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Pillar Talk

Colette Bryce

That magician
who stationed himself on a pillar

over Manhattan
for thirty-five hours

knows nothing whatever
of loneliness,

or how it is
for people like us

who have no soft acre
of cardboard boxes

not even the eggshell
flashbulbs of the press

or the well-meant antics
of neighbours with a mattress

to temper the thought
of the hard, hard earth

to break the fall

nothing at all.


Colette Bryce

Reproduced by permission of the author.

Tags:

Despair & Loneliness
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Colette Bryceb.1970

Colette Bryce was born in Derry in 1970.  She was a Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Dundee (2003-05) and  then held the North East Literary Fellowship in Newcastle 2005-07. She divides her time between London and...
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