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Alison lives in South London and started writing seriously after cancer diagnosis in 2002. Her first collection Journeywoman was published following her MA study in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths and she has been published in various magazines and anthologies (Rapport; Morley College Review; Goldfish Anthology 2; Waves; The New Writer; Mslexia). She is now working on a second collection.
Mine are plain hands made to cook
and sew and garden, never comfortable
with manicures. I hold the warm bulb
of your four year old fist like a promise
safe in the curve of my glove
as we wait by the gate to the park.
I’d like to be around when cartilage
hardens to bone, to see you grow knuckles
with a broader span than mine,
which cannot stretch an octave.
One joint nurses a crooked ache –
still able to forecast thunder.
You boast to your friends
about my magic finger,
not knowing there is another story
of a fortune teller who ran her thumb
across my palm, refusing to take my silver
when she felt the line line stop short.
Publications:
Journeywoman, 2009, Bookmark Publications, ISBN 978-0-9560731-0-5 £5 (all proceeds to Beating Bowel Cancer). e-mail for copy
61 Sunderland Road
London
SE23 2PS.
Tel: 07787 500257
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
