In The Poetry

Her News

You paused for a moment and I heard you smoking
on the other end of the line.
I pictured your expression,
one eye screwed shut against the smoke
as you waited for my reaction.
I was waiting for it myself, a list of my own news
gone suddenly cold in my hand.
Supposing my wife found out, what would happen then?
Would [...]

‘When I grow up’ is sort of couched as a prayer really, a prayer to God. I thought it would be nice for God to have a prayer which he could answer. So this is a poem to cheer God up.

When I Grow Up

When I grow up I want to have a bad leg.
I want [...]

Prayer

God give me strength to lead a double life.
Cut me in half.
Make each half happy in its own way
with what is left. Let me disobey
my own best instincts
and do what I want to do, whatever that may be,
without regretting it, or thinking I might.

When I come home late at night from home,
saying I have to [...]

This poem’s ‘Dinner with my Mother’ – I used to go and stay with her in Portugal, down in the Algarve every year and she would make me lovely meals. And this makes me feel slightly sad because it mentions a kind of mannerism she had when she was cooking. She died a while back.

Dinner [...]