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

Windhover by Gerard Manley Hopkins

To Christ Our Lord

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
  dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
  Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
  As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
  Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
  Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

  No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
  Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

The Plain Truth of the Matter by Sean O'Brien

There are two tribes this world can boast -
The Marmite-lovers and the damned.
Fact is, though, everybody's toast,
Whatever breakfast they've got planned.

It's not for us to turn away
The sort who shun the dark-brown jar,
But sure as sure come Judgement Day
The Lord will know who His folk are.

from November

View from the Old CLR James Library Window

‘OVERCOMERS CHURCH’

says the sign.

Coming over what?
You wonder, tongue bulging

against the pant of your mouth.

For you are without doubt.

Absolutely certain

that the worshippers within

would not find your flippancy

the least bit funny.

My life has been the poem I would have writ by Henry David Thoreau

My life has been the poem I would have writ
But I could not both live and utter it.

An Interview with Slavoj Žižek.

Slavoj Žižek is best known as the recession celebrity who fucks frustrated idiots like a grizzly bear and, true to form, within moments of our first meeting he invites me to join him in a postmodern, permissive, pragmatic form of consensual anal rape, before mentioning, discreetly, that he was “never able to finish into the woman’s mouth.” 

Not even when staying at the Burj Al Arab hotel? I enquire. 

“No,” he tells me, “women are always angry with me for not proposing complete solutions for controlling global capitalism on an immense international level.”

We arrive at his apartment in Ljubljana where he spends most of his time double checking the counter cultural establishment for little slivers of plastic macdonalds cups. Innumerable languages fill one room alone yet his kitchen cabinets contain only clothing.

“Contradiction is encoded into almost everything like mother nature eating an organic apple.”

he tells me.

We talk about his latest book The Perverts Guide to Living in the End Times in which he gives a graphic, blow by blow account of his affair with the Slovenian philosopher Jacques Lacan. I ask if, perhaps, his obsession with the tacky ostentation of swimming pools atop singaporean 50-storey hotels had led to a ridiculously intimate perspective of eternity.

“Fuck you!” he replies “None of us is gay, just good friends.”

Oh No, Not My Baby by John Burnside

But who is this other, waiting in the dark,
the one she listens for?
No ordinary man, but Brother Bones
calling to her in whispers from a place
she's known since girlhood: miles of perfect snow
to cancel out the fever of a body.
What treasured story makes her love the cold?
Some hallowed father, hunting in the blood?
Old wives-and-mothers, stiched along the marrow?

Everyone wants to tempt Providence, but she was lost
before we knew that lost was possible
and something in the woods, unkempt
and knowing, not
one body, but an undivided host
of looks and cries was waiting for its time
to drag her down, in some exquisite fall
to icebound realms
of hyacinth and vellum.

Sliding away in dreams she had rehearsed
for years, that tomboy sweetness in her face
of one struck dumn with awe, she shed her veils
in endless rounds of theme and variation,
but everything she touched returned to dust
and scattered to the wind as, at the end,
she scattered from my hands, no longer hurt
so beautifully, she seemed more song than woman.

[from: Black Cat Bone]

Shirt by Robert Pinsky

The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,

The nearly invisible stitches along the collar

Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians

Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break

Or talking money or politics while one fitted

This armpiece with its overseam to the band

Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter,

The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,

The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze

At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven.

One hundred and forty-six died in the flames

On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes—

The witness in a building across the street

Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step

Up to the windowsill, then held her out

Away from the masonry wall and let her drop.

And then another. As if he were helping them up

To enter a streetcar, and not eternity.

A third before he dropped her put her arms   

Around his neck and kissed him. Then he held

Her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once

He stepped to the sill himself, his jacket flared

And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down,

Air filling up the legs of his gray trousers—

Like Hart Crane’s Bedlamite, “shrill shirt ballooning.”

Wonderful how the pattern matches perfectly

Across the placket and over the twin bar-tacked

Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme

Or a major chord.   Prints, plaids, checks,

Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans

Invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of Ossian,

To control their savage Scottish workers, tamed

By a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor,

Bailey, MacMartin. The kilt, devised for workers

To wear among the dusty clattering looms.

