Wild Court

An international poetry journal based in the English Department of King’s College London

Two poems by Anna Chorlton

Beg Your Neighbour

She pushes back her sleeves,
cuts a piece of bread,
dreads the cold, lonely day ahead.

Could she pluck up courage
to ask her neighbour for milk?
He won’t look at her, let alone smile.

How hungry she is for a smile,
not church, trees, river in his eyes.
She watches him:

he pushes back his hair, abashed.
She feels the beat of a determined gait
as he passes.

She looks into her neighbour’s life
through the eye of the storm inside her,
and asks him, ‘Where has your kindness gone?’

Mousehole

A hush grips the harbour
as eyes flicker, waiting for the glow
of lights, remembering –

he sailed a ghoul of a sea.
His old life cast free
in the face of starvation.

Out of darkness fish leapt
aboard, seven sorts of flapping tails.

Tom reached with shaking hands,
stroking the flush of harvest.


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