K.M. Dersley
The ones we sarcastically dubbed 'the lovers'
After 7 1/2 years of lukewarm companionship
they’re hanging up whatever they
might have been about to use instead of vows.
In the Social Club week after week
amongst the din of the Shaboogamoo Shufflers,
the Makeshifts and others
while the freaks took the floor (some on Ecstasy)
they sat there all night
and suddenly his lips would move or hers
and one or the other
would get up and refill the foaming beakers.
He never after all invited her
to move into the house with its stable
converted into a garage
then a sitting room
an arrangement he did himself
being an architect
(the subject of a spread in the local paper).
She had to stay in the Greystones tower block
with noise next door
and negative equity over the bedhead
and he never accompanied her
to the poetry functions she frequented.
He showed a basic indifference even to
the curries they ate together and the films
they saw.
Everyone always said she
could do better, he wasn’t much to look at.
And that, at least, is now
a bit of a
comfort.
Page(s) 168-169
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