Month: September 2022

Looming Days of Covid, by Tim Dwyer


By Robert Garnham 
LOOMING DAYS OF COVID

Not another nature poem!
So the world shuts down
and suddenly journal after journal
features a 21st century Wordsworth 
and a Mary Oliver back from the grave 
with a strong dose of mindfulness
and ecopoetry thrown in.

Goodbye gritty streets and dive bars
and meeting on the stoop in Alphabet City 
for an after-dinner smoke.
Hello moon and stars, flowers, and birds.

But here in Belfast after my second jab 
Titanic Station with trashed streets, cranes 
and construction sites on one side, 
political murals and churches on the other, 
a bell chiming for a lonesome funeral,

here on the tracks,
weedy yellow flowers
push through gravel and railway ties.

I couldn’t tell you their name 
as they bend below the trains 
passing over.

Dear Mary and Will,
that is the beauty of nature.

(Luke Nilan is a fictional, 75-year-old poet who moved from the East Village, NY to Belfast 10 years ago.)

Tim Dwyer’s poems appear regularly in Irish and UK journals, forthcoming in Allegro, London Grip, and The Stony Thursday Book. His chapbook is Smithy Of Our Longings (Lapwing). Raised in Brooklyn, NY, he now lives in Bangor, NI. These poems are from the unpublished manuscript, Luke Nilan Writes Again.

 

Biotechnology, by Patricia Walsh


By Robert Garnham 
Biotechnology

You use your paralysed hand in misdemeanour 
Stating ‘all is well’ before the time does clock 
Not repeating miracles for all, how liked
Cutting swathes through green grass and despair.

She’s the image of you, in the limited vision
I have already seen, resting on your shoulder 
Studying for your sins, a generic degree
Writing scribble from your fingers, down to earth.

The battery is merciless. 
Wishing to ring you 
And offer my heart in condolence, 
Something tarnishes in soul for centuries
But gold comes clear, seldom does it ever.

Begging at traffic lights, seeing the day, 
When the caustic reminders take the bait
As I am, so you will be, a Catholic marker 
Humbles himself for exaltion on the last day.

Warmth spills out of windows and doors 
Guarded by housemates jealousy corralling 
Artefacts from the stoic, gleaming on their own 
Arresting the comfort of the welcoming soil.

Death can be sweet, for want of a better life, 
In the next life, divested of sin
Enough to drink body and blood

Patricia Walsh was born and raised in the parish of Mourneabbey, Co Cork, Ireland. To date, she has published one novel, titled The Quest for Lost Eire, in 2014, and has published one collection of poetry, titled Continuity Errors, with Lapwing Publications in 2010. She has since been published in a variety of print and online journals. She has also published another novel, In The Days of Ford Cortina, in August 2021.

 

Cousin Ken, by Hilary Willmott


By Robert Garnham 
Cousin Ken

Cousin Ken from Cockermouth Cumbria
Has a wholesome rhythm to it.
Cuz-in-Ken-from-Cock-er-mouth-Cum-bri-a.
I loved him living there.
When friends asked after my cousin Ken
I would say ‘Oh, Cousin Ken?  He’s well, still living in
Cockermouth, Cumbria.’
And then he called with his new address 
making him cousin Ken from Romney Marsh, Kent.
I’ll never forgive him for this.

Hilary lives in Bristol close to the River Avon. She resides there with her partner and three dogs. Has been previously published by Templar Press, Bristol Poetrycan, Leaf, Velvet, Obsessed with Pipework, Exeter Broadsheet and Mr Garnham. Still planning to submit enough poems for a collection and still finding excuses not to send them off.

 

Submit (to poetry magazines) by Brian Kelly


By Robert Garnham 
Submit (to poetry magazines)

It’s easier to submit under the covers 
Hands shaking a hasty rhythm
Ankles trembling as you click send 
Convulsions into the pocketed atmosphere. 
Beware the patient person
Who lies eye wide in front of lined white sheets
Empty minds bleached between verges and soft margins, 
Where thoughts are an unmanned flock of birds
From hedgerow
Over hedgerow
To hedgerow....
I clip a wing on the drive there,
Ten percent over the legal speed limit
Leaves no discretion on five-foot-wide tarmac.
How insane am I? I wonder
Undiagnosed, I respond.
Stopping, I swing the door open
Step back from the vehicle
And pick up the bird, a crow.
Bringing it home smiling
I nail it to my refrigerator.
Good, another poem.

Brian Kelly is a bean from the west of Ireland who has recently given up his dreams and aspirations in the pursuit of poetry. What were once late night drunken chicken scratchings, etched onto any surface with something preferably sharp, are slowly evolving into bipedal beings traversing dry poetic lands.

 

George Actually, by Ros Woolner


By Robert Garnham 
George actually

King George (the First – though actually, they didn’t call him that 
till George the Second’s time, by when, of course, our George was dead)
came in fact from Hanover in Germany, which means
his name’s not George at all, but Georg. 

This George (or Georg), followed Anne – though actually, they changed
the rules to stop Anne’s Catholic relatives becoming kings
and queens, so really there were several other cousins closer
to the throne when George pushed in. 

Well anyway, Anne died and he was crowned – though actually,
it took six weeks (no telephones to break the news, no cars
or trains or planes, and when he reached the sea he had to wait
for winds and ships so he could sail). 

Despite not speaking English well, George ruled for thirteen years –
with ministers to help him, naturally. In any case,
in Europe in those days, the language of diplomacy
was French. Not English. Actually.

Ros Woolner lives in Wolverhampton. Her poems have appeared in anthologies and journals, including Magma, The Cannon’s Mouth, The Interpreter’s House and Under the Radar, and she won the Guernsey International Poetry Competition in 2021. Her pamphlet On the Wing is available from Offa’s Press. www.roswoolner.co.uk

 

Cliche, by Terri Metcalfe


By Robert Garnham 
Cliché

I could throw caution to the wind,
put all my eggs in one basket,
be a beacon for change
and give absolutely no fucks,
because at a certain age
it’s important to choose a cliché.
I could carry my pre-middle age
in a wicker basket,
amongst Gitanes and cognac,
and a Bichon Frise
I’d swim in the sea wearing only
a paisley headscarf
and oversized sunglasses.
I could develop a passion for plastic appendages
remoulding myself as “Polly Murs”,
rename the kids “Tupperware” and “Teflon”
influence the influencers
and become a cartoon of my former self.
I could grow my facial hair
into a handlebar moustache,
disappear from the internet
join MI5
and tell everyone
I’m now a European truck driver.
I could sell raffle tickets for a kidney,
host bingo for a pint of blood
defraud my siblings into handing
over mum’s Jacobean furniture collection
and leaving them dad’s Elvis memorabilia.
I could take up marathon running
but only on days with a c in them,
run for council
but only for a party with a heart in them,
adopt stray dogs
but only ones with a bit of feline in them.
Then again,
you can’t teach a young leopard new stripes
and a cat doesn’t change its tricks.