By Al McClimens
They stepped out of the hotel and onto the esplanade
where the shadow of the palm trees did just enough
to blur the light and soften the figures in the photograph.
It might be Los Angeles and not Torquay. Look, Dad
is in his sharpest suit. And listen, that’s Victor Sylvester
playing a slow fox as Mum shakes some confetti free.
Even in black and white if you look closer you can see
the colours sparkle as they take the floor together.
The album comes to a dead stop in nineteen seventy nine.
Then there’s a few hours of home movie from the eighties
where you can watch the disintegration on VHS. My memory’s
not what it was, she says, groping for the words, as that line
from Perry Como eludes her. The tapes aren’t going to last.
‘Time can’t erase…’ he croons. Innocence sinks into the past.
Al McClimens is a Sheffield based writer/poet who is old enough to know better but cute enough to carry on. Variously described as an unemployed waster, Scrabble fan and lapsed socialist he reads a novel a week, writes a poem a day and makes vodka on his allotment from potato peelings and magic water. His debut collection The Other Infidelities’ was published by Pindrop Press in 2021.
Will work for food. Please give generously. His literary ambition is to overthrow Don ‘Dundee’ Paterson from his position of UK sonnet king. By any means necessary. The revolution starts here. Now.
Hot Pot Magazine 