Weavers, carders, spinners. The loader,

The docker, the navvy. The planter, the picker, the sorter

Sweating at her machine in a litter of cotton

As slaves in calico headrags sweated in fields:

George Herbert, your descendant is a Black

Lady in South Carolina, her name is Irma

And she inspected my shirt. Its color and fit

And feel and its clean smell have satisfied

Both her and me. We have culled its cost and quality

Down to the buttons of simulated bone,

The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters

Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape,

The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt.

Forest Forment

Birds murderously

scrap it out for shade that there 

just ain't enough of.

The Room by Stephen Dunn

The room has no choice.
Everything that’s spoken in it
it absorbs. And it must put up with

the bad flirt, the overly perfumed,
the many murderers of mood—
with whoever chooses to walk in.

If there’s a crowd, one person
is certain to be concealing a sadness,
another will have abandoned a dream,

at least one will be a special agent
for his own cause. And always
there’s a functionary,

somberly listing what he does.
The room plays no favorites.
Like its windows, it does nothing

but accommodate shades
of light and dark. After everyone leaves
(its entrance, of course, is an exit),

the room will need to be imagined
by someone, perhaps some me
walking away now, who comes alive

when most removed. He’ll know
from experience how deceptive
silence can be. This is when the walls

start to breathe as if reclaiming the air,
when the withheld spills forth,
when even the chairs start to talk.

Illiterate in the Library

The top of the forest
stands tall and upright
above your head so
when you enter the light
is blocked by canopoly.

Way up there, each tree
has its own leaf, distinguishable
from the others like fingerprints.
If you knew how to look
you could tell them apart.

Held up by unmade paper
smeared by many
a miniture message
unseeable by you or anyone
bigger than a beetle.

Down at ground level,
tracks and signs of creatures
all around can be read,
yet to you mean nothing but
meaningless marks in the wild.

This Be the Verse by Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   

    They may not mean to, but they do.   

They fill you with the faults they had

    And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

    By fools in old-style hats and coats,   

Who half the time were soppy-stern

    And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

    It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

    And don’t have any kids yourself.

Nomads in City Road by Yiska Fonseca

Curtains strewn up like a bad theatre play, rooms divided and subdivided. 
The fabrics seem to breath in the wind - the howling cold wind, sent to fret.

Drapes hang in a gesture of privacy, walls being built, yet they don't even block out the cold/keep in the heat. 
They hang in an attempt to partition space, like Japanese paper walls. 
Their illusion becoming as transparent as the walls in my mind, as they blow in the wind, I can feel my thoughts tumble past. 
How easy it is now to see Me, standing bare and strong, in amongst the hanging fabric of my reality.

Concientious Objector by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I shall die, but
that is all that I shall do for Death.
I hear him leading his horse out of the stall;
I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.
He is in haste; he has business in Cuba,
business in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning.
But I will not hold the bridle
while he clinches the girth.
And he may mount by himself:
I will not give him a leg up.

Though he flick my shoulders with his whip,
I will not tell him which way the fox ran.
With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where
the black boy hides in the swamp.
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death;
I am not on his pay-roll.

I will not tell him the whereabout of my friends
nor of my enemies either.
Though he promise me much,
I will not map him the route to any man's door.
Am I a spy in the land of the living,
that I should deliver men to Death?
Brother, the password and the plans of our city
are safe with me; never through me Shall you be overcome.

my fate by Charles Bukowski

like the fox
I run with the hunted
and if I'm not
the happiest man
on earth
I'm surely the
luckiest man
alive.

Spectrum Disorder

Look at life
through a twisted prism
and the colours come out wrong.
Red's violet
and the orange is yellow;
while the green's completely gone.

There's only one,
a single shade -
that still rings faintly true.
It's the tone you'll find
at the bottom of the ocean;
a deepest, darkest blue.

Fond by Joletta Thorburn

Arms reach toward you like branches
Surrounding the expanse of the mass
That lies beside me on soft furnishings
Searching for breath, for a resting place
Intertwined in your embrace.
Can’t even call you a lover

Or even a brother for that would cause concern.
Dear friend would be more fitting
For there be a clear, deep fondness
So gentle, uncomplicated and pure that I would like to share with you
4 giant words: I REALLY ( really ) LIKE YOU.
Could fall asleep beside you and forget to mow the lawn.

