Month: August 2021

Golfing Heaven, by Paul Francis


By Robert Garnham

GOLFING HEAVEN

I hope there’s golfing heaven.
I’m sure there’s golfing hell.
I visit it most weekends –
I know it really well.

The devils haunt me from the tee
They mock my grip, my stance.
“Should you be doing this at your age?”
They think I’ve got no chance.

I shan’t give in. Some practice swings,
I‘m made of sterner stuff.
They smile and clap sarcastically
As I blaze into the rough.

The bunkers seem to chuckle
They’re driving me insane;
The way my chip shot hits the edge
Then bounces back again.

There’s the giggling of banshees
Who devour my inner soul
As once again a two-foot putt
Goes bobbling round the hole.

So as my scores get higher
Par threes take six or seven
I like to dream of changing course –
A move to golfing heaven.

Where drives zip down the fairway
Chips always reach the green
And wedge shots from the bunker
Are the finest ever seen.

It’s hard to pick a highlight
When everything is fine;
Was it the eagle at the fifth?
The albatross on nine?

The clubhouse beer is nectar
All members are my friends.
The round is only eighteen holes
But the feeling never ends.

For there’ll be no more sorrow
In the solace I have found.
They’ll smile and say “Tomorrow
We’ll play another round.”

Paul Francis lives in Shropshire, and is active in the West Midlands poetry scene. He has won three national competitions, and in 2020 came second in the Beyond the Storm poetry competition (2,381 entries). His most recent collection is Rescue from the Dark (Fair Acre Press, 2021).

 

Sleep on me, by Enda McGarth


By Robert Garnham

Sleep On Me

Sleep on me
so I can hold your exhaustion
and weariness.
Your bleary eyes haunt me.
I dream of the days
they used to hit me like a sunrise.

I made the mistake
broken trust.
In your bleary eyes
so much to regain.
I’ll be the workhorse
this time
to fix it
before I’ll proceed from shame.

Sleep on it
and decide if you’re mine
while I lay beside you
holding cold promises
In the night.

 

Their Relationship Inventory, by Kevin Higgins


By Robert Garnham

Their Relationship Inventory

He’s proof there’s nothing as loud and long
as an idea whose time will hopefully never come.
She’s the type who gets illnesses,
her own, and other people’s.
Shutting him up is like trying to screw down the lid
on a coffin full of alligators,
all in a rush to get to the airport.
His list of those who need to be taken out and garrotted
is thick as Ghislaine Maxwell’s black book,
and always being updated.
Her sulks are more protracted
than a bad summer in Kilkee.
He’s the sort who paints a mayonnaise and chocolate
Jackson Pollock
on the new furniture she spent months choosing
within five minutes;
though, about the household accounts,
he’s uptight as a pro-lifer’s under-elastic.

And when she ran him over
in the small car he bought her
for her birthday
and didn’t visit him in hospital afterwards,
he sat up in bed and announced:
he was choosing not
to take this personally.

That she’ll be back
to run him over again.

KEVIN HIGGINS

Kevin Higgins is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events in Galway. He has published five full collections of poems: The Boy With No Face (2005), Time Gentlemen, Please (2008), Frightening New Furniture (2010), The Ghost In The Lobby (2014), & Sex and Death at Merlin Park Hospital (2019). His poems also feature in Identity Parade – New British and Irish Poets (Bloodaxe, 2010) and in The Hundred Years’ War: modern war poems (Ed Neil Astley, Bloodaxe May 2014). Kevin was satirist-in-residence with the alternative literature website The Bogman’s Cannon 2015-16. 2016 – The Selected Satires of Kevin Higgins was published by NuaScéalta in 2016. The Minister For Poetry Has Decreed was published by Culture Matters (UK) also in 2016. Song of Songs 2:0 – New & Selected Poems was published by Salmon in Spring 2017. Kevin is a highly experienced workshop facilitator and several of his students have gone on to achieve publication success. He has facilitated poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre and taught Creative Writing at Galway Technical Institute for the past fifteen years. Kevin is the Creative Writing Director for the NUI Galway International Summer School and also teaches on the NUIG BA Creative Writing Connect programme. His poems have been praised by, among others, Tony Blair’s biographer John Rentoul, Observer columnist Nick Cohen, writer and activist Eamonn McCann, historian Ruth Dudley Edwards, and Sunday Independent columnist Gene Kerrigan; and have been quoted in The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, The Times (London), Hot Press magazine, The Daily Mirror and on The Vincent Browne Show, and read aloud by Ken Loach at a political meeting in London. He has published topical political poems in publications as various as The New European, The Morning Star, Dissent Magazine (USA), Village Magazine (Ireland), & Harry’s Place. The Stinging Fly magazine has described Kevin as “likely the most widely read living poet in Ireland”. One of Kevin’s poems features in A Galway Epiphany, the final instalment of Ken Bruen’s Jack Taylor series of novels which is just published. His work has been broadcast on RTE Radio, Lyric FM, and BBC Radio 4. His book The Colour Yellow & The Number 19: Negative Thoughts That Helped One Man Mostly Retain His Sanity During 2020 is was published late last year by Nuascealta. His extended essay Thrills & Difficulties: Being A Marxist Poet In 21st Century Ireland is just published in pamphlet form by Beir Bua Press. Kevin’s sixth full poetry collection, Ecstatic, will be published by Salmon in March 2022.

