POEMS BY:
Hilda Sheehan
Anna-May Laugher
Heather O'Neill
Susan Utting
Wendy Klein
Michael Scott
Katherine T Owen
Rosie Jackson
Nikki Kenna
Josephine Corcoran
Bethany Pope
'The door was an absurd thing... yet it was passable ... it was this shape' Mina Loy
THE QUEEN OF EUROPE BECOMES WHOLE
Of plastic she's pleasure:
THE QUEEN OF EUROPE BECOMES WHOLE
Of plastic she's pleasure:
blond hair, blue eyes,
a squeaky cliché that lies
a squeaky cliché that lies
back and thinks of Europe.
The distance of her faraway
stare means nothing,
stare means nothing,
to him, she’s
mind-blowingly real,
inflates to double-boob FF
impossible sizes. No deflated look
in full submission, comes without
instructions, ‘no’ never leaks
from any of her holes.
Give her a mouth, she’ll scream,
get dressed, read a book,
walk out, become a woman
of words and mouth
her mighty poems – whispering
from her eye
stood up.
Hilda Sheehan
Dear Inflatable,
Hilda Sheehan
Dear Inflatable,
Your buyer finds the factory set 'yes'
in the print of your relentless gaze attractive.
Shy man, he can squeeze your hands
watch your wrists engorge as your fingers yield
and fold to flippers useless for caress.
You'll be the cure and cause of all his loneliness.
No contract will exist between your vinyl and his skin;
except the sweat and stick of desperate co-mingling.
He'll stroke your dimpling breasts,
watch helplessly as they invert,
run out of puff (his staling breath).
Inflatable, I offer you this square of wordy lace,
a negligee of verbs and such;
so you can wear the words and be made flesh.
Anna-May Laugher
Anna-May Laugher
MY SOW'S EAR
I am making the best-looking sow's ear
you've ever seen. It'll have sequins
and sparkles and gold and shit. But no silk.
I'm gonna take it out on trips to see art
and museums and jaaazzzzzzzz.
We'll debate philosphically on
religion and the topics of the day.
People may ask "What. Is that?!" I'll reply
(with pride) "That? It's a SOW'S EAR, my friends."
I'll proclaim but not limit or restrain -
it can be intangible if it wants.
So fuck you. And I know it's a sow's ear,
but it's mine. And at least I took the time
to acknowledge it.
Heather O'Neill
TWO MOUTHS
i Beckett's
Not I on a screen:
tongue, spittle, gaps, the lot, in close-up
grainy black and white, remembered red.
ii Below
her eyes behind their heart-shaped shades
Lolita's on a poster,
sucking an everlasting sweetmeat on a stick.
Susan Utting
HALLUX VALGUS
Not the mark of Cain, nor the print of heredity;
more sculpted by poor fit or fashion: thick socks,
tight shoes and time; so you find a way to live with it.
You remember your grandmother’s -- the excuse
it gave her not to walk -- better to summon him
from behind his paper, lips hypertensive blue.
He’d get out the old Pontiac, pull it in close
as possible to the front step,
sit hunched under his hat, his eyes turned
to watch her mincing up the path.
You don’t think of yourself as a person who has one,
though you know it’s growing in secret:
the cause, iatrogenic – a bad mend from a complicated
fracture. You try to think of it as a badge of honour,
your once pretty feet irretrievably ugly when bare;
your excuse to shun fashion, give in to the comfort
it demands. Nonetheless you examine your daughters’ feet
for telltale bumps, though you always made sure
their shoes fitted – their unblemished feet,
one visible sign of good mothering.
Wendy Klein
ANCESTRAL DESIGN
for my grandfather
for my grandfather
His life was mapped on the tip of his nose;
its shape the onion of Russian peasant,
the shade and texture of matzo ball, a globe
veined with history. The blue Dnieper
of his Diaspora crossed it, past Smolensk
on its crenulated path towards Kiev; was cut
in half by the Hudson’s red sweep in its flow
straight and wide from Manhattan towards
Schenectady. The caverns of his nostrils lurked
below; high-arched, flared. We are Russia and
New York entwined in this one ancestral organ,
evolved through the chance of Cossack raids
on the children of Zion, designed, above all,
to sniff out trouble.
large and firm,
they announce her arrival.
An impressive weapon –
a susceptible mandoes not stand
a chance:
They dance
and here he is – hypnotisedinto submission.
BOTTOMS
I watch bottoms
walk down the street:
Big bottoms,
Small bottoms;
Bottoms sticking out like trays,
Bottoms hidden carefully away;
Bottoms squeezed into the tightest jeans,
Bottoms rarely thought about,Bottoms calling to be seen.
I cannot hold men to blame
for watching women’s bottoms;I now do the same.
TONGUE
I have no bones.
I’m the softest invertebrate,
lying wet on the floor of the cave.
Mostly it’s dark in here, warm and moist,
but light can suddenly implode,
flood over me.
