Tag: poetry

Sleeping Legion, by Jennie E. Owen


By Robert Garnham

Sleeping Legion

They’re all here tonight you know,
every face you’ve ever seen
flickering behind your eyes like cherries
spinning like bells
they put on a show
as you push off your blankets
then swaddle them again.

Your old maths teacher chases you
to the edge of the cliff,
a book of equations in one hand
a garden gnome in the other. Whilst
a midwife leads you
down endless
hospital corridors

where at the end
you’ll find nothing but the check-out boy,
the one with whom you locked eyes
over a cucumber
and a packet of hob nobs,
last Tuesday.

Jennie E. Owen’s writing has won competitions and has been widely published online, in literary journals and anthologies. She teaches Creative Writing for The Open University and lives in Lancashire with her husband, three children, and cat.

 

When Brian Became Broccoli, by Ben Macnair


By Robert Garnham

When Brian Became Broccoli

When asked what he wanted to be,
three-year-old Brian thought about it,
for a while, and with a smile,
said that he would like to be Broccoli.

A strange choice for a career,
you might have thought,
but Brian was only three,
the age where you could be what you wanted to be.

When a kindly local Wizard was told of this tale,
he visited Brian and asked: ‘And who might you be?’
Are you the little boy who wanted to become Broccoli?
Brian nodded his head.

Brian went to bed that night,
but he woke up with a bit of a fright.
His hair was green, stiff, and standing on end.
The following night, he went to bed,
and woke up completely Green.
His Mum and Dad had never seen anything
quite so obscene.

The next day, they found Brian in bed.
He had become Broccoli.
The kindly Wizard broke the spell,
and for 14 years, all was well.

Until the Wizard turned up one day,
and was quite drunk.
‘I am afraid that the spell didn’t quite wear off.’
he said because Brian was becoming a Punk.

Ben Macnair is an award-winning poet and playwright from Staffordshire, in the United Kingdom. Follow him on Twitter @benmacnair

 

Why I ended up (for a while) in Hull, by Janet Sillett


By Robert Garnham

Why I ended up (for a while) in Hull

My group of friends read Larkin aloud
skiving off hockey,
outliers in a school
which dished out piety at 9am

We admired his contrariness,
dirty words,
and suburban weariness,
his constipated ennui

Larkin inspired me to study
in a god forsaken east coast city
a shared terrace with a parrot
a bath in the kitchen
on Anlaby Road

I skulked in vain in the library,
until we parted company abruptly,
Hull, Larkin and me
I moved on, as they say,
to Plath, Stevens, Crane
to a concrete place of learning,
and Larkin expressed his adoration
for Margaret Thatcher

I reread his poems, when living
in bedsits, in semis,
in the disillusionment of marriage

But let’s face it,
Larkin was a bigot, racist, serial snob
I want to see them starving,
the so-called working class
nostalgic for the good old days
when only white men played cricket for England

Consumer of pornography
(but never in the library)
composer of sado­masochistic reveries
shared to fellow man poets
posh adolescents fumbling with themselves
in bedrooms after lights out

I want to cancel Larkin
unknow his life,
his pervasion of archetypal Englishness
I settle for drowning in his poetry
with fingers in my ears

PS Apologies to Hull which I now think is a great place.

Janet Sillett recently took up writing poetry and short fiction again after decades of absence. She has had poems published in the Galway Advertiser, Poetry Plus magazine and Spilling Cocoa over Martin Amis, and flash fiction in Litro. She works for a think tank.

 

Ode to a Pee Funnel, by Christine Fowler


By Robert Garnham

Ode to a Pee Funnel

Alan’s caravan was the apple of his eye
It was a 1979 beauty
And only ←———-→ this wide
It had nowt of this modern rubbish
It was retro through and through
But there was one adaptation
He was really proud to use
It was a plastic funnel
Set up at just the right height
And the circumference you know
Was really not to tight
With wiggle room to spare
So when he stood there
And let it all hang out
There was only sound of running ‘water’
And moans of delight
And when the last drops were shaken
And everything tucked back in place
He was often heard to murmur
That’s a cracking thing I’ve made.

