your back.
Page(s) 23
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