Valerie Clarke
Clean sweep
What to discard? Admonitory hymnbooks,
clodhopping poems, toys, tight bras,
out of focus photos of sunsets,
paintings that are a waste of canvas,
the bottle of straw-coloured Chinese wine
that tastes like chicken shit smells?
What to keep? Your old skis,
your fifteen pairs of tennis shoes, rackets,
Lenin's Speeches at Party Congresses,
my collected works aged twelve and upwards,
the Rorschach inkblot test you took
in the seventies, Certificates
of Births, Marriages, Deaths? Letters
I should have burnt? I could go on.
Perhaps we need a skip when all's
said and done. And, my love,
I almost forgot the 2 foot hippo
I won in the Silentnight Bed Competition -
he's staying.
Valerie Clarke has published in magazines, is a prizewinner in competitions and is 'On the Buses'. Her first collection, Dance of Love and Death, has just been published by the National Poetry Foundation.
Page(s) 24
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