Magyar post
Fifth frontier, twenty-two hours
from Ostend, custom queues under arclights.
An intermitting blue road slithers off the grid.
Each July my father smoking too hard,
my mother heart-still, I’d concentrate on Gerard's
stamp collection, cradle the department
store doll with T-bar shoes: schoolyard
rumours of store-rooms of impounded
toys… Then the slow build-up in second,
holsters shrinking in the car's rear window.
Signal; mirror; ignition; one military
strobe-striated bridge and we’re in
a country where thunder pummels
unlined windows our whole first night.
Rainfall and lurid dreams. Vast
cellophanes of on-approvals—kingfishers,
red-capillaried butterflies, olympians
cutting overarm through pools—
scatter unhinged off squared
loose-leaves. I wake to the absolution
of afterstorm, and day-long disquiet
until we find the shut kiosk,
cornice pocked since fifty-six,
grille-window lined with limited editions.
from Ostend, custom queues under arclights.
An intermitting blue road slithers off the grid.
Each July my father smoking too hard,
my mother heart-still, I’d concentrate on Gerard's
stamp collection, cradle the department
store doll with T-bar shoes: schoolyard
rumours of store-rooms of impounded
toys… Then the slow build-up in second,
holsters shrinking in the car's rear window.
Signal; mirror; ignition; one military
strobe-striated bridge and we’re in
a country where thunder pummels
unlined windows our whole first night.
Rainfall and lurid dreams. Vast
cellophanes of on-approvals—kingfishers,
red-capillaried butterflies, olympians
cutting overarm through pools—
scatter unhinged off squared
loose-leaves. I wake to the absolution
of afterstorm, and day-long disquiet
until we find the shut kiosk,
cornice pocked since fifty-six,
grille-window lined with limited editions.
Anne-Marie Fyfe has organized the Coffee-House Poetry reading series at the Troubadour since 1997. She was writer-inresidence at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival in 2003 and was a recipient in 2002 of an Authors’ Foundation award. Her collections are Late Crossing 1999 and Tickets from a Blank Window 2002, both from Rockingham Press.
Page(s) 11
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