Enough of an Interruption

By ALAN FINLAY

 

It’s our wedding anniversary—i almost forgot.

  been drowning listening to bartók,
and when i say
drowning i mean—
you run bathwater
submerge yourself, exhausted
“ask daddy”

enough of an interruption:
can’t i switch the CD off
to play tarzan.
ok, just press stop.
wez stopf.
it’s the little square button,
and so on.
he’ll be back,
daddi thez so many square buttins
you in the bath

leaves falling in the other room

as he heaves

back down the two big

steps to me

naked

to complain.

 

 

Alan Finlay lives in Johannesburg and has published the poetry Burning Aloes, No Free Sleeping (with Donald Parenzee and Vonani Bila), and The Red Laughter of Guns in Green Summer Rain: Chainpoems with Phillip Zhuwao, and, most recently, pushing from the riverbank.

Click here to purchase Issue 04

Enough of an Interruption

Related Posts

Book cover of Concerning the Angels by Rafael Alberti

January 2025 Poetry Feature #2: Rafael Alberti in Translation

RAFAEL ALBERTI
Who are you, tell us, who do not remember you / from earth or from heaven? // Your shadow—tell us—is from what space? / What light, say it, has reached / into our realm? // Where do you come from, tell us, / shadow without words, / that we don’t remember you?

The Old Current Book Cover

January 2025 Poetry Feature #1: Brad Leithauser

BRAD LEITHAUSER
I’m twenty-seven, maybe too old to be / Upended by this, the manifold / Foreignness of it all, the fulfilling / Queer grandeur of it all, // But we each come into ourselves / As each can, in our own / Unmetered time (our own sweet way), / And for me this day’s more thrilling

December 2024 Poetry Feature #2: New Work from our Contributors

PETER FILKINS
All night long / it bucked and surged / past the window // and my breath / fogging the glass, / a yellow moon // headlamping / through mist, / the tunnel of sleep, // towns racing past. // Down at the crossroads, / warning in the bell, / beams lowering // on traffic before / the whomp of air