Peter Yates is a playwright who has his own Theatre Company Random Cactus. He works with various charities and is a Theatre Critic at London Theatre 1.
Month: June 2016
The Artist Does Laundry by Pat Tompkins
The artist mixes darks and lights
in a single load on washday,
although she knows that blacks and whites
will turn various tones of gray.
The cheap madras fabric bleeds
odd shades: a true creation.
The bargain red towel will lead
to pastel pink foundations.
Different colors each season:
a della robbia blue
gets muddied into titian.
The old wardrobe becomes new.
(Previously published in Still Point Quarterly)
Pat Tompkins is an editor in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her poems have appeared in Confingo, The A3 Review, bottle rockets, and other publications.
Tackling the Issue by Helen Laycock
‘Oh, please, God, not those jeans again!’ He’s got them on once more:
those baggy, beltless, ragged things that drag across the floor.
In minutes, they’ve obeyed the law of undisputed gravity,
and, as they creep towards the floor, they smack of rude depravity.
Not just a peek of buttock crack to all is now exposed,
but glorious, billowing, hairy cheeks, like dough buns juxtaposed.
Untroubled by malfunction, he potters as I watch,
his movements getting hindered by a slowly sinking crotch.
The other day he wandered in, his iPad a fixation;
his eyes were glued, his hands engaged . . . He stood in concentration.
Daughter, sweet, sat at my side, sharing time together –
that innocence of childhood, soon to be lost forever –
when suddenly a movement, quicker than a beat,
resulted in his trousers crumpling at his feet.
Startling was not the word – nay, we were traumatised,
for with the jeans had dropped his pants: AWOL, decentralised.
We squealed and covered up our eyes; his top half was intact,
but any shred of man attire his nethers sorely lacked.
He shuffled to the sofa with bondage round his ankles
to first put down the iPad before dealing with his dangles.
I waited ’til the sound of snores told me he was asleep
then felt through piles of clothing he’d left huddled in a heap.
I grasped them with a robber’s touch and slid them out with guile.
I felt the stringy, tattered hems. God, those jeans were vile.
I looked for a concealing place. Boy, was I in a fluster –
if hubby woke, that jeopardised ‘Operation Denim Duster’.
I rammed them in the wardrobe and pushed the door damn tight,
then schemed and plotted for their end. I tossed and turned all night.
The rumbles in the street outside reminded me ‘Bin Day’!
I forfeited my cleaning cloths and threw the jeans away.
He’s hunted for them ever since. I’ve repossessed composure.
The naked truth is hard to bear in full and stark exposure.
When life throws up the unexpected, Helen Laycock casts it in rhyme (much to the embarrassment of her Muse/husband). She writes serious poetry, too, as well as fiction. Details of her short stories and flash can be found here and information about her children’s books can be found here.
Straining Credulity by David O’Neill
The morning after the night before,
I left my carapace on the floor
As instar five followed instar four—
No metamorphosis here.
As entomologists rightly state,
We exopterygotes thus gestate
And Kafka’s travesties truly grate
On every schoolboy’s ear.
David O’Neill is a frustrated mathematician who has journeyed through a predominantly life-science-based medical landscape for most of his mortgage-paying professional life, eventually finding salvation in the Open University, too close to the end for practical application but sufficiently early for peace of mind and poetic inspiration.
Bravissima by Sherri Turner
I’ve never been blessed
with a bountiful chest
so to offer some zest
to my pitiful breast
today I got dressed
in a garment that pressed
on each fleshy crest
till they both pointed west.
It made a nice nest
on which someone could rest
but I still worried lest
the result of my quest
was an increase in jest
when I sadly confessed.
So I gave up the test
and went back to my vest.
Sherri Turner lives in Surrey. She has had numerous short stories published in women’s magazines and has won prizes for both poetry and short stories. She likes to write silly poems when she feels in danger of forgetting that this is supposed to be fun.
Hyperbolic Wishes by Sarah Watkinson
And you, have an amazing weekend too
be stunned as your three-storey extension cracks and falls
shedding that primrose render from its breeze-block walls;
watch the four horsemen churn your stripy lawn
and your yelling kids launch into space from their trampoline.
I hope it’s truly fabulous for you
with lots of harpies at your barbecue,
a whopping leviathan in your swimming pool,
dragons to drop in, turn your burgers black
and incinerate your Range Rover Evoque.
Sarah Watkinson is a lifelong scientist and new poet. Her work has recently been published in magazines including Antiphon, Clear Poetry, Ink Sweat and Tears, Pennine Platform, The Rialto, The Stare’s Nest and Well Versed, and has won several prizes in open competitions.
