Most Read... Rebecca WattsThe Cult of the Noble Amateur
(PN Review 239)
John McAuliffeBill Manhire in Conversation with John McAuliffe
(PN Review 259)
Eavan BolandA Lyric Voice at Bay
(PN Review 121)
Patricia CraigVal Warner: A Reminiscence
(PN Review 259)
Vahni CapildeoOn Judging Prizes, & Reading More than Six Really Good Books
(PN Review 237)
Tim Parksin conversation with Natalia Ginzburg
(PN Review 49)
Next Issue Hal Coase 'Ochre Pitch' Gregory Woods 'On Queerness' Kirsty Gunn 'On Risk! Carl Phillips' Galina Rymbu 'What I Haven't Written' translated by Sasha Dugdale Gabriel Josipovici 'No More Stories' Valerie Duff-Strautmann 'Anne Carson's Wrong Norma'
Poems Articles Interviews Reports Reviews Contributors
PN Review 276
PN Review Substack

This poem is taken from PN Review 234, Volume 43 Number 4, March - April 2017.

Four Poems John Upton
Scream

It made no sense, but perfect sense. As lovers
they’d  revelled – theatre, concerts, galleries.
Now she screamed, ‘Get out of the car! Get out!’
She was order, control, controlling, fashionable,
dressing up for theatre. He was orderly
but out of order, careless, dressing down
in jeans and two-or-three-day clothes. Love’s magic
seventy and tragic thirty percent.
Now, as she drove the car –
out of nothing, really, but everything –
she disdaining his opinion of the play they’d seen,
he objected to her tone, her character.
She hit the brakes then, screaming,
ordered him out. He looked at where they were:
down by the docks at midnight, lifeless streets,
...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image