Pat Winslow
Invisible Freight
She drinks milk, looks like she drinks milk.
She has cheese maker's hands, teeth like
pearls of ice cream. She's solid as cheese,
edam firm. Her fingers are teats, fat, pink,
When she sleeps it's like pigs in hay,
her and her husband, their neat trotter feet
sticking out of the bedclothes at night.
The crust of bread moon rises. She snores.
Her skin gleams. She's dreaming in green,
clover, mint, birch leaves spinning in the wind.
At cock crow, her hair is pinned up the old fashioned way.
Buttons, kirby grips, a stub of pencil in her pocket.
She mends the fence, feeds hens from an iron bucket.
She collects the rent from just awake campers.
Halloo, she calls through their pinned down flaps.
She sells them eggs in small white bags.
Later, she barrels along the high street in an old brown coat.
Wind and rain and shopping bags make way for her.
The sun is a coin above her head when she stands by the gate.
This could be a painting. But she's not thinking that.
She's watching the sky for plumes of smoke,
measuring the distance between them and her,
wondering how long, which gust, which soft summer breeze,
which cubic foot of air or footprint will bring it here.
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