Month: January 2022

I Wore a Red Hat, by Trisha Broomfield


By Robert Garnham 
I Wore a Red Hat

 

I wore a red hat
odd looks from the cat
you said I looked fat
your boots on my mat
on my bed you sat
 
our futures were set
I wish we’d not met
I’ll try not to fret
I’d love to forget
I won’t though, I’ll bet
 
my life you once lit
we were a good fit
my right cheek you hit
my sharp words I bit
and now here I sit
 
we started off hot
and did such a lot
you don’t care one jot
our time spent will rot
just part of your plot
 
there’s no point in, ‘but…’
my heart has been cut
I’m out of my rut
you called me a slut,
I wore a red hat.
 

Tripping with TJ, by Steve Bailey


By Robert Garnham 
Tripping with TJ

by Steve Bailey

 
Tom Jefferson, while working on something profound,
Was surprised and distracted, buy a soft knocking sound.
"Do come in," he called out, "My daughter so sweet."
And tell me, dear Patsy, do you have my treat?"
 
"A traveler," she said," from far New Spain,
Journeyed through the cold and rain
He brought you these buttons and said with a grin
You should chew on them all for the mescaline."
 
He took all the buttons; she gave him a kiss.
For the next several hours, his mind she would miss.
"A truly new world now I shall see,
So, thank you, now leave my darling Patsy."
 
Strange images jumped in and out of his mind.
Tom found himself flying through centuries of time.
No longer was he in old Monticello
Not frightened was Tom. Instead, he felt mellow.
 
He was still in his country, but it was all rather odd.
The twenty-first century made him rather slack-jawed.
In each of the houses, colors made a box glow.
And from this same box, endless chatter did flow.
 
Close to one house, Tom moved in for a look,
Then a dog began barking, thinking he was a crook.
When its owner arrived, he called it Big Burr
It was snarling and snapping, this ugly old cur."
 
"This is my guard dog, and friendly he's not.
If he had a gun, he would so take his shot.
Come now, Big Burr, you're annoying us so.
Harassing a POTUS! To the doghouse, you go!"
 
Delighted, TJ responded with glee
"The doghouse is where A. Burr should be."
"A leader bad Burr would never make."
"A. Burr is a scoundrel. A. Burr is a fake."
 
"Whatever you're on, I certainly am not.
Can I offer instead a few bowls of pot?
The election returns are now on TV.
Come in the house and watch them with me."
 
On a couch, they then sat and toked on a pipe.
Watched talking heads talk and heard all their hype.
"So, this box called TV decides how it goes?"
And the candidates come from one of its shows?"
 
"The box, it must like you. It's as simple as that.
Did you notice we talk like The Cat in The Hat?"
"A cat in a hat? This is something new.
I tell you I'm learning, one thing or two."
 
"I want to say more, but now I forgot.
I say it's delightful, this stuff you call pot."
"This has truly been fun; I want you to know.
But the magic is leaving, and so, I must go."
 
"The questions I have for you come in a bunch.
Can you come back tomorrow and join me for lunch?"
But the room it was empty, it was easy to see,
No answer was coming. He was gone, POTUS3.
 
Back in his room, in dear Monticello,
            For a time, TJ just sat, a reflective old fellow.
            "How was your trip?" young Patsy inquired.
            "You were gone a long time. Are you newly inspired?"
 
"I thought that my buttons would take me to God
To see if he's real or show faith is a fraud.
But that did not happen. No secrets unlocked.
Unless what we call God is this strange-looking box."
 
"I'm done with the buttons, though I liked them a lot,
I think I'll be better, just toking on pot.
The fate of the nation, it's easy to see,
Rests not with the people, but with a box called TV."

Steve Bailey is a freelance writer living in Richmond, Virginia. There he writes fiction, creative nonfiction, long and short stories. He has two novel-long manuscripts in search of a publisher. His writings are at vamarcopolo.com.
 

On First Looking into the Oriental Chill Cabinet at Waitrose, by John Lanyon


By Robert Garnham 
On First Looking into the Oriental Chill Cabinet at Waitrose

Susie, roll the rice,
form a mutant teenage Liquorice Allsort,
a distant runt-cousin of a Swiss Roll.
Let’s have it in black and white –
You see, I’m a stranger here myself.

Susie, roll me your sushi,
sharpen the blade,
perform the rite, just for me.
Show me the eye of the cucumber,
a little vinegar for my rice,
a dream of ginger.

Taking off the lid,
I discover your miscellaneous
drug dealer-like micro-packages:
the green plastic fern,
the plastic fish that squirts soy sauce.

I wouldn’t have bought you
if you hadn’t been reduced,
you cut-price Samurai,
A dream of skill and love
swimming round the kitchen,
a little fish out of water.
 
 
This poem appeared in the anthology A Funny Way with Words published by  The Wychwood Press (2012).
 
Bio: John Lanyon lives in the Cotswolds. He works as a gardener, linguist, musician, and writer. Having failed his English Literature O Level, he came to love literature through reading it in French and German. He writes about art, the body, childhood, society, nature, the spirit of places, the secret lives of words. He believes you can create complex things from simple means.
 

Bored, by Margaret Jennings


By Robert Garnham

Bored, by Margaret Jennings

Margaret Jennings lives near Portsmouth with a dog and a cat and a husband. Her first poetry chapbook, ‘We Are The Lizards’, published by Dempsey and Windle came out just as the country went into lockdown, which was not good timing. Margaret is currently working on a novel, ‘Ten Tricks’. https://www.dempseyandwindle.com/margaret-jennings.html also available from Amazon and Waterstones

 

The Storage Unit, by Jeremy Szuder


By Robert Garnham

The Storage Unit

I was in a band with a kid
named Johnny Angel.
One day Johnny’s mom,
a patron saint for fostered animals,
told us we couldn’t rehearse
in her living room anymore.

