Issue 14: February 2007

Matthew Caley| Tim Cumming | Valeria Melchioretto | Kathryn Simmonds | Mark Waldron | Tamar Yoseloff

KATHRYN SIMMONDS

Winter Morning

Rain sings spirituals across the pane
as Old Man River rises, rouses me
to dip a toe into the semi-dark
where half-read novels and a bowl
of last night's cereal still float.
Birds gang up in dripping trees,
already morning fills my IN tray
and I'm thinking of the journey home.

Winter how I love you for you speed
the darkness back to me, return me to my bed
where my titanic longings are revived
and sail around again colossally in dreams.
My bed, still almost warm, safe
as a lover whom I do not have to please.

 

The Woman Who Worried Herself to Death

She wasn't robbed or raped or made a scapegoat of,
she didn't take ill-fated flights on shaky planes

and no one splashed her house in paint. Kids with hoods
and sovereign rings and hates left her alone. That twinge

she sometimes felt was just a twinge. Her fillings
didn't leak. At office dos she danced and no one laughed.

Her children didn't have disorders, fail exams,
take smack. Her husband didn't love his secretary

or get the sack. But, if you saw her fidgeting
towards another dawn, her breathing playing tricks,

a thousand what ifs snaking in a queue, you'd feel for her,
you'd wish she had something to pin her torment to.

Kathryn Simmonds lives in north London and works as an editor. She won the 2006 Poetry London Competition and her pamphlet Snug is published by Smith/Doorstop.