Ruth Hite
July 1998. Supersaver Return.
"Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen, we are now approaching Carlisle.
If you are leaving the train at this stop, please be sure to take all your
belongings with you."
Don't forget the yellowing, over-read Times you adopted,
whilst enduring the mind
numbing experience
of sitting, shaking like a rattle snake,
everything waist down falling quietly asleep.
Trapped for three slow-motion hours,
in the grinding, churning metal cage.
Thirty-four pounds worth of sunset,
clouds sucked, by the evercreeping horizon, out of view,
sodden, sedate (pre-Tesco) cattle falling,
mute and uncaring, into the enveloping mist.
The "Engaged" sign strains to stay
permanently aglow above you, flickering and fading
gently like the silver air swelling across the grey sky,
silently mocking travellers' caffeine jitters, shaking your vision,
primed bladders, straining your waistband.
"Take all your belongings with you..."
Take home the echoing laughter of a small
Cockney woman, gnawing the stale air.
The sound of a convulsive donkey,
in a tiny pin-stripe suit, could be mistaken for a
"Suspicious Package."
(We may have to notify the relevant authorities.)
Any small children, mistakenly (or not) left on the platform
will be removed.
"Please mind the gap."
As if you'd want to fill it.
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