 

President Marcus Choy, by Art Ó Súilleabháin


By Robert Garnham

President Marcus Choy

Marcus Choy was an awkward boy
all homework had a tale
teachers, it appears, he set out to annoy
with excuses, no matter how stale.

The pup ate the page, he was at that stage
he couldn’t find a pen
a budgie escaped and left its cage
the lights went out again.

He was so sick, he developed a ‘tic’
re-repeated his words
a doctor was called, he was anemic
the house was invaded by birds.

An alien landed, he was stranded
a tiger escaped from the zoo
little sister the book demanded
what was he to do?

Teachers, all fed up with his tricks
digging under their skin
a job that expected excuses – politics!
some seat he would have to win.

So, he bought a suit to appear resolute
as sharp as any pin
promises, promises, all the truth
the better to help him get in.

With so much wealth, he’d solve the health
thousands of houses he’d build
he’d change the system by acts or stealth
every promise fulfilled.

No one would be poor, he’d be a real doer
things would simply get done
Dublin homeless would be fewer and fewer
living would be fun.

But he made up his mind to be one of a kind
he’d be a poet or die
his wardrobe had to be redesigned
for ‘the job’ he would apply.

He’d develop a blog and get a dog
the voters he would dupe
decrees he’d write, laws he could cog
a saying he could loop.

Oh, what a lark, a house in the park
just like Uachtarán Higgins
in seven years, he would leave a mark
another story begins …

Art Ó Súilleabháin was born in Corr na Móna, Co. Galway and spent some years in Boston USA. He worked in Dublin, Castlebar and Washington DC before returning to Corr na Móna. His first collection of poetry for adults (Mayflies in the Heather) was published by Revival Press in April 2021.

 

No Joy, (after Marie Kondo), by Agnes Warren


By Robert Garnham

No joy

After Marie Kondo

I drew the line at Marie Kondo
and not a straight, well-behaved line.
More a squiggly, thrice drawn,
twice rubbed out, kind of line,
the likes of which Marie could never approve of.

I attempted to fold my underwear, à la KonMari,
but my rebellious knickers had other ideas.
Protesting at every turn,
like a bunch of radical feminists at Miss World,
defiantly refusing to be folded into submission.

She could never accept
my need for thirty books,
piled precariously on my nightstand,
a leaning tower of delight.
Even when I swore
they all sparked great joy.

Her sanctimonious smile,
her Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up.
It was never going to work.
It was her, not me.

In the end, she just wasn’t
nightstand quality

Agnes Warren lives in the West of Irelans. She is new to poetry writing, having recently participated in a series of workshops with Kevin Higgins, through Galway Arts Centre.

 

King Roger, by Melanie Branton


By Robert Garnham

King Roger

Roger de Mortimer, 4th Earl of March and 6th Earl of Ulster, was heir presumptive to Richard II between 1382 and 1398

King Roger! We nearly had a King Roger!
So, did we dodge a
bullet or should we, in fact, bemoan
the fact that Roger never, ever
made it to the throne?

When Richard needed spies,
then he applied for the position.
So, Roger went to Ireland
on a very secret mission.

He skulked about and got himself
in thrilling scrapes galore.
Was he James Bond?
No, he was Roger, more.

To blend in with the Irishmen,
he found it a no-brainer
to paint his face a lurid blue
and wear the brat and léine.

So maybe he went AWOL,
but I can still relate if
he got a little overkeen
and went a little native.

Some said he took it way too far,
some said, “He’s off his trolley!”
but I say, like the pirate flag,
Roger was jolly.

Roger’s story reached its end
in 1398.
He walked into a brigands’ trap:
they fell upon him, straight.

They knocked him off his horse
and then they pummelled him about.
Alas, that was the end of him:

Roger was over and out.

Melanie Branton is a spoken word artist from the Bristol area. Her published collections are Can You See Where I’m Coming From? (Burning Eye, 2018) and My Cloth-Eared Heart (Oversteps, 2017). She is inordinately fond of hats, historical linguistics, and porridge.

 

Colonoscopy, by Vern Fenn


By Robert Garnham

COLONOSCOPY

This poem is irrelevant for young people
until the doctor says:
“At your age you need one of these
for a lifetime regimen,
every few years until…”

Snow White’s Step-Mother
must have invented
that first evil prep potion
you had to drink for hours,
which almost killed me
and made me swear off
lemonade for six months.

I was so sick I told the doctor
I would gamble against colon cancer
rather than drink that stuff again.

But they changed it to something
drinkable only by comparison,
the rest of the process not the stuff of poems.

