The Ofi Press Magazine

International Poetry and Literature from Mexico City

Rachel Piercey: 1 Poem Published

Seat etiquette

Excuse me, I am not sure

if you’d appreciate the offer.

I’d hate you to think me rude

and I will gladly move

 

but I’m always hearing

examples of great daring:

how grandma climbed Kilimanjaro,

about Pop and his one-man boat.

 

Perhaps you are intrepid like them

and belong at the helm

of this hard-angled argonaut?

You want to work the oars

 

straight-backed, and navigate

a sea of exacting strangers,

lands so far unreachable to me.

 

You have proud adventurers’ feet.

Poem by Rachel Piercey (UK)

Published in Issue 35 of The Ofi Press. 

About the Poet

Rachel Piercey won the Newdigate Prize in 2008 with her poem Returning, 1945. She is an editor at Cadaverine magazine and the Emma Press. Her illustrated pamphlet of love poems, The Flower and the Plough, came out with the Emma Press in 2013.

Image used under Creative Commons Laws. By Ribena Wrath: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ribenawrath/