Comfortableness
has topography, contours,
crevices between
syllables to wriggle bum
and shoulders into snugly.
Bill Allen lives in West London and writes in retirement. Worldly wise, a wicked sense of humour, he often observes the darker aspects of life as well as the curiously funny. Likes old films, modern plays, wine mixed with a pinch of conversation. Bill has published a few poems and short stories.
(based on a small-ad in “Time Out” Magazine)
You – seen at the night bus stop
completely pissed on alcopop.
Me – the girl with ginger head
who held you, while you vomited.
The WKD Blue that soaked my thighs
brought out the colour of your eyes;
so tenderly I wiped your face.
You smiled at me with vacant grace.
O glory that is Friday night
that puts the working week to flight!
What sweet oblivion portends
when alcoholic daze descends.
Have you, since then, forgotten me
and how our hearts touched, fleetingly?
If not, and you still sometimes think
of me, let’s go out, for a drink.
Judi Sutherland is a poet, formerly resident near Henley on Thames, now living in Barnard Castle, Durham. She is the proprietor of The Stare’s Nest and organiser of the Fledgling Award for debut pamphlets by poets over 40.
The dog is doing his little dance. The little dance he always does whenever he wants more biscuits. He has a limited repertoire. He’s never been to dog training and we were too poor to send him to stage school.
As if, I say, I’m giving you any more biscuits when you’ve just turned up your nose at your dinner. A dinner of well-balanced tasty morsels that a team of canine nutritionists spent the best years of their lives perfecting. You, the same picky pooch who, given half a chance will happily snarf down six-month old roadkill.
Then I realise I’m being sarcastic – to a dog. My dog doesn’t understand English. Even if he could, he’s old and deaf now.
I begin to feel guilty, like maybe I’ve hurt his feelings. So I give him some more biscuits and explain that… I wasn’t laughing at him but with him.
My dog doesn’t do sarcasm but he appreciates irony.
(previously published in Not Expecting Fish anthology, Gatehouse Press, 2007)
Charles Christian is a former barrister and Reuters correspondent who now writes about tech, geek stuff, folklore, pop culture, medieval history, the just plain weird, and anything else he thinks you’ll enjoy.
I thought to write a villanelle
like Sylvia and Elizabeth
I didn’t like it and it smells
It really didn’t go as well
as Sylvia’s or Elizabeth’s
I thought to write a villanelle
It’s hell it’s hell it’s hell it’s hell
I’d rather try some crystal meth
I didn’t like it and it smells
I used to have an auntie Nell
I used to have a flatmate Seth
I thought to write a villanelle
I’m crawling back inside my shell
I’m changing all my names to Jeff
I didn’t like it and it smells
For travel sickness take a Kwell
I like to sing Sunshine on Leith
I thought to write a villanelle
I didn’t like it and it smells
Laura McKee writes poems by mistake. Last year she had a poem on a bus for the Guernsey International Poetry Competition, was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, and nominated for the Forward Prize Best Single Poem.
If I had an anaconda
I’ll tell you what I’d do
I’d rent a brand new Honda
and to Disneyland we’d go
at the ticket booth the
man would holler
what you got there son?
I’d produce
the anaconda and point it
like a gun, saying
gimme all your tickets man! Today is free for all!
And he’d gimme all the
tickets and go climbing up a wall
’cause no one wants to
fight an anaconda which constricts
then I’d give out all the tickets to
the spoiled little pricks
But I won’t go to Disneyland
not even with a snake
’cause all the talking animals
give me a belly ache
I’d take the anaconda to the
swamps he loves the best
where he can hunt the nutria
the rats and all the rest
You really can’t go wrong
with a constrictor as a friend
he’s the best of company
from snout to tail-end.
Keith Welch lives and works in Bloomington, Indiana. His work has been published exactly once, possibly in error.
The fridge started it.
Did that light really go out when the door closed?
Questions that have no answers
Bother me.
Not the usual ones such as
Is there a God? And what happens when we die?
But the really difficult ones like
Did the cabaret on the Titanic go down well?
Do fossils meet through carbon dating agencies?
And if you made love in a JCB would you feel the earth move?