Christine Fowler was in her 60’s, when she began focussing on writing and performing poetry in autumn 2019 and published in journals and anthologies since 2020. Her poems are informed from a life time of experience of working with people in challenging situations. https://www.christinefowlerpoetry.com Instagram@christine.fowler.poetry

 

The camera never lies, by Sarah J Bryson


By Robert Garnham

The camera never lies

Take off your rucksack, it’ll spoil the image.
Here I’ll watch over it. Can you pull the scarf straight?
Zip up your jacket. That’s it, turn your face
so that it catches the sun. No – I can’t take it yet.
There’s a whole family in the way having their fun.
Just wait. Stay there. it won’t be long
before they are out of shot.

Damn. Now the sun’s gone. Hang on. It’ll be back soon.
There’s a strand of hair … can you pin it down?
Now. Are you ready? Look this way…without squinting?
Yes, I know it’s straight into the sun. Look away,
then I’ll give you a count…. One, two three, ready:
chin up, that’s it. Now smile.

Sarah J Bryson
Bio: Sarah has poems published in print journals, anthologies and on line. She has been a regular participant, during the Covid pandemic, in a weekly on-line arts event, combining photographs with haiku style poetry and has recently had several poems on the Poetry and Covid site.

 

Grumbles, by Amanda Baker


By Robert Garnham

Grumbles

I don’t want air treacle in my nostrils
a sullen clot of exhaustion in my stomach
sending spider webs of weakness through my veins
as I trudge up the hill.

I don’t want the miniature catgut squeal
of mosquitoes behind my right ear
to brush its crushed body off my upper arm
as I flail at the soft hollow behind my knee
driven in from my twilight garden.

I don’t want to stretch my fingers to relax
after clenching the steering wheel for thirteen hours
trapped between the swaying container walls
yellow blue and white barely visible in the torrential rain
as useless goods get transported across Europe
in response to an impulsive click on the tick box.

I want to be Legolas,
dancing lightly through ancient lichen-hung forests,
intact ecological webs singing their joy,
untouched by wildfires, beetles and drought.

Amanda Baker is based in Berlin. As a scientist, teacher, and animal physiotherapist, she loves exploring new ideas. She has had performances in KlinkerdIn, the Curious Fox and Over the Edge and has poems published in Automatic Pilot, Poethead and Strukturriss. She thoroughly enjoys Kevin Higgins’ Poetry workshops.

 

The Tale of Little Red Riding Hood, by Trisha Broomfield


By Robert Garnham

The Tale of Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf in Night Attire ( with apologies to Charles Perrault who probably wrote the original story in 1697)

‘Ah but just feel that cloth, the quality, the cut.’
Red Riding Hood noticed the glint in his eye
as the wolf’s hot, bad breath crept round her pale neck,
‘That’s one piece of clothing I simply must buy.’

‘It’s an heirloom,’ she said, with a vital step back,
‘belonged to my grandma who, if it wasn’t for you
would be waiting for me in this very bed.’
The wolf grinned, ‘but sweetie, it’s just me instead.’

‘I’m not at all sure’, Red Riding Hood said,
‘I should be sharing this feast with somone like you,
there’s a quiche in this basket and I know for a fact
that the canis lupis (and I suspect that you are), doesn’t eat that

‘Oh silly Red Hood, don’t be so unsure, we have changed
over years of the telling of tales, we eat quinoa, and eggs
you can trust me to share your fine basket of wares,
we even’, he murmured, ‘eat most things with legs.’

‘Take your hand of my quiche you ravenous beast,
and look what you’ve done to my cloak
where is my grandma? You must think I’m dim.’
‘There’s room for one more in this bed, do come in.’

