Issue 26: Jeremy Gibson
last and first in line
the day my dad burnt down
a whole queue from st pauls to
the commercial road walked
backwards and in reverence.
story-book ducks and men
in cardboard coats stepped out
struggling to remember his name
or to see what was coming
to us at every flame in the day
/and this is your actual divide, the whole
and the past, the poem and the past/
I stopped time and time again
in the steam of a smithfield bull
and glared as there came my son
with my ashes on his hands.
la mer
with no more words than necessary
she’d live with nothing, or less if she could,
on the kind of whispering street you
see with the corner of your eye
and so down stairs stuffed with leaves and drought
one step ahead of what was owed, feared or borrowed
she would slow burn along with rare nimble
repetition, jump skipping across the water to meet
the sun. there wishes willfully belonged to the lazy
and the timid, an idle swell to forget the rest, until
her tomorrows ebbed in the blink of her now one good eye
which like the day absorbed all the withered light of evening
welcome back
So all that time I was knocking on an open door covered in all sorts of dull
tiny scratches We shrink away as we enter our then We fail Just like how
we grew clever and measure or maybe slip into forgetting
like that
16 time of hers
A sudden leap without looking but holding onto the names of flowers,
devils and narrow side streets And she still runs on into a strong old
wind into few into less into not
Jeremy Gibson is a language teacher and is now further exploring poetry. He has been published by Blackbox Manifold, Hi Vis Magazine and twice by Dreich. He was born and raised in South-East London.
Copyright © 2021 by Jeremy Gibson, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.
