walleah press
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GRAHAM ROWLANDS
Jennie Churchill
- When she arrived by
Atlantic Ocean liner
- she might or mightn't
have been tattoed
- but disembarked smoking
& corsetless for
- sex & sex & sex
& sex & Sir Randolph.
- Her money was hers
while it lasted;
- his title was his while
he lasted.
- There were three kings
as well
- too late to be the
Three Wise Men
- but one up on, well,
three up on
- your common-or-garden
aristocracy
- & both titled &
untitled others too
- ( after all, her money
was running out ).
- You could say these
carryings-on
- were just the
carryings-on of an old dog
- if Jennie had been Jim
or John or Jack &
- that, rather than the
prim & the proper
- old jealousy was
sneering at not one
- but two husbands as
young as her sons
- & if sixty seems a
bit late for
- Jennie to own up to no
longer being
- the most beautiful
woman in the room
- well, you weren't
there, were you?
- You could find yourself
wondering whether
- her redemption would
have to wait for
- the Sir in Sir Winston
Churchill
- but not if you died at
Gallipoli.
Graham Rowlands has been a literary journalist, lecturer in
literature, educational editor and both a poetry editor and a poetry reviewer. Besides a
number of poetry collections, he has published over 800 poems in newspapers and magazines
with some anthologised by Penguin, Random House, Oxford University Press and University of
Queensland Press.
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