Maggie Sullivan
Seize the day
4am. Awake and wondering why she
tries to go back to sleep. Then the
pressure of a full bladder. It’s
January. Even with the heating on,
tea brewing, an inauspicious,
unromantic start to the day.
There is romance in her life,
a new affair. She wonders if
his imagination will keep pace
with hers. Remembers, last
night in the pub, somebody
asking ‘if they’d shagged yet?’
She prefers understatement,
eroticism. Now and then
something raunchy.
The edges are still blurred.
Takes a walk to clear her head,
feeling strange, a bit foolish, out
so early with no particular direction.
Surprised to find someone there
before her - a road sweeper!
Of course, easier to clean up with
fewer people about. In the half
light, ice on pavements glitters brightly.
The cemetery at the end of the road is frightening
Scares herself into seeing ghosts.
Skeletal fingers beckon.
Back indoors. Still an hour to kill
before she catches up with real time.
Channel hops - breakfast TV, cartoons,
the end of a film. Thinks, she wouldn’t
have understood the plot even if she’d
been there at the start.
Drains her cup.
There’s work ahead.
The alarm set to go off at 7.
Page(s) 14-15
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