Chloë Meakin
Playing at Leaving
Late at night I’ve been getting up.
None of you know this.
Fingering my wardrobe in the dark.
Putting on a suit for business.
I could get on a train in this suit.
Its sharp lines would be stabs in all of your hearts.
How completely satisfactory would that be?
Putting on scarlet lipstick,
watching my lips in the bathroom mirror.
One night they might say something.
It hasn’t been easy keeping secrets like this.
I’m cutting everything that I eat in half.
I like the mathematics of it.
I am in favour of details.
I am thinking carefully about
exactly what each one means.
The old skeleton’s back in town, you know.
Nobody seems to have noticed.
Late at night I’ve been putting things together.
Placing thing after thing, perfectly in its place.
I can’t quite explain this.
It would hurt you too much.
It might mean I wouldn’t love you all enough.
The thought of that is a little too much.
It makes me sweat with excitement.
My mouth is so full of secrets.
“I might not love you all quite enough.”
To say that late at night, echoing with space!
One night I think I might
go out into the excitement of the darkness
and rape myself.
Page(s) 9-10
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