From: Abracadabra Boombastic

Fuck by Kim Addonizio

There are people who will tell you
that using the word fuck in a poem
indicates a serious lapse
of taste, or imagination,

or both. It’s vulgar,
indecorous, an obscenity
that crashes down like an anvil
falling through a skylight

to land on a restaurant table,
on the white linen, the cut-glass vase of lilacs.
But if you were sitting
over coffee when the metal

hit your saucer like a missile,
wouldn’t that be the first thing
you’d say? Wouldn’t you leap back
shouting, or at least thinking it,

over and over, bell-note riotously clanging
in the church of your brain
while the solicitous waiter
led you away, wouldn’t you prop

your shaking elbows on the bar
and order your first drink in months,
telling yourself you were lucky
to be alive? And if you wouldn’t

say anything but Mercy or Oh my
or Land sakes, well then
I don’t want to know you anyway
and I don’t give a fuck what you think

of my poem. The world is divided
into those whose opinions matter
and those who will never have
a clue, and if you knew

which one you were I could talk
to you, and tell you that sometimes
there’s only one word that means
what you need it to mean, the way

there’s only one person
when you first fall in love,
or one infant’s cry that calls forth
the burning milk, one name

that you pray to when prayer
is what’s left to you. I’m saying
in the beginning was the word
and it was good, it meant one human

entering another and it’s still
what I love, the word made
flesh. Fuck me, I say to the one
whose lovely body I want close,

and as we fuck I know it’s holy,
a psalm, a hymn, a hammer
ringing down on an anvil,
forging a whole new world.

Absence by Elizabeth Jennings

I visited the place where we last met.
Nothing was changed, the gardens were well-tended,
The fountains sprayed their usual steady jet;
There was no sign that anything had ended
And nothing to instruct me to forget.

The thoughtless birds that shook out of the trees,
Singing an ecstasy I could not share,
Played cunning in my thoughts. Surely in these
Pleasures there could not be a pain to bear
Or any discord shake the level breeze.

It was because the place was just the same
That made your absence seem a savage force,
For under all the gentleness there came
An earthquake tremor: Fountain, birds and grass
Were shaken by my thinking of your name.

Leaving Home by Jackie Kay

On the night that I was leaving
the old waves were high;
I lay small inside the dark
as the waves tore me apart.

On the night that I was leaving
I was strewn around the cabin
my body belonged to the boat
as the waves tore me apart.

On the night that I was leaving
to try and make a new start
I felt sick to my stomach
as the waves tore me apart.

On the night that I was leaving
the wind battered at the boat;
I tried to still my broken heart
as the waves tore me apart.

Toilet by Hugo Williams

I wonder will I speak to the girl
sitting opposite me on this train.
I wonder will my mouth open and say,
'Are you going all the way
to Newcastle?' or 'Can I get you a coffee?'
Or will it simply go 'aaaaah'
as if it had a mind of its own?

Half closing eggshell blue eyes,
she runs her hand through her hair
so that it clings to the carriage cloth,
then slowly frees itself.
She finds a brush and her long fair hair
flies back and forth like an African fly-whisk,
making me feel dizzy.

Suddenly, without warning,
she packs it all away in a rubber band
because I have forgotten to look out
the window for a moment.
A coffee is granted permission
to pass between her lips
and does so eagerly, without fuss.

A tunnel finds us looking out the window
into one another's eyes. She leaves her seat,
but I know that she likes me
because the light saying 'TOILET'
has come on, a sign that she is lifting
her skirt, taking down her pants
and peeing all over my face.

Nulla Dies Sine Linea by V. Penelope Pelizzon

On my birthday

A crow guffaws, dirty man throwing the punch of his

one joke. And now, nearer, a murder

answers, chortling from the pale hill’s brow.

From under my lashes’ wings they stretch

clawed feet. There the unflappable years

perch and stare. When I squint, when I

grin, my new old face nearly hops

off my old new face. Considering what’s flown,

what might yet fly, I lean my chin

on the palm where my half-cashed fortune lies.

Insomnia by Elizabeth Bishop

The moon in the bereau mirror
looks out a million miles
(and perhaps with a pride, at herself,
but she never, never smiles)
far and away beyond sleep, or
perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.

