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The First Thing I Ever Stole<\/strong><\/p>\n A thrupenny bit from my mother\u2019s purse <\/p>\n Carole Bromley<\/strong> lives in York. Two pamphlets and a full length collection, A Guided Tour of the Ice House<\/em>,\u00a0 from Smith\/Doorstop. Writes a poetry blog at www.yorkmix.com<\/a>\u00a0 Website www.carolebromleypoetry.co.uk <\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n What Remains<\/strong><\/p>\n I got the Malta album, The black and white photos The black and white photos The black and white photos The only other thing I have, What remains is distilled by love. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Vivien Jones<\/strong>‘\u00a0 first poetry collection – About Time, Too<\/em> – was published by Indigo Dreams Publishing in September 2010. In that year she also won the Poetry London Prize. She has completed a second short fiction collection on a theme of women amongst warriors – White Poppies (<\/em>2012) –\u00a0 with the aid of a Creative Scotland Writer\u2019s Bursary and has adapted two of the stories for theatre performance in 2013. In February 2014 her first e-book – Malta Child<\/em> – was published – memoirs of four childhood years in Malta in the late 1950s. Her second poetry collection –Short of Breath<\/em> – will be published in November 2014 by Cultured Llama Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The First Thing I Ever Stole A thrupenny bit from my mother\u2019s purse because she wouldn\u2019t give me money for the tuck shop and because she\u2019d never miss it and because I could and because of red lollies and sherbert dabs and black jacks and because it made me feel normal and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7442"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7457,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7442\/revisions\/7457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nbecause she wouldn\u2019t give me money for the tuck shop
\nand because she\u2019d never miss it
\nand because I could
\nand because of red lollies and sherbert dabs and black jacks
\nand because it made me feel normal
\nand because of my baby brother
\nand because no-one noticed where I was
\nand because I liked the feel of it in my pocket
\nand because I could think of it all through arithmetic
\nand because Gillian might be my friend now
\nand because I didn\u2019t believe in baby Jesus
\nand because I knew it was wrong but I did it anyway
\nand because actually I was the Queen of the whole wide world
\nand because she could always get more coins from the post office
\nand because when I put my hand in her coat pocket
\nthe purse was warm and soft and the coin was cold and hard and real.<\/p>\n
\nmostly black and white photos
\nand a set of colour postcards.
\nThe black and white photos
\nspark Technicolor memories,
\nshow an unexceptional family.<\/p>\n
\nshow my parents in love,
\nglow with light from the sea,
\nrecord how quickly we grew,
\nmy sister, already a beauty,
\nmy brother asleep, me, scowling.<\/p>\n
\nlist the cars we hired; The Singer,
\nThe Morris, The Mayflower,
\nto drive round the island
\nlike well-mannered tourists,
\nMoorish in long sleeves and scarves.<\/p>\n
\nhave dying glue on the corners,
\nwhen they fall out I turn them over
\nand find my Dad\u2019s neat writing,
\nrecording the dates and places,
\nno need of the names; it\u2019s always us.<\/p>\n
\nmy Horby 0-gauge clockwork key
\nfor the train set that started my trip
\ntowards my self, aged five, already
\ntruculent, headed for rebellion.
\nI played alone and made my own world.<\/p>\n
\nWhat I see now is that the track is,
\nand always was, a circle.<\/p>\n