Boxer by Paul Farley

Her face so grave and serious -
not the nettle-lick of the bulldog
or the irony of the pug
as if she'd been bred to remind us

of the tenderness behind each tough
guy stance. I heard one brindled pup
spent a decade lashed to a nylon rope
in a garden next to an engine block,
another went down with kennel cough
and a third was kicked from a 79 bus

but ours stayed loved, and stoical.
After she died, the hole I dug
was so small, I had to break her leg
with the spade. She's giving me that look.

From: The Dark Film

Sub. Lim. Phil.

MAYBE YOU

are all alone
and cannot love
another for for another

to exist would implicate a duality
as surely as
when the detective

in a murder mystery
points the finger
and everyone is shocked

by old Mrs Haversham's behaviour.
But just because
we are all one

does not mean
you do not need
to try to

LOVE ME.

Home Cooking by Ruth Padel

You spread our Free Range Duck
Breasts with your trade-mark mix

Of honey, soya, Chinese Five Spice
While I etch
A fingernail down your spine

Ending in a fuck
The length of our kitchen table

Making the bread-board rise
To its feet, the dog beneath us whine,
And Sainsbury's poultry burn.

from Voodoo Shop

Le Poète

after Rodin

how is it girls

can conjure up

a baby

using just a spoon

of sperm?

that shit sure smells

like alchemy 

to me.

still, i've not had 

a warm bath 

or wank

for over a month now

and my nuts feel 

like a fun-swim

at my local

swimming pool

so perhaps 

some of the magic

is in 

me.

Breeding ground, Chicago by Imtiaz Dharker

    
     CHRISTINE:

I always knew I was carrying around
a breeding ground
for the devil.

I mastered the art of nodding, smirking,
doing my hair just so
and wearing pink

to mask the stink of evil
lurking right inside my pride.

I could take the cleverest devil
for a ride.

A good thief cuts the glass
quite cleanly, without a noise
and enters.

There's hardly any sign
that things have been disturbed.

That's how the devil got in,
slipped into my skin,
rearranged my thoughts
like old clothes at the change
of the season.

Slice off my fingertips.
I mustn't leave our prints.

I'm burgling myself, and I'm so good
I won't be caught.

There's nothing here I'm afraid to lose.
Room after room of dusty corners
and mouldy shoes.

But what the hell -
Where are all the precious things,
the gold I thought I had,
the soul begging to be sold?

From I speak for the Devil.

Sleeping Dog by August Kleinzahler

The terrier will not relinquish
his hold on it,
frozen in attack he clenches stillness
and would shake it like a rat
but for its vastness.

                           Bad William trembles,
electrons crakling in his wisp
of beard, warrior-sage,
while all of heaven's soldiers
swoop down in staggered assault:
Canis, Ursus, Aries,
first one then the next.

Willie, jump.
No, there, there, Willie, in the rushes.
A terrible exchange.
Stout Wille. Willie the Brave.
Your back, Willie
Willie, five o'clock high.

Behold, your fearsome arsenal,
its plenitude of feints,
its murderous sorties.
Fair William,
Willie the True,
now is your moment arived:

Sweetie boy
you lovely little killer toy
Willie, hold on.

From: Strange Hours Travelers Keep.

First Things to Hand by Robert Pinsky

In the skull kept on the desk.
In the spider-pod in the dust.

Or nowhere. In milkmaids, in loaves,
Or nowhere. And if Socrates leaves

His house in the morning,
When he returns in the evening

He will find Socrates waiting
On the doorstep. Buddha the stick

You use to clear the path,
And Buddha the dog-doo you flick

Away with it, nowhere or in each
Several thing you touch:

The dollar bill, the button
That works the television.

Even in the joke, the three
Words American men say

After making love. Where's
The remote? In the tears

In things, proximate, intimate.
In the wired stem with root

And leaf nowhere of this lamp:
Brass base, aura of illumination,

Enlightenment, shade of grief.
Odor of the lamp, brazen.

The mind waiting in the mind
As in the first thing to hand.


From First Things to Hand