Jonathan Wonham
The life model
She grows old through staring out of the window
at the half-lidded eyes of the windows opposite,
or at the sea, the sea as it was in the beginning,
or at the empty road, the almost empty train.
She has posed so often the light seems to bleach her,
his clumsy brushstrokes patching her with shadow.
On canvas she’s thinner, more shapely, wherever
she stands, she stands there thirty years ago.
Slowly, the emptying train disappears for the suburb
pulling its distant thread through her patient eye.
at the half-lidded eyes of the windows opposite,
or at the sea, the sea as it was in the beginning,
or at the empty road, the almost empty train.
She has posed so often the light seems to bleach her,
his clumsy brushstrokes patching her with shadow.
On canvas she’s thinner, more shapely, wherever
she stands, she stands there thirty years ago.
Slowly, the emptying train disappears for the suburb
pulling its distant thread through her patient eye.
Jonathan Wonham lives in Aberdeen where he works as a geologist. He was a contributor to Poetry Introduction 7 (Faber 1990).
Page(s) 61
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