‘You’re joking,’ she said, I’m just not that sort
and you’ve not had a haircut or shave
I’m taking my wares and my very fine cloak
I’ll leave you the food; perhaps with some luck you will choke.

‘But sweetie you must see that all through my life
and the length of this very fine tale
I’ve been waiting for you, it’s predestined, it’s fate!’
And the poor girl became the last thing that he ate.

 

Poem by Julia Whatley


By Robert Garnham

Been feeling quite nostalgic
About that council estate
I was dragged up on
Where my mates and I ran amok
After school I frequent the youth club
Jimmy Cliff and Marvin Gaye
Song in the Key of life
Dancing every night away

At home we had a radiogram
I put the Beatles, White Album on
Dad said that their hairs too bleedin long
And that Jimmy Hendrix’s guitar
Sounds like a strangled cat
I’m off out dad
If you’re going to be like that

My dad smoked park drive
And I helped myself
He used to leave his fags on the shelf
I smoked one in the outside loo
Blamed my little brother
Seemed the only thing to do

Down the youth Club
I met my boyfriend, Vernon
He had a vesper scooter
He ‘d often take me home

This night we skidded and off we fell
My dad was driving in his Zepher Zodiac
My hair blowing in the breeze
He must have noticed me on the back
As we overtook at high speed
My fishnet tights all ripped
And blood pouring from my knees
No helmet and my dad flipped
Grounded, but well worth it!

 

I am the Genie in the Jar, by Mandy Beattie


By Robert Garnham

I AM THE GENIE IN THE JAR

A wee glass jar with a maroon lid
is an insect-tent, it sits
on a shelf watching the sunflower
clock’s second hand scurry
on yard thick walls of stone
the wee glass jar peers down
above, around and spots a ballerina
in a white tutu and pink tap shoes
on a white wall waiting for Genie
to lift the maroon lid
to flit and look for ladybirds, spiders
and moths to scoop them up and squeeze
through yard thick walls of stone
to re-pot the ladybird on a Hyacinth
bush and the scurrying spider
on a newel post by raised beds
of rhubarb and blueberries
but Genie lets slaters bide inside
a yard of stone to scurry
over oak and hide under knots.

Mandy Beattie, is a feminist from Caithness, Scotland with an MA in Social Work Practice & Research. Her poetry is a tapestry of stories and imagery, rooted in people, place and the natural environment, set at home and abroad.

 

Padraig – Who Drove the Snakes Out of Ireland, by Pratibha Castle


By Robert Garnham

Padraig – Who Drove the Snakes Out of Ireland

At the allotment, daddy
forked the crumbly black earth
till the air quaked
with anticipation
of excess, me
sifting stones
in search of treasure;
the robin sat, pert, on the lip
of the bucket meant to carry
spuds or cabbages, the occasional
giggle-tickle carrot
back to placate the mammy.

The bird’s eye bright
with a lust for worms, his song
a crystal cataract of merry;
though none of the seeds we sowed
ever showed head out of the sly earth
and we saw nothing of the slow worm
daddy promised so that, his name being Padraig too,
I guessed he must be a saint, especially
when he himself vanished.

Though he turned up
months later
at the end of school
again and again and again till
I had to tell the mammy
where the books and toys came from
and that got me sent off
to board at St. Bridget’s convent
where the head nun was nice to you
if your mammy gave her fruit cake in a tin,
bottles of orange linctus sherry, a crocheted shawl
like frothy cobwebs, none of which

my mammy could afford, Padraig
having banished more than snakes.

Pratibha Castle’s award-winning debut pamphlet A Triptych of Birds and A Few Loose Feathers (Hedgehog Poetry Press) publishes 2021. An Irish poet living in England, her work appears in literary magazines including Agenda, Dreich, HU, Blue Nib. Highly Commended in various poetry competitions, she reads regularly on West Wilts Radio.