It was fine by me,
the smell of cat urine was
too much to bear and
I no longer wanted to clean
animal hair from my drums.

Someone had the bright idea
that we should rent out
a storage unit and just practice
there instead, whenever we wanted.

The process was simple enough,
it was the sheer amount of volume
however that no one could
have warned us about;

corrugated metal walls and roof,
with cold concrete floors-
the sound was torturous.

So we rolled down the front gate
and played inside under a single
green light bulb for hours at a time,
almost until we couldn’t breathe
any longer.

And we would come out of that
tin green dungeon with multiple rows
of teeth in our mouths like sharks,
and the perspiration garnered from
within that stomach of storage madness
streaked into our eyes until we
saw multiple green light bulbs
melt and dance across our irises.

That volume was beginning to
puncture the inner hollow ways
of our bones and after two or
three months of that, we crumbled
under the weight of Inland Empire
industrial wasteland, and quickly found
somewhere else to rock.

I learned, after we split from the scene,
that there were a few storage units
very near the one we practiced in
that were being used for meth labs.

And though, with our clamorous
residency, our surf/monster/sci-fi/guitar hell,
we might have earned a few new
jittery, nervous, paranoid and highly
strung out new fans,

still, they were glad to see us go.

Jeremy Szuder (he/him) lives in a tiny apartment with his wife, two children and two cats. He works in the evenings in a very busy restaurant, standing behind a stove, a grill, fryers and heating lamps, happily listening to hours of hand selected music and conjuring ideas for new art and poetry in his head. When his working day ends and he enters his home in the wee hours, he likes to sit down with a glass of wine and record all the various words and images that bear fruit within his mind. Jeremy Szuder only sets the cage doors free when the work begins to pile up too high. In this life, Szuder makes no illusions of being a professional artist in any way, shape, or form.
https://jeremyszuder.wordpress.com/

 

Recycling is good for the planet, by Finola Scott


By Robert Garnham

Recycling is good for the planet

Seeing my ironed socks, polished glass
friends declare he’s servicable, a keeper.

But they don’t know, can’t imagine
his moonlit yearnings, his penchant

for rubber – not lingerie but stationary.
The flip side of those origami scribbles

fluttering from pockets, the notes stuck
on the fridge urging me to eat his plums.

Let’s not speak of housework. l say
live and let live, but dusting in a wet suit?

Vacuuming in lederhosen? Buffing
me in the buff? Even Alexa has given up.

I tried – took him to my book group
to the Ukulele girls, to Capoeira. No takers.

So next week he’s going on Freecycle –
Banker, slightly worn, one careless owner.

William Carlos Willams was not harmed 
in the writing of this poem. 
 

Abominable Manners, by Catherine Doherty Nicholls


By Robert Garnham

Abominable Manners

Looking like a hairy yeti
Sitting sucking his spaghetti,
Bolognesey bits
all splattered on his face
I watched him gulp and slurp,
Sniff and pick and blow and burp,
When his plate was licked
he never left a trace.

She’s a 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.
She recently read some out in Charlie Byrne’s bookshop, Galway. People clapped.

 

Bohemian Raspberry (Liqueur), by Vanessa O’Rielly


By Robert Garnham

Bohemian Raspberry (Liqueur)

I drank a little Amaretto with my Nan
Crème de Menthe, Crème de Menthe will you drink a cold Tango?
Thunderbolts, White Lightning, very, very frightening me
Galliano, Galliano
Galliano, Galliano
Galliano, Aperol, Limoncello

 

Corpus Christi College has no pastry chef, by Natalie Shaw


By Robert Garnham

CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE HAS NO PASTRY CHEF

Also the gold pelican on the JCR wall has gone,
as I believe has the JCR itself.
This despite the fact that Jack Turvey
stapled himself to the pelican and the wall
to prevent its sorry loss.

I digress: without a pastry chef and with the sorry loss
of the pelican, poor Corpuscles
have sorrier options. Adam Spicer,
senior Corpus sous chef and Masterchef:
The Professionals quarter-finalist

has been blamed for the crisis.
With no pastry chef,
a dearth of formal halls; the passing
of the loving cup in a silver horn
must pause. Worse, students are forced

to breakfast at Catz or possibly Fitzbillies:
the sole college founded by townspeople
in 1352, site of the oldest living court in Cambridge,
home of the hideous Chronophage and Parker Library,
now with no cake to crumb in fledgling mouths.

 

Is Poetry Pointless?, by Alanna Hammel


By Robert Garnham

Is Poetry Pointless?

I don’t write poetry
I don’t think I ever will
It’s a rotary system
It’s one aim to kill.

I admit I did once overdose
On Lowell’s polyphonic prose.
You don’t see that lot nowadays,
With your Robert Frost
Or your Terrance Hayes.

They have all moved on to screenplays
If they do write it is melodic phrase.
What does pointless even mean?
Without purpose or meaning?

Purpose in poetry is fairly drastic
Some just want a book to read quick.
I doubt most poetry would please the reader
Unless you care for iambic pentameter.
I can see the poet waving its beater
Easy to confuse with the grim reaper.

Poets are killers
I’ll say it again
From your Rupi Kaur to your Dickinson
On rhythm the poet stabs to death
That’s about as good as poets get
While the poet goes through the alphabet
And thinks for a minute about their next sonnet.
Being struck by lightning odds at 500,000 to one
But Increased massively by reading John Donne.
They say you are what you eat
You also are what you read I learnt that from a man with a degree in ‘filíocht’
Little did he know his future would have sucked.
Writing poetry is pointless
I’m telling you now
That’s coming from someone who doesn’t know how.