Month: September 2021

Knock Knock, by Ed Poetastic


By Robert Garnham

Knock,Knock
Who’s there?
Knock, Knock
Should I care?
Knock, Knock
Do I dare?
Knock, Knock,
yes I can hear, I’m aware.
Knock, Knock,
I didn’t do it!! I swear!!
Knock, knock,
I don’t need a prayer!
Knock, Knock
My house doesn’t need repair!
Knock, Knock,
I don’t need any cookware!
Knock, Knock
I don’t need any armchairs!
Knock, knock
I’m losing my hair!!!
knock, knock
Don’t have money to spare
Knock,Knock
OMG!! I’m in a nightmare!!!
Knock, Knock
Are you a Grizzly Bear!!
Knock, Knock
I’m only in my underwear!
Knock, Knock
please just be air
Knock, Knock
I have nothing to share
Knock, Knock
This isn’t a freaking daycare!!
Knock, Knock
Sigh Yes, I’m here. Are you still there

By Ed Poetastic

My name is Ed Poetastic and I’m here to make you feel fantastic. I’m regular at open mic such as Nuyorican, Barbwire, Grassroots, Antics Open Mic, Poetry Cafe, The Mitch Salon, Phynnecabulary Open Mic, Time to Arrive, The Word is Write, Unmesh Life Open Mic, Tokyo Kotoba, and many more. I was interviewed by Rick Spisak, Pal Sujata, and Harrison Hickman. My Facebook is Eddy Foreman and My Ig is edforeman92.

 

Whatever Happened to Fay Wray?, by Dominic Weston


By Robert Garnham

Whatever Happened To Fay Wray?

No one wants to fall
from the tallest building
in the world
but the journey down
sure gives you time to think

Broke nearly every bone
in my body – damn near died
took a year just to walk again
still, Time’s a great healer
Ma said, before she passed

Bullet holes closed up
but I got smaller inside
folks think cos you’re big
you’re strong
it ain’t the same thing

Couldn’t hold down
no job for a long time
not till TV came to town
but no way was I goin’
back in front of the cameras

I shoot doc-u-ment-aries now
not the people type –
sad fuckers in a trailer park
but dumb animals –
sad fuckers in a national park

Same story every time
but stressy folks lap it up
I just change the players
change the places
tell it forwards, tell it sideways

It’s all about sleight of hand
what really happens don’t matter
it’s what they want to see
what matters, and one thing
I’ve always been good at

is a side show.

Dominic Weston produces wildlife television programmes, runs over the Mendip hills and writes poetry. His work often relates to family or the natural world, undercut by a healthy slick of darkness. His poems have appeared in Agenda, Black Bough Poetry, Magma, The North, Under the Radar and many other publications.

 

Homing Pigeon, by Hilary Willmott


By Robert Garnham

HOMING PIGEON

You won’t bloody believe this. It’s his best stunt yet.
He’s only going to drive it back to Derbyshire in the car!
We live in Bristol, mind, so it’s a bit of a trek.
I really think he’s lost his mind this time.

It has one of those rings around its foot, apparently
so that’s how he made contact with the owner
and I guess when he offered to drive the thing back.
I wasn’t privy to that conversation, so I’m surmising.

But I’ll tell you this and you can call me cruel if you wish.
I’ve been to the Cat Rescue this morning and come home
with a muscly ginger one, who has an intense stare and licks
his lips alot. I’m not risking all this fucking nonsense again.

HILARY WILLMOTT

Hilary has been writing for many years. Her poetry has been published by Templar Press, Bristol Poetry Can, Obsessed with Pipework, Leaf, Velvet, The Exeter Broadsheet and Spilling Cocoa over Martin Amis. She has also been shortlisted nationally.

 

A man on the 19.34 to Birmingham New Street, having misread the signals, uses his mobile to try to arrange another date with the woman who has hastily waved him off at Liverpool Lime Street , by Emma Purshouse


By Robert Garnham

A man on the 19.34 to Birmingham New Street, having misread the signals,
uses his mobile to try to arrange another date with the woman who has
hastily waved him off at Liverpool Lime Street

Whah?
Say again.

I bet yum freezing
ya baps off ay ya,
bab? Say again.
Say again. Whah?

I could come back

like, warm you up.
Whah? Say again.

Say again. Whah?

Errrrr……Runcorn.

Say again? Whah?

Thursday. Thurs…

Say again. I know,

yeah. Say…………

Ok…………..Tarrah.

Tarrahtarrahtarrah.

 

To Professor John Henderson, by Maria Andrews


By Robert Garnham

To Professor John Henderson, about my/his belly.

John,

Would be great to cut a fine figure.
I do, says your belly,
Swaying on my two pins.
Uh huh? I’m listening, I say.
Yeah, I cut a fine figure of a Henderson belly
asking John for a hug.

You’ve got persistence going for ya,
I give you that. Yeah I have,
my/your belly drawls,
taking a long drag of a cigarette,
I’ll ask him till the day I die. I placate curve
with smoothing palm.

Are you thinking about John now?
John Henderson belly closes her eyes.
Yeah. All his vocatives rolled
into one tumbling waterfall of cadences.
What about his ablatives, his hyperbatons?
All cases. All cadences. One long

Belly schmoosh. His semantic analytics?
His patterns? His parsings? His epics?
His topsy turvey word order?
My belly is opening her lips, lost
for words. His exploratory thematics?
She’s gone, lost in loin-louche.