By the Universe deserted,
she'd tell it to go to hell,
and she'd find a body of water,
or a mirror, on which to dwell.
So wrap up care in a cobweb
and drop it down the well

into that world inverted
where left is always right,
where the shadows are really the body,
where we stay awake all night,
where the heavens are shallow as the sea
is now deep, and you love me.

Bereft.

No longer do we skip and play
as sunlight brightly fills the bay.
Our world has spun, it's getting cool,
the sea now has to stick to rules
and follow orders to file out
filling an ocean roundabouts
the way and go, not feeling bold
as we shiver against the cold.

What Happens to Women by Ros Barber

It's what happens to women, no matter who you are.
Divine inside? They'll only see the face.
It's coming, despite your warmth, your grit, your heart -
the sudden shift from beuaty to disgrace.
A light snapped off and your gone. You're in the dark.
No one can see you now, you're unglued,
for while you slept, the world took you softly apart.
Now man after man walks through the ghost of you.

On a morning like any other, she wakes to find
her lover moved out and her admirers gone
from her steps, as if with one breath, one mind,
they abandoned their roses there like skeletons.
A half-penned love note stutters towards the sea,
embarrassed, undoing its 'love', and 'dear, and 'we'.

The Love of Unknown Women by Alan Jenkins

Young women with damp hollows, downy arms,
Bare burnished legs — you see them striding
Towards their plant-filled offices, riding
Bicycles to flatshares after work; lunchtimes, you stare
As secretaries, backpackers tanned from birth
Peel off their things and stretch on sun-warmed earth.
A few of them stare back... As if they’d share
Their world of holidays and weekend farms
With you! They step more lightly every year,
A glimpse of neck-hair, a scent that lingers, girls
Who, swinging bags with shops’ names, disappear,
Trailing glances, into crowds; each one unfurls
Her special beauty like a fragile frond
Before your famished eyes. I am what lies beyond,
They seem to say, beyond the mortgage, car and wife —
I am what you deserve, I am the buried life
You will never live. Are they pushed laughing onto beds
By hands that unhook bras and yank down briefs?
Do they wake with tongues thick-furred, heads
Hot and unremembering as carpet-swirls?
Crave water running over them in purls,
As cool as their long fingers? Schubert, jazz,
It’s all the same to them. As are your little griefs.
It isn’t fair. If you’ve not changed, what has?
Is it a kind of shifting, imperceptible, like sands
On some barren, windswept stretch of shore?
In simmering parks, on summer streets
Where they wait but not for you, you furtively explore
The curves of eyebrow, cheek and lip —
Of other things too; you search left hands
For seals of love, or ownership.
Moving off, they can smell your old defeats.

Next, Please by Philip Larkin

Always too eager for the future, we
Pick up bad habits of expectancy.
Something is always approaching; every day
Till then we say,

Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear
Sparkling armada of promises draw near.
How slow they are! And how much time they waste,
Refusing to make haste!

Yet still they leave us holding wretched stalks
Of disappointment, for, though nothing balks
Each big approach, leaning with brasswork prinked,
Each rope distinct,

Flagged, and the figurehead with golden tits
Arching our way, it never anchors; it's
No sooner present than it turns to past.
Right to the last

We think each one will heave to and unload
All good into our lives, all we are owed
For waiting so devoutly and so long.
But we are wrong:

Only one ship is seeking us, a black-
Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back
A huge and birdless silence. In her wake
No waters breed or break.

E Bay Habit.

Fully aware

like a kestrel

hung out in air

over morsels

 

of food

ready to pounce

won't do me no good

this 3.4 fl oz

 

bottle du bleu

too expensive

it's true

but I'm worth it.

 

Commute.

Racing on down
the swirling river of eastway;
crimson lights
a barrier to nothing.
To stop is to die.

So I speed on, through
traffic rapids, round rocks
of trucks; careful to avoid
the soft machinations
of pedestrians.

On in to work
where I get stabbed
dead
in the heart
by a smiling child.

