Angela Topping Poems

Whether to cry out in answer to
My father’s strangled cries
as he shifts bricks above my head,
or whether to keep silent, holding back
...

The New Generation

Wizards look like everyday folk
despite what you’ve been told.
...

We were spies on her world -
her safe house of skin. She
was etched in silver: moving, human.
...

Madison Square Gardens had never seen a mermaid.
Now, here she was, so far from home she’d never go back.
Stitched into the dress, a cage around her flesh, so tight
there’s no mannequin in all America could fit in.
...

im. my father 1911-1978


Finals: the shining room,
...

She sits and briskly knits, her needles clack,
and grimly add the seconds of her life.
Her head is bent so she won't see his chair
whose vacancy insists 'no longer wife.'
...

Today my kids are skipping
over your threshold and you not here.
The ones you never dandled,
pronounced prodigies: My kids
...