Maria Andrews is a short film maker and photographer who occasionally gets published in poetry mags (Polka Dot Ceiling, Still Life) and was once published in a collection (Bloody Amazing). Her current alias is a puppet called Leopold, who is a London correspondent for Helmiflix.com She likes belly laughs. manifestafilm@weebly.com.

 

Do Come to my Party, by Ruth Aylett


By Robert Garnham

Do come to my party..

This time, just for close friends
so no Facebook public event;
I’m celebrating the spring equinox
but haha – without fertility rites.

I am not inviting anyone’s ex
as far as I know, but nobody said
last time about Liz and Dean
or Janice and Liz, or the tragic death.

This time the veggie option
will not contain chicken stock
and I told everyone no hash brownies,
whether labelled or not.

The party games will all be voluntary;
there will be no charades
acting out cocktail names,
no removal of clothes.

No dog-sitters will bring the pooch,
another time for the twins with AHD
and we already established
next doors cat won’t fit the BB Q

This time no stand-back-fifty-metre
fireworks in the tenement’s back green;
it’s the wrong time of year
and the facing flats weren’t keen.

Though the emergency services
were actually rather pleasant
and the front door
has now been mended.

RSVP. Do come!

Ruth Aylett teaches/researches computing in Edinburgh and her poetry is published widely in magazines/anthologies. Joint author of Handfast (Mother’s Milk, 2016); her pamphlet, Pretty in Pink (4Word) was published Jan2021. More at http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~ruth/writing.html

 

Earthworms are Awesome, by Holly Conant


By Robert Garnham

Earthworms Are Awesome

I mean, they literally feed the fucking planet. Take our fermented banana, yellow miasma and crap it out as wise-man’s gold. And I feel impressed with my morning turd! But that needs hours of processing, by loads of people in hazmat suits with fancy gizmos, before it turns into anything useful. I’d rather be a worm: take a shit, and boom, job done; it’s warm and ready to be laid into by a seed-bean or bulb. Maybe I’d be more fulfilled without a human brain to contradict my purpose. I’d find my way into a middle-class compost bin, spend all day eating potpourri detritus, and be a rent-free master architect, redacting common land law. I’d be humbled by my legless body, my simple ways of building, mindful of camber structure instead of grey velvet sofas and Mrs Hinch. I’d be at home in dirt, throw my gender away and bag the kinky night-time rendezvous’ amongst an orgy of grass with wet breath. The human hand would be no more risk to me than it is now, maybe even less, and mother Earth might forgive me for my flesh. I just hope being swallowed by a bird is a quick death.

Holly is a mature student currently studying at the University of Leeds. Her poems have been published since January 2021 by Ink, Sweat & Tears, Anti-Heroin Chic, Spilling Cocoa Over Martin Amis, Dreich and more, as well as appearing in anthologies. She is currently working on her debut collection.

Twitter: @Holly_C_Writer

 

Plums, by Lee Campbell


By Robert Garnham

Plums

I walked into the kitchen and there was Mum
Sitting at the table with a truck load of plum
As Mum de-stoned the fruit to make it into a pud
She wrote a short verse which I thought was quite good

She has this skill of writing as if she is somebody else
Looks like the voice of this poem is that of myself

And so, she wrote:

‘My mum’s been busy cutting up plums
Her son, her chum thinks they all look like bums
Now she is glum as she is getting numb thumbs’

A few hours later she had no reason to grumble
Those numb thumbs had made way for the perfect crumble

Lee Campbell is a performance poet and regularly performs at Paper Tiger Poetry in London His poem ‘Clever at without being Seen’ was recently included in Sometimes, The Revolution is Small, Disarm Hate x Poetry’ project by Nymphs & Thugs Recording Co. UK and published in Queerlings online magazine. His poem Juniper Park was recently published on this website.

 

My Mother Said, by Sharon Phillips


By Robert Garnham

My Mother Said

Always take care of your man
and try not to seem too clever.
The home is a woman’s domain;
this floor could do with a hoover.

Men like to think they’re clever
so buck your ideas up, my girl:
this floor could do with a hoover
and you’re wearing a dirty skirt.

Buck your ideas up, my girl,
make him feel proud of your looks:
you’re wearing a dirty skirt
and wasting your time on books.

Make him feel proud of your looks
and give that bathroom a clean;
there’s no time to waste on books;
cook something nice for his tea.

Go on, give that bathroom a clean;
the home is a woman’s domain,
so cook something nice for his tea
and try to hang on to your man.

(Previously published in Snakeskin, May 2018)

Sharon stopped writing poetry in 1976 and started again forty years later, after retiring from her career in education. Her poems have been published online and in print and she is currently studying for an MFA at York St. John University. Originally from Bristol, Sharon now lives in Otley, West Yorkshire.

 

Reincarnation Revenge, by Catherine Doherty Nicholls


By Robert Garnham

Reincarnation Revenge

If I come back
I’ll be a flea,
A sexy flea
who’s bitchy

Throw wild flea orgies
in your bed,
and bite you
’til you’re itchy

Winner of no Poetry Ireland Competition, or any other competition, no published debut collection, nothing printed anywhere else yet except here. 
Her poems have been nominated for nothing so she’s nominating this poem to go on this page – a great place to start nominating. 

She is the curator of nothing. Her anthology doesn’t exist, yet she keeps going.