I work hard.
I wriggle and push and curl
against these stalactites in front of me.
I make sounds, love, music.
I am muscle attached at the base.
I move like a sheet shaken by the wind.
Too much heat, I erupt into blisters,
too much biting, into lumps and scars.
I’m a creature of the night,
badger or bat,
I understand things that beat in the dark.
Silent I am and yet a thing of speech:
without me words would never reach you.
Rosie Jackson
A GIRL BODYBOARDS ON PORTHMEOR
Pink into the ocean, you push
flawless as pebble
your hair banded against the wind.
Nothing so new as you
on this beach
except perhaps the mussel-shell
blue-broken by the tide or
the puff of gull down,
white on the sand.
Pink into the ocean, you push
flawless as pebble
your hair banded against the wind.
Nothing so new as you
on this beach
except perhaps the mussel-shell
blue-broken by the tide or
the puff of gull down,
white on the sand.
Nikki Kenna
STATIONERY MONITOR
The slap of wet fish
as the books hit the desks
of your tight ship. Each word
battened down. You hate
wasted space. You forget
I wear the key to the treasure chest.
Tonight I will swim free of lines.
Every sentence up late
in its own double cabin.
Josephine Corcoran
Bethany Pope
STATIONERY MONITOR
The slap of wet fish
as the books hit the desks
of your tight ship. Each word
battened down. You hate
wasted space. You forget
I wear the key to the treasure chest.
Tonight I will swim free of lines.
Every sentence up late
in its own double cabin.
Josephine Corcoran
THE LITTLE MERMAID
The
cleaned up stories
you
humans get
are
always bastardized
long
before Disney
applies
its Clorox,
wiping
out the stench
every
fleck of skin,
or
blood,
the
fabric has
been
washed
a
thousand times.
Take,
for instance
this
story, favourite
of
six-year-old
females,
splashing
in
the bath with
red-haired,
plastic
-finned
dolls.
Mermaids
are not
clean
things
though
they exist
in
water. There
are
reasons that
they
drowned
their
lovers
before
bringing
them
home.
Your
prince, that
tall,
dark-haired
prepubescent’s
first
crush, fell
overboard,
one night
wind-tossed
by a billowing
storm.
He died
with
his eyes open,
observing
his loves
bared
teeth
and
empty eye
sockets,
her talons
hooked
into
his
algae-specked
shirt,
the scales
of
her tail
peeling
off,
revealing
a flank
like
an ancient
salmon
fillet,
thrashing
muscular
through
the jism
waves.
And yes,
there
was singing,
enchantment,
a
wedding
in
a castle
full
fathom five
beneath
the weight
and
press of ocean.
There
was a magic
transformation,
something
human
into
a different,
if
not arguably
better
form;
but
still,
I
can remember
those
pearls
that
were
his
eyes
and
I think;
who
needs
your
cleaned-up
stories?
Real
life is filthy,
awful,
but the
love
is more lasting,
undying,
rotten
but
solid,
inarguably
real.
Bethany Pope
SELKIE: THE RIVER'S DAUGHTER
When I was a child, the hair cut
straight across my forehead,
we lived by a river that fed
mangroves,
where the herons speared black
snakes
and infant alligators, and the
city municipalities,
in the cheapest of wisdom,
allowed sewer water
to flood into streams feeding
the sheepshead
which grew giant and toxic,
scales as big
as the nails on your hand.
I was a creature of that river,
plunging down
in my cheap dresses, peeling
them off
when the water soaked them too
heavy to stand.
I swam through the currents, a
knife in my teeth,
bonehandled, it came from
great-grandfather,
brought home from the wars. I
slaughtered
nothing on those swims, save
for
the dragons which rose in my
mind. I never took
a lover there on the stream
bank, on bed
of palmetto leaves or saw blade,
but I found
many real romances on the
estuary called
Jacobs island. Where the drunks
slept off
their amethyst wine and the
wharf rats formed kings,
tied into knots by their fractured
tails,
hung from slick branches.
See what I saw. Look though
those eyes,
filth blinded slit, the color of
sewage,
observe the moment I first loved
light.
The sunshine gold in early
morning, pouring
through those knife shaped
leaves, the glory
of Zeus poured out on Danaë,
made pregnant
by light. That numinous glow
which rose
from the water, made lovely for
once, the colour
of silver, new forged, left to
cool on the brace.
I was planted there, drunk on
heron wing,
enchanted by fish scale, something
took root.
This is the flower.
The roots which grow from
watching,
taste of soil fed by rich water,
laden with spoil,
and though it was waste, I was
not wasted.
Coming home again, here, my feet
in the spoilage,
the only locality, unmapped,
where all that is beautiful
can possibly grow. What looks
foul feels fair
In this light. And those bones
you despise
feed the soil where the flowers
of the true reality
take root and grow.
Jill Carter in her garden with the Queen |