Kate Potts
Proof, Maybe
Grand, fly-goggle glasses and cribbed grin,
dog lead slung loose around neck,
her daughters – her ducks – putter behind,
lagging, diminishing in height.
The light’s buttercups – quick, mossed water.
Bat-eared dog turns away from the lens.
We girls have armed ourselves with buckets,
shrimp-nets, and our own, brittle cameras.
Your one, gigantic eye dilates, tightens –
pure cornea – calculated focus and aperture –
a question of degrees –
We took the girls out to Westerham. It was August.
Swish car, upholstery, house in the city,
a dopping of letters after your name – Doctor –
remember that telephone call in the early hours,
the man whose wife was giving birth?
We were there – squinting in gingham.
Growing, intractable, yours.
Not insomnia’s spite, cussed days, kicked teeth
but an accumulation of glossy paper,
irrefutable facts, brisk walks.
Kafka had a sign over his desk that read, simply, WAIT.
Words seize – bleach – are not enough.
Page(s) 18
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