Category: Uncategorised

Do dust mites eat ginger biscuits?, by Trisha Broomfield


By Robert Garnham

Do dust mites eat ginger biscuits?

I did wonder as I sipped my morning tea
dark and caffeine free
accompanied by a ginger biscuit or three
it was the crumbs, you see
parent mites with little mites of their own
living on the breadline during Lockdown
but then I thought, of course not
they’d have gorged themselves on me
I know they eat people,
if only by miniscule degrees
but perhaps I could tempt them away
with my ginger biscuit crumbs, flax filled, gluten free.

Trisha has had three pamphlets published by Dempsey and Windle. She is a regular contributor to Surrey Libraries Poetry Blog and has a regular poetry spot on her local radio. Humour escapes from her work regardless of any constraints applied. https://www.facebook.com/Trisha-Broomfield-Poetry-2340859049276291

 

able, by beam


By Robert Garnham

able
I wrote into my note app
I ate beans on toast for the millionth time
no exaggeration
I wore pink velvet trousers
I looked at myself and thought ‘’cute’’
I smiled
I fed my dog purina, carrot and peanut butter
but held onto my porkchop
I sang into my computer
I felt like the wheels of my life were moving again
I watched benjamin button become a baby
I felt cold
I wanted to be close again to gone friends
I read kevins book
I was outside
I peed
I used the magic of the internet
I forgot to connect my feelings to the mains of my friends
I warmed up and down
I used my fingers, feet, hands, body
I was able to imagine myself next year
not in a pandemic

‘beam’ is a woman from Galway who is interested in self expression, politics, art and human-beams. Her recent work includes surviving the pandemic and several disappointing sourdough loaves. You can find more of her poetry at @personalbeam on instagram.

 

Good Morning Mr Magpie, by Teresa O’Connor


By Robert Garnham

Good Morning Mr Magpie

So how is life in your new job?
It couldn’t be simpler
Your brush stroke always black
Not a hint of light
Only your face calico white

Do you still magnify a molehill?
Huff and puff it into a peak
like the Reek and talk is cheap
And have you climbed it yet?
Oh! and don’t forget your umbrella

And whose ear do you burn now?
You’re a gossip blogger, I hear
Always knew you as a luddite
But then you usually found someone
useful just around the corner

By now you must have genius status
It takes a lot of time to be a genius,
you have to sit around so much
doing nothing, really doing nothing

Teresa O’ Connor-Diskin’s poems have been published or forthcoming in The Galway Review, Skylight 47, Dodging the Rain, Vox Galvia, The Irish Farmers Journal and she was shortlisted for Poems for Patiences 2019.
One of her poems has been added to Poetry in Lockdown collection at the James Joyce Library UCD

 

Neighbourhood Watch, by Maurice Devitt


By Robert Garnham

Neighbourhood Watch

When she woke he was gone,
the scent of him still dawdling
on the stairs, phone
and wedding-ring abandoned
on the console table in the hall.

After three weeks, she packed
his clothes into a suitcase
and left it in the porch.
In the morning it had vanished
except for the shoes he never liked,
perched squarely on the step.

A woman down the road,
dowdy and disinterested
since her last romance,
has been spotted wearing lipstick
to the bin and the milkman
has remarked, in the form
of an open question,
how she’d increased her order
from one bottle to two.

Winner of the Trocaire/Poetry Ireland Competition in 2015, he published his debut collection, ‘Growing Up in Colour’, with Doire Press in 2018.

His poems have been nominated for Pushcart, Forward and Best of the Net prizes and his Pushcart-nominated poem, ‘The Lion Tamer Dreams of Office Work’, was the title poem of an anthology published by Hibernian Writers in 2015. He is curator of the Irish Centre for Poetry Studies site.

 

Double Negative Party, by Melanie Branton


By Robert Garnham

Double Negative Party

There ain’t no party like a double negative party,
ain’t nothing better you can get.
You think that sounds exciting?
Well, you ain’t heard nothing yet!

There ain’t no party like a double negative party.
Nothing never felt so great!
Don’t never start till midnight
and don’t never end till really late.

You’ve heard that they’re “bad grammar”?
You’ve heard they “don’t make sense”?
You’ve heard they are “confusing”,
sound “uncouth” or “cause offence”?

The French use double negatives!
The Polish use them, too!
There ain’t no foreign language
that supports that snobbish view!

They were used by William Shakespeare
and Chaucer! Goodness sakes!
Ain’t no-one gonna tell me
Will and Geoffrey made mistakes!

There ain’t no party like a double negative party –
the guest list’s full of stars!
Ain’t no-one who is no-one
would give that bash a pass.

There ain’t no party like a double negative party –
Not nowhere in no nation.
No-one don’t want nothing else –
just an invitation.

