Ruth Hite
Number 15265 from Glasgow Cen/QSt to Wigan Stations.
All you ever needed to know
about fishing and farming chickens in Cheshire
given to you, in a thick country conversation
between two strangers.
Dave's doing well for himself on the farm.
But he knows if he comes in drunk -
he's in trouble.
The train jolts,
building up speed, slicing
through the uninterested earth.
Leaves, mercilessly destroyed beneath it.
They ignore our enormous speeding mass,
indifferently floating down from the trees until
the rush of air sucks, pulling them down, swallowing
debris between hot steel, grinding,
at over one hundred miles an hour.
Double reflections of the wrinkly old man,
with his Billabong cap and smoker's cough,
stare, with their offset double exposure eyes,
in the fleeting moments
of outside darkness.
There's floods in Cheshire at the moment.
More fish,
but it's not so good for the farm.
Castles and cottages
solemnly regard us,
watching the world in rewind.
Raindrops cling to the windows,
fighting
to defy the artificial wind.
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