We the Women by Grace Nichols

We the women who toil
unadorn
heads tie with cheap
cotton

We the women who cut
clear fetch dig sing

We the women making
something from this
ache-and-pain-a-me
back-o-hardness

Yet we the women
whose praises go unsung
whose voices go unheard
whose deaths they sweep
aside
as easy as dead leaves

Tea by Carol Ann Duffy

I like pouring your tea, lifting
the heavy pot, and tipping it up,
so the fragrant liquid steams in your china cup.

Or when you're away, or at work,
I like to think of your cupped hands as you sip,
as you sip, of the faint half-smile of your lips.

I like the questions - sugar? milk? -
and the answers I don't know by heart, yet,
for I see your soul in your eyes and I forget.

Jasmine, Gunpowder, Assam, Earl Grey, Ceylon,
I love tea's names. Which tea would you like? I say,
but it's any tea, for you, please, any time of day,

as the woman harvests the slopes,
for the sweetest leaves, on Mount Wu-Yi,
and I am your lover, smitten, straining your tea.

Baize by Polly Clark

I should have tried harder
to love Steve Davis.
If not for his neat bow tie
then for his rare motor skills.

Good hand-eye co-ordination
smooths the path of a relationship.
At least one of you must have it
like hope, and the ability

to love and keep one's word.
There was much I failed to understand
that Steve tried to explain:
that life's a process of elimination,

and the black truth must be toyed with
until it's the only way out.
One must maximise one's options
within the frame the game creates,

avoiding conflict until its result
can be decisive in your favour -
and the one true art is procrastination
so complex it appears something is happening

until finally, the smack of the cue
drives uncertainty off the face of the earth.
I've learned at last I don't need anything
that requires a hand to touch me.

I dream of the long green baize
where Steve and I might have lain,
my unmanageable dreams
finally, gratefully, pocketed.

Mandy Andy's Lost Dogs.

I was fucked
he said, an excuse
brushed off; an accident
just biding time to happen.
No man's fault.

I knew though
what they meant to him.
The long look in his eye
told a truth where
lips could only lie.

Fellow Travellers.

now, i'm standing
at the bus stop
on the homerton high road,
when five young men
show and i think:
why, they sure broke the mould!

they look to me,
all too-tight slacks
and curly bouffant hair,
like some old prog-
rock band been all
time-warped unawares.

but boy, are these
boys big, they go
on well up over me
and also speak
and act with such
assurèd certainty

that when they speak
in swedish, all
a "har du sett?" and "ja",
my mind can't help
but think: my, ain't
these vikings 'alf come far!

The Australian Suicide Bomber's Heavenly Reward by Clive James

Here I am, complaining as usual to Nicole Kidman
("Sometimes I think that to you I'm just a sex object")
While I watch Elle McPherson model her new range
Of minimalist lingerie.
Elle does it the way I told her,
Dancing slowly to theme music from The Sirens
As she puts the stuff on instead of taking it off.
Meanwhile, Naomi Watts is fluffing up the spare bed
For her re-run of that scene in Mulholland Drive
Where she gets it on with the brunette with the weird name.
In keeping with the requirements of ethnic origin
Naomi's partner here will be Portia de Rossi,
Who seems admirably hot for the whole idea.
On every level surface there are perfumed candles
And wind chimes tinkle on the moonlit terrace:
Kylie and Dannii are doing a great job.
(They fight a lot, but when I warn them they might miss
Their turn, they come to heel.)
Do you know, I was scared I might never make it?
All suited up in my dynamite new waistcoat,
I was listening to our spiritual leader —
Radiant his beard, elegant his uplifted finger —
As he enthrallingly outlined, not for the first time,
The blessings that awaited us upon the successful completion
Of our mission to obliterate the infidel.
He should never have said he was sorry
He wasn't going with us.
Somehow I found myself pushing the button early.
I remember his look of surprise
In the flash of light before everything went sideways,
And I thought I might have incurred Allah's displeasure.
But Allah, the Greatest, truly as great as they say —
Great in his glory, glorious in his greatness, you name it —
Was actually waiting for me at the front door of this place
With a few words of his own. "You did the right thing.
Those were exactly the people to lower the boom on.
Did they really think that I, of all deities,
Was ever going to be saddled with all that shit?
I mean, please. Hello? Have we met?"
And so I was escorted by the Hockeyroos —
Who had kindly decided to dress for beach volleyball —
Into the antechamber where Cate Blanchett was waiting
In a white bias-cut evening gown and bare feet.
High maintenance, or what?
No wonder I was feeling a bit wrecked.
"You look, "she said, "as if you could use a bath."
She ran it for me, whisking the foam with her fingertips
While adding petals of hydrangeas and nasturtiums.
Down at her end, she opened a packet of Jaffas
And dropped them in, like blood into a cloud.