Melanie Branton is a spoken word artist from North Somerset who is totally obsessed with cats, linguistics, Vikings and vegetables. Her published collections are Can You See Where I’m Coming From? (Burning Eye, 2018) and My Cloth-Eared Heart (Oversteps, 2017) melaniebranton.wordpress.com

 

Model Boat Club Blues by Charlotte Harker


By Robert Garnham

The decline began after a spree of sinkings.
I think it was a submarine.
Someone is disobeying the finely streamlined rules.
I am facing a flotilla of ruse,
I’ve got those model boat club blues.

I am losing the plot and my concentration,
I keep getting the bow and the stern mixed up,
I’m caught in a storm at a lake so artificial,
Infighting and resignation over the sailing schedule,
Should a clipper give way to a frigate?
Yet more dispute,
I’ve got those model boat club blues.

In the clubhouse I’ve lost direction and rudderless
I struggle to make a course correction
to keep this armada in some order,
but there is no denying we are taking on water; oh whatever,
I am always on board,
to hell with the weather,
this is my ship and I’m going down with it,
I’ve got those model boat club blues.

Charlotte Harker is a Writer, Artist and Performance Poet. Her first collection of illustrated poems ‘The Wear and Tear of Conversation’ was published in 2018. Further information can be found at https://www.dempseyandwindle.com/charlotteharker.html

 

We are open for business!


By Robert Garnham

Hello, it’s been a while! Due to various technical gremlins, we’ve had to be off line for a while. But the good news is that everything is sorted and we are ready to roll again!

I would love to see all your poems and submissions are now open. Feel free to email me on the new address, professorofwhimsy@yahoo.com

I’m looking forward to reading all of your wonderful comedy poems.

If anyone has been using the old address, then I do apologise. I’ve been locked out of it for a while now.

Thank you so much for your patience!

Robert x

 

Heathcliffe Enters Love Island, by Mark Connors


By Robert Garnham

The new islander is something to behold
with his thick black hair and heavy black clothes
dressed for a winter on the wild, wild moors
but today it’s in the late 30s.
With all of the contestants already paired up,
he broods by the pool, under a parasol,
emitting nothing but the odd mirthless chuckle.
The buff boys with scar-less skin and insane white teeth
don’t see him as a threat, until the girls
huddle up, whisper, giggle a little too often,
now immune to cheap cheeky chap smiles
and made for ITV2 chat up lines.
Oh yes, some women love a bastard.

One by one, the islanders visit
The Beach Hut, but not to reveal
their coupling agendas but to talk about him.
the boys deride his inability to fit in,
be one of the lads, have a bit of a laugh.
But the girls are genuinely intrigued,
and not just by superficialities,
transfixed by his stares, smirks and sneers,
drawn to his darkness and elemental moods
like silicone and hyaluronic moths.
“A just haven’t got a clue what he’s thinkin,”
says Miranda from Birkenhead.
“Every time he looks at us, me heart falls out me arse,”
says Felicity-Jane from Wallsend.

Then come the challenges. First, arm wrestling.
Heathcliff finally strips off to a black loin cloth
and the girls get to see his old latticed wounds,
festooned behind considerable body hair.
He goes through the boys one-by-one, without
so much as a bead of sweat on his brow.
Then it’s problem solving, a general knowledge quiz
and not one of the lads can compete with Heathcliff.
So ,he wins, gets to stay in The Hideaway
and one lucky woman will join him.
He chooses a brunette called Cathy, from Hull.
“I wanted him the first tarme a saw him,” she says.
“I’ll give him the tarme of his larfe.”
But when she enters The Hideaway that night,
Heathcliff opens a window to let another Cathy in.

Mark Connors is a writer from Leeds. He has been widely published in magazines, webzines and anthologies in the UK and overseas. His debut poetry collection, Nothing is Meant to be Broken, was published by Stairwell Books in 2017.

For more info visit www.markconnors.co.uk
Twitter: @markeconnors2
Publisher: www.stairwellbooks.co.uk

 

Fianna, ‘In the soup’ (after William Shakespeare)


By Robert Garnham

Should I compare you to a bowl of soup?

You are less sloppy and more glutinous —

yet nothing could contain your bubbling gloop

so well as clay (twice fired and round you trussed).

There’s some mulligatawny in your mix

since spice and heat and noodles come to mind

and when I see you up to your old tricks

then bouillabaisse and bouillon seem too kind.

Gazpacho looks volcanic, just like you

but cools, as you do not, on summer’s night.

On simmer, you approximate to stew

with marrow-fat and bones in constant fight.

But ajo blanco added to your dish

would give me hope you’d turn out far less pish.

Fianna (Fiona Russell Dodwell) is from Fife and lives in the Fens. She has had about 60 poems published both in print and in online poetry magazines.