St Petersburg
by and published in Edition Two of Pomegranate
St. Petersburg stood out from all the rest, as if those weathered block capitals
had been knocked askew by some frugal northerly wind;
the tuning forks shivered and the books grew beards of dust from neglect.
She supposed there would never be a dull moment
where the coins were crimson and caught between the gusts.
The language would be an obstacle. The letters rode on donkeys
through her daydreams, on saddles bejewelled with folk songs and fables.
She’d only sleep until midnight, and only wake up when her ugly pet cat
needed feeding. She lay awake, repeating the day’s thick Russian.
And St. Petersburg was just one picture of a tsar’s palace,
a snow-covered wish balled into a fist, that she had ripped
from one of the school’s history magazines when the librarian
was checking out an older boy’s book. She hibernated beneath it,
tacked to the low sloping ceiling above her bed.
Sometimes, even English made sense, and she despaired
at how she’d torn the caption in half; on the remains were jotted “Ivan The”,
although sanguinely she told herself, that when she went to St. Petersburg,
she’d have the pleasure of confirming it to be “Saviour”.
Sophie Yeo
Sophie Yeo is an eighteen-year-old girl who’s not quite decided yet whether to be English or Welsh. She has twice been one of the Foyle commended poets, and next year she hopes to go to university to inevitably write lots of essays. She likes Evelyn Waugh, Cicero, the famous speech in “The Merchant of Venice” and trying to memorize lots of facts about Richard III. One day, she hopes to own a vineyard in the Val-de-Loire.