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This poem is taken from PN Review 255, Volume 47 Number 1, September - October 2020.

Day Hectic and other poems
Three Poems
Paul Stephenson
Day Hectic

I’d just doored the get-in when the red ring phoned.
Living into the running room, I received the pick-up,
eared it wearily to my hold. An enquired voice: Hello?
I’m froming the call… can I glaze you in double-interested?

I colden hate-callers: No! Mouthpiecing down the slam,
I blazered my hang-up, shoed off too-tight kicks, sighed,
saw evening windows streaming August through the light.
The peace seemed strangely at room, but then I noticed…

mantel the besidepiece a walling had painted off the fall,
must have bookcased behind the slide. To reach it meant
hardbacking all the take-outs, stacking them in carefuls
of spine-worn crime – tedious and it would take a time.

I gently landscaped the salvage – a favourite take-me-to
my used-to mother beached – grandfathered by my oil-do
the die before he yeared. Two-inching in a deep hammer,
...


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