Found in the Library by Anonymous

Lucky by Tony Hoagland

If you are lucky in this life, you will get to help your enemy the way I got to help my mother when she was weakened past the point of saying no. Into the big enamel tub half-filled with water which I had made just right, I lowered the childish skeleton she had become. Her eyelids fluttered as I soaped and rinsed her belly and her chest, the sorry ruin of her flanks and the frayed gray cloud between her legs. Some nights, sitting by her bed book open in my lap while I listened to the air move thickly in and out of her dark lungs, my mind filled up with praise as lush as music, amazed at the symmetry and luck that would offer me the chance to pay my heavy debt of punishment and love with love and punishment. And once I held her dripping wet in the uncomfortable air between the wheelchair and the tub, until she begged me like a child to stop, an act of cruelty which we both understood was the ancient irresistible rejoicing of power over weakness. If you are lucky in this life, you will get to raise the spoon of pristine, frosty ice cream to the trusting creature mouth of your old enemy because the tastebuds at least are not broken because there is a bond between you and sweet is sweet in any language.

Parsnips

Nobody writes poems about parsnips.
- Anna Pavord

I never liked parsnips when
I was younger than today;
my father's mother always used
to roast them on sunday;

the super-sweetness of them
would offend me because I
thought they were potatoes
so I'd spit them out and cry.

Ultrasound at 13 Weeks by Kona McPhee

A child, I'd curl up small at night
in moonlight's brittle calm
and make believe I rested safe
within a giant palm.

This bell of muscle rings you round
as never fingers could
until the birthday when you come
to claim your personhood;

for now, this image speaks for you:
a snowflake hand outflung
proclaiming human, greeting us
in every human tongue.

A Pretty Song by Mary Oliver

From the complications of loving you
I think there is no end or return.
No answer, no coming out of it.

Which is the only way to love, isn't it?
This isn't a playground, this is
earth, our heaven, for a while.

Therefore I have given precedence
to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods
that hold you in the centre of my world.

And I say to my body: grow thinner still.
And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song.
And I say to my heart: rave on.

Song for Gwydion by R.S.Thomas

When I was a child and the soft flesh was forming
Quietly as snow on the bare boughs of bone,
My father brought me trout from the green river
From whose chill lips the water song had flown.

Dull grew their eyes, the beautiful, blithe garland
As stipples faded, as light shocked the brain;
They were the first sweet sacrifice I tasted,
A young god, ignorant of the blood's stain.

S/M

I sometimes like a bit of pain
and do get sexy dreams,
but might they go together
bit like vodka and ice cream?

You could end up in a&e
or just get painful teeth,
a fun time you can't recollect
or sticky mess beneath

the bedsheets when it's over
or bruises on your bum
or failing that
you're just left with
a funny white russian.

Magnetic by Wendy Cope

i spell it out on this fridge door
you are so wonderful
i even like th way you snor

An Accident.

A whining lament wakes us all up, he be wanting
something but even when the door is left wide
as a load he just will not go out for the rain.

Sitting up by the bed, he stares at your face
trying to communicate his need by force of a
psychic will but he just can't stand still.

At the back door, he tries squeeking some more
having failed to get any attention he leaves
a big pile of shit on the living room floor.

Henry Masauko Chipembere's Mango Tree at Mtundu, cheChiwaya's by Jack Mapanje

The fig tree at Mtundu, cheChiwaya's was
robust, dynamic once - political arena, court,
market; chiefs and their elders chewed our
cases in subtle riddles, proverbs, narratives
there, fishmongers milling about bamboo and
reed stalls, trading sun dried utaka, usipa, nchila,
zisawasawa, mcheni for salt, sugar, beads;
women in cheerful calico offered spirited prices
for their sweet brew, babies on backs munching
banana bread baked in banana leaves. And
this mango tree, this arch rebel standing tall
beside the fig tree at Mtundu, cheChiwaya's
hasn't it weathered ruthless Young Pioneer
butts, Youth League lashes all these years? And
when figs and mangoes, finally fall to earth,
like their rebel hero, will swallows swoop
and turn to gathering clouds and whirlwind,
promising another bitter-sweet fruitfulness?