It’s not the deep philosophical questions but the simply mundane that perturbs me
Do vandals come from broken homes?
Can acupuncture cure people of pins and needles? Why do they play dance music on hospital radio?
Do people have arguments in fall out shelters?
And would there be any point in making Groundhog Day 2?
More and more questions:
If you tried to row across the Atlantic single-handed would you keep going round in circles?
If its “i” before “e” except after “c” did Einstein get it wrong twice?
Why did kamikaze pilots wear helmets?
What was the best thing before sliced bread?
Do bakery workers on the slicing machine go through thick and thin together?
And if a word was spelt wrongly in a dictionary – how would you know?
I lie awake wondering: if overall prices have gone up 10% in the past twelve months, should I have bought my overalls last year?
And if they made a promotional film for Viagra would they play soft organ music in the background?
Do flashers in Alaska suffer from indecent exposure?
What do plain clothes policemen wear on their day off?
Are human cannonballs people of the highest calibre?
Where does the rubber from worn tyres go?
Do poor KGB agents take in brainwashing?
And do mountaineers rope themselves together to stop the sensible ones from going home?
Still puzzled, I wonder
What are the chances of a fat chance going on a diet and becoming a slim chance?
Can fortune tellers see us coming?
If the Metropolitan Police were issued with pocket calculators would they be a force to be reckoned with?
Do Wasps rugby club have a “B” team?
If BT went bust would they call in the receivers?
Do American evangelists do more than lay people?
Do bored chefs just fritter away their time?
Why are anger management courses currently all the rage?
What were Marcel Marceau’s last words?
What would Kraftwerk Unplugged sound like?
Did Pavlov’s dogs join the Salivation Army?
Why do I keep dong this?
If the buck stops here, where does it start?
And will I ever
Get out of this fridge?
Gordon Williams was born near Manchester when the M6 was still cobbled. Moved to Northern Ireland for the peace and quiet in 1984 and, intractably indolent, still lives there. His stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies, on walls and websites. Some have won prizes; most haven’t. This poem represents 20% of a lifetime’s poetic output.
Why do the pants linger on and on
When the matching bra is long since gone?
Josa Young is a novelist and copywriter. Her two novels One Apple Tasted and Sail Upon the Land are out there somewhere being read. She was a decent poet up until puberty, and has taken to verse again as all the creative frenzy of childbearing has faded.
It was while we were singing
‘All Things Bright And Beautiful’
that I first became Superman
soaring over the dull heads
red cloaked
and fast
as a dart
into the blue.
Clarissa Kent Form 1B
was just an empty uniform
on the school hall floor.
(first published in Domestic Cherry 4)
Marilyn Francis lives, works, and writes poems near Radstock in the wild south-west of England. She has had one collection of poems, “red silk slippers”, published by Circaidy Gregory Press. She also has some other poems out and about in the world, though she has even more lazing in her notebooks.
Whose wife this is I think I know
He’s not due back til Tuesday, though;
By her enthusiasm here
She wasn’t sad to see him go.
Still, she makes it pretty clear
She wants a part-time chevalier —
It does her good to shout and shake;
I hope the neighbors cannot hear.
Later, kissing me awake,
She says it made a lovely break,
Then indicates which tangled heap
Of clothes is mine, and no mistake.
Once more, then, lovely, dark and deep,
But, after, says she needs her sleep;
She has her promises to keep.
She has her promises to keep.
Not much is known about Marcus Bales except he lives in Cleveland, Ohio, and his poems have not appeared in Poetry Magazine or The New Yorker.
Licking your lip for a last slick
of sauce, is unappetising
when mixed with bristles,
No baggy tops, let your belly flop,
assume others will be riveted
by what you say, that facts
are love tokens, when words fail.
On no account show weakness,
or gaze at other guys.
Stand wide-legged, claim space.
It really is an issue. A rolled up
sock is no substitute
for a cock, but it might
just get you better pay.
Rachael Clyne‘s work has appeared in Prole, The Interpreter’s House, Tears in the Fence. Anthologies: The Very Best of 52, Book of Love and Loss, Poems for a Liminal Age. Her prizewinning collection, Singing at the Bone Tree, concerns our longing for the wild . She also enjoys humour.
