Antony Christie
Mint Tea at the Café Resta
we are sitting on a slat bench
at a grey metal table
on the terrace of the Café Resta
admiring the geometrically patterned
red white orange and black carpets for sale,
the bright Berber scarves with their black ends,
as we wait for our mint tea.
the blue truck from Asni has offloaded
mineral water, bagged vegetables, its human cargo.
dense walnut leaves scatter a mottled shade
over the dirt square where two men in green jellabas
and white skull caps hold hands as they talk.
a sparrow with an orange back pecks crumbs
from under the next table.
the morning passes.
a mule train carries a family that seems of some importance
and their moulded grey jet-age suitcases
towards the high valleys.
a boy in black jeans and t-shirt
takes home the lamb’s head in one hand,
holds with the other the guts in a blue plastic bucket.
a trussed sheep waits in a mule pannier.
at last the waiter brings us two glasses
of fresh mint and boiling water,
a saucer of coarse sugar,
not the traditional way of serving it
but right for this place and this morning,
Imlil, 1700 metres.
Page(s) 44
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