Al-A'imma Bridge by Brian Turner

“This will leave a scar in our souls…”
—President Jalal Talabani


They fall from the bridge into the Tigris—
they fall from railings or tumble down, shoved by panic,
by those in the crushing weight behind them,
mothers with children, seventy-year-old men
clawing at the blue and empty sky, which is too beautiful;

some focus on the bridgework as they fall, grasp
the invisible rope which slips through their fingers,
some palm-heel the air beneath them, pressing down
as their children swim in the oxygen beside them;
lives blurring with no time to make sense, some
so close to shore they smash against the rocks;

the pregnant woman who twists
in a corkscrew of air, flipping upside down,
the world upended, her black dress
a funeral banner rippling in the wind,
her child never given a name;

they fall beside Shatha and Cantara and Sabeen,
Hakim, Askari, and Gabir—unraveling years
and memory, struggling to keep heads above water,
the hard shock sweeping them downstream
as Askari fights to gain the shoreline
where emerald flags furl in sunlight,
and onlookers wave frantic arms
at Gabir, who holds the body of a dead child
he doesn’t know, and it is only 11:30 a.m.,
And this is how we die, he thinks
on a day as beautiful as this;

and Shatha, who feels the river’s cold hands
pulling her under, remembers once loving
the orange flowers opening on the hillsides
of Mosul, how she lay under slow clouds
drifting in history’s bright catalogue;

they fall with 500 pound bombs and mortars,
laser-guided munitions directing the German Luftwaffe
from 1941, Iraqi jets and soldiers from the Six-Day War,
the Battle of Karbala, the one million who died fighting Iran;

and Alexander the Great falls, and King Faisal,
and the Israeli F-16s that bombed the reactor in ’81,
and the Stele of the Vultures comes crumbling,
the Tower of Samarra, the walled ruins of Nineveh;

the Babylonians and Sumerians and Assyrians join them,
falling from the bridge with Ibn Khaldun’s torn pages,
The Muqaddimah—that classic Islamic history of the world,
and Sheherazade falls too, worn out, exhausted
from her life-saving work, made speechless by the scale of war,
and Ali Baba with an AK-47 beside her;

whiskey and vodka, pirated Eastern European porn videos
the kids hawk to soldiers—the freaky freaky they call it,
and foil-wrapped packages of heroin, heroin
thrown to the river;

the year 1956 slides under, along with ’49 and ’31 and ’17,
the month of October, the months of June, July, and August,
the many months to follow, each day’s exquisite light,
the snowfall in Mosul, the photographs a family took
of children rolling snowballs, throwing them
before licking the pink cold from their fingertips;

years unravel like filaments of straw, bleached gold
and given to the water, 1967 and 1972, 2001 and 2002:
What will we remember? What will we say of these?

it awakens the dead from the year 1258
who cannot believe what is happening here, Not a shot fired—
our internalized panic deeply set by years of warfare,
the siege and adrenaline always at the surface, prepared;

the dead from the year 1258 read from ancient scrolls
cast into the river from the House of Wisdom,
the eulogies of nations given water’s swift erasure;

and the dead watch as they are swept downstream—
witness to the soft, tender lips of the river fish
who kiss the calves and fingertips of these newly dead,
curious to see how lifeless bodies stare hard
into the dark envelopment, hands
waving to the far shore;

the djinn awaken from their slumber
to watch the dead pass by, one fixed
with an odd smile, the drawn-out vowel
of a word left unfinished, and they want to hold these dead
close and tight, the lung’s last reserve given
as a whisper of bubbles for the ear held up to it;

the djinn swim to reach the bony ankles of Sabeen,
the muscled Askari, clasping to stop them
from this tragic undertaking;

and some are nearly saved by others diving in
to rescue the terrified and the stunned,
but drown beneath a woman’s soaked abaya;

and the Tigris is filling with the dead, filling
with bricks from Abu Ghraib, burning vehicles
pushed from Highway 1 with rebar, stone, metal,
with rubble from the Mosque bombed in Samarra,
guard towers and razor wire imprisoning Tikrit,
it fills with the pipelines of money;

marketplace bombs, roadside bombs, vehicle-driven
bombs, and the bombs people make of themselves;

