Page 53 - The Woven Tale Press Vol. III #11

would you stay at home alone
with a takeaway in front of the telly? Me neither.
He was in the pub every day;
we watched his sallow deterioration.
He was swollen-bellied and cold all summer,
a stale perfume of decay,
like a snappy threadbare dog.
But we were used to him, we loved him in our way, and the fireplace is empty and strange
without him standing there now.
That glass of red went down well, the old ladies buy me another,
I light a fag,
I do it to myself but
I don’t bother to finish the Jonathan Franzen article. Life is too short and even I know
we should all read more.
Salena Godden is a regular guest poet on various BBC shows, including Woman’s Hour, From Fact To Fiction, The Verb, Saturday Live and Loose Ends. She is currently poet-in-residence for Click Radio on BBC World Service. Both these poems are taken from her collection Fish- ing in the Aftermath: Poems 1994-2014.
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