Under the Hummer Tree by Simon Pinkerton
The Hummer Tree,
Sacred pillar of our school community.
Site of countless hummers.
All-season hummers.
The Hummer Tree bare
And party to blue-lipped, quick, cold-trembling hummers.
New growth, new blowers and blowees.
Hot, sweaty, teenage-fumble hummers,
Welcome cool shade and relative darkness
So as not to showcase the hummer too much,
Or get too hot.
And of course, dry, scratchy leaves falling on my head,
Both heads,
All the heads,
Giving head hidden from the Head
And her Deputy Head hummers.
No matter the season it was always
Cool to be given or to give
A hummer under The Hummer Tree.
(originally published by Mad Swirl, February 2015)
Simon Pinkerton is a humour and fiction writer, very famous and drives a very elegant posh car (Hyundai) and lives in a sought-after area (a shed near Heathrow airport). Please read his writing at McSweeney’s, Word Riot, Minor Literature[s] and other sweet places.
The Knight of Whatever by Rhys Hughes
Champion of shrugs, defender
of the couch faith,
bides his time unbidden,
bodes well emboldened,
rests his pointed metal feet and yawns
like the hinges of his suit
and waits to evade the next crusade.
His helmet has a double chin
built in just in case
he is invited to too many hog feasts,
not that this is very likely
because he does not love his friends.
Other things he cares nothing for
include jousts, sieges and enormous horses.
The Knight of Whatever
can no longer be bothered with this poem
so he refuses to rhyme or scan
and forces it to change direction.
There is an astrolabe over there,
small troubadours mean big trouble,
Jerusalem is nice at this time of year.
Rhys Hughes has been a writer for most of his life. He has published more than 30 books, almost 800 short stories and numerous other pieces.
The Oxfordshire Smug by Judi Sutherland
(After Edward Lear)
In your Barbour coat do you garden all day
and go out gathering nuts in May
in a TRUG?
the Oxfordshire Smug.
Do you have a thing for the great Outdoors
and go out walking your Labradors
or the PUG?
the Oxfordshire Smug.
In the gastropub when you go to dine
Do you yell in the bar as you quaff your wine
or the SNUG?
the Oxfordshire Smug.
At parties in your Orangery
do you liberally let the Bolly flow free
or the KRUG?
the Oxfordshire Smug.
Do you name your children Piers and Jocasta
so their modelling jobs will take off faster?
you MUG!
the Oxfordshire Smug.
In Regatta week do you swig champagne
or use fifty pound notes to snort cocaine
as a DRUG?
the Oxfordshire Smug.
At Christmas time do you give your cleaner
a gift of your wife’s cast-off pashmina
or SHRUG?
the Oxfordshire Smug.
Do you cruise the lanes in your four by four
speeding because you’re above the law
you THUG?
the Oxfordshire Smug.
On Sundays, after you’ve sung your hymns
do you sit outside with a glass of Pimm’s
or a JUG?
the Oxfordshire Smug.
At festivals, scoffing from Harrods deli
do you strut your stuff in a Hunter wellie
or UGG?
the Oxfordshire Smug.
Do you loll on the chintz with your horsey arse
and secretly sneer at the working class?
you SLUG!
the Oxfordshire Smug.
Judi Sutherland is a poet, formerly resident near Henley on Thames, now living in Barnard Castle, Durham. She is the proprietor of The Stare’s Nest and organiser of the Fledgling Award for debut pamphlets by poets over 40.
A Failed Poet’s Reflections on Writing Poetry – Part 1 by Jose Varghese
I struggled hard to create unique phrases,
got stuck with clichéd metaphors,
tried to freeze the magic of life
in extreme close-ups and wide angle shots
and ended with a senseless collage,
wrote of ‘chirping birds and twittering sparrows’,
watched thoughts ‘pirouette’, kept dreams ‘etched
in memory’, and failed miserably. Poetry
did not arrive in search of me. Perhaps
I lack experience, ‘real’ experience, mind it,
or I am insensitive to life and language,
or it’s my tpying, full og typpos, you see,
or it’s my blind faith in free verse and its
irreverent choices of
lexis
and
alignment,
or it’s just my attitude, my faltering faith
in the ways of the world of creativity.
I know there is something wrong for sure.
I have even started to wonder
whether the problem is with my readers.
(To be continued)
Jose Varghese is a writer/translator/editor from India who is currently teaching English in the Middle East. ‘Silver-Painted Gandhi and Other Poems’ (2008) and ‘Silent Woman and Other Stories’ (forthcoming) are his books. He is the founder and chief editor of Lakeview International Journal Of Literature and Arts.