I went in for mine this morning,
greeted by the same smiling face of the man
I see once every five years
as we go through this together,
he for the thousandth time,
me, starting at fifty, only for the sixth,
hoping for only polyps,
which are benign–hooray–once again.

When he pulls me out of sleep
to share the good news,
I mumble how many years until the next;
he smiles: Five.

But that will make me 82!
Is there a statute of limitations,
an age where old age and death
wait grinning heartily: “Why bother?”

And each time I say:
”I’m sure glad this is over.
Don’t ever want to do it again!”

But at 77, 82 in five years, I do.
I really do.

A retired special education teacher, Vern Fein has published over one hundred fifty poems on over eighty sites, a few being: *82 Review, Oddball Magazine, Bindweed Magazine, Gyroscope Review, Courtship of Winds, Young Raven’s Review, The Daily Drunk, and The Monterey Poetry Review.

 

The Neighbour’s Fish, by Lynn White


By Robert Garnham

The Neighbours Fish

The neighbours had asked her to feed their fish.
They were going on a short holiday.
It sounded straightforward,
should have been straightforward.
“But I overfed it,” she said,
“and it burst open,
exploded
all over the place.”

She looked glum.

“But that wasn’t the worst of it.
Next thing is
the dog’s eaten it.
And that wasn’t the end of it,
next thing is
he started to be sick,
just puked it up all over their carpet.”

She looked glum.

“The carpet’s wrecked,” she said.

First published in Scrittura, Summer 2020

Bio: Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Rhysling Award. https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/

 

Bubble Wrap Blues, by Pete Mullineaux


By Robert Garnham

Bubble Wrap Blues

Stack away the coffin boards – pack away the nails,
moor that boat for Avalon, lower down the sails.
Place me on a bed of foam before I take a nap,
swaddle me in comfort,
bury me in bubble wrap.

Take down the big marquee – pay off the cabaret,
cancel the choirboys and girls – come back another day.
Hold back the holy waters, the tree bark with no sap,
let a band of homeless sing –
‘bury me in bubble wrap.’

No bankers to hold the handles, no regulator prayers,
no corporate greed to drive the hearse, no soft landing soothsayers.
No message from our leader, no sentimental crap,
give me a dry-eyed crocodile,
bury me in bubble wrap.

If I rage into the night, can’t take it on the chin,
find it all too much to bear and go without a grin –
let the feelings run and run like a leaking tap,
lend me a suit of armour,
bury me in bubble wrap.

Farewell world it’s been a gas, a never ending joke,
banana skins to beat the band, fun-loving goats to poke.
Laugh me forward to my spot, place me in the trap,
bundle me in comedy,
bury me in bubble wrap.

Life is just a holiday, brief relief from nothing,
huff and puff and other stuff, we get on by bluffing.
But even an off-performance deserves a slow handclap,
minimise the damage,
bury me in bubble wrap.

What’s done is done, no mileage in regret
if it wasn’t exactly all my way, too late to get upset.
The exit doors are beckoning, time to mind the gap,
don’t spare the layers,
bury me in bubble wrap.

Pete Mullineaux has published four poetry collections, most recently How to Bake a Planet (Salmon 2016) – “A gem” – Poetry Ireland Review. A new collection is forthcoming in 2022. He’s been interviewed on RTE’s Arena and also had three plays produced by RTE radio. His work has been described by reviewers as ‘profoundly sensitive’ ‘gorgeous and resonant’ & ‘grimly funny’, and comparisons made with Roger McGough, John Clare, John Cooper-Clarke and Pete Seeger. His debut novel Jules & Rom: Sci-fi meets Shakespeare (Troubador UK) was published in April 2021, (‘Certainly worth a gander’ – Irish Times). following an ebook version in 2020. Website: petemullineauxwriter.com

 

Mnemonic: or, When Dr Asperger met Dr Alzheimer, by Mandy Macdonald


By Robert Garnham

Mnemonic: or, When Dr Asperger met Dr Alzheimer

For example:
you are about to leave the house.
You have a letter to post.
You forgot it yesterday. It must be done
today.

You put it on the hall table, where you can see it.
But you know you have to check
one more time
that the back door is locked
and that all the burners on the stove are turned off.
(15 February 2010 has never quite gone away.)

But you know, too,
that after doing these tasks you might well leave
without picking up the letter.
So you set the letter slant
on the hall table. For as soon as you see it
slant on the hall table
you will have to straighten it so that its edges are parallel
to the edges of the table.
And as soon as you touch it to set it straight
you will remember
that you have to post it.
And then you will pick it up and put it in your bag, hoping
that you will remember to post it.

NB: You do NOT go back and check
the back door and the burners again.
Things have not got that bad
yet.

Australian writer and musician Mandy Macdonald lives in Aberdeen. Her poems appear widely in anthologies and magazines; her pamphlet The temperature of blue was published just before lockdown by Blue Salt Collective (http://bluesalt.co.uk/the-temperature-of-blue/index.aspx). Mandy writes in the hope that poetry can change the world, or at least make it laugh.