Gilgamesh can do nothing, knows that each life is the world
dying anew, each body the deep pull of currents below, lost,
and lost within each—the subtle, the sublime, the horrific,
the mundane, the tragic, the humorous and the erotic—lost,

unstudied in text books, courses on mathematics,
the equations quantifying fear,
or the stoppage of time this eternal moment creates,
unwritten history, forgotten in American hallways, but still—

give them flowers from the hills, flowers from the Shanidar cave,
where mourning has a long history, where someone in the last Ice Age
gathered a bouquet—give daisies and hyacinths
to this impossible moment, flowers to stand for the lips
unable to kiss them, each in their own bright beauty, flowers
that may light the darkness, as they march deeper into the earth.

Energy

the pile of wood
we went collecting
may not last the night.
the fire consumes
all of it
so we can have some light.
it burns so bright
the heat so much
i almost cannot bear
to sit so close
while we pile on
our wood without a care.

The Clinic by John Stammers

Vivid teenage girls with awkward boys
jig about and giggle; the little radio bleats.
Everything is poster bright:
Free Condoms, Folic Acid.

You are wearing black as usual;
your black hair, your pale skin.

The salmon-red polyprop chairs sit
like strange plastic organs
from a third-form biology lesson:
And this is the oviduct or Fallopian tube,
and this is the placenta, and this is the vagina.

One girl shows a leaflet to her boy,
'That's the coil, it's for rude boys like you!'
She leans, chuckles; he squirms in his trainers,
they seem to be ceaselessly dancing, these kids.

The white of your skin,
the dark rings under you eyes.

The receptionist ticks off
a row of boxes on a sheet,
'First the nurse, then the doctor,
then the nurse and the doctor together,
then we finish off with the counsellor.'

Your eyes are fixed on nothing,
you are thinking of nothing perhaps
or of what nothing is
and when it stops being nothing.

Moon Hymn by Alice Oswald

I will give you one glimpse
a glimpse of the moon's grievance
whose appearance is all pocks and points
that look like frost-glints

I will wave my hand to her
in her first quarter
when the whole world is against her
shadowy exposure of her centre

o the moon loves to wander
I will go clockwise and stare
when she is huge when she is half elsewhere
half naked, in struggle with the air

and growing rounder and rounder
a pert peering creature
I love her sidling and awkward
when she's not quite circular

o criminal and ingrown
skinned animal o moon
carrying inside yourself your own
death's head, your dark one

why do you chop yourself away
piece by piece, to that final trace
of an outline of ice
on a cupful of space?

Blanket Coverage

Everything’s been tipp-exed out
as if the gods were trying to erase
mankind’s afflictions.
The roads, the cars, the shops and bars
all covered over with correction.

In the park the frozen men
stand around while laughing
children throw their souls,
my dog’s piss a vibrant yellow
ink with which he writes hello.

Spilling Out by Jacob Sam-La Rose

What's the half-life of a bright idea?
How deep must it be buried
to prevent it radiating,

like trying to stop a bulb's
insistent light from spilling out
between the fingers or leavening
the enforced blindness
of closed eyelids?

Imagine rolling that hot bulb
on your tongue,
all it's brilliant shining.

Now, try closing your mouth.

New Library.

Confusion appears
on the faces of new
library members
that come in and join up
because of the slick, shiny, sleek,
multi-million pound, industrial-chic
library that's appeared round 'ere.

They walk in and are confronted
not by rows of books
(as one would expect)
but by what is called
a 'quick choice collection'-
a single shelving unit
with a selection of the stock.

"Is this it?"
they ask bemused,
and you have to tell them that more exists upstairs.
In this way
you feel a little like a preacher
or a sunday school teacher
answering your congregations questions about life.

A Little Nut-Tree by Roald Dahl

I had a little nut-tree,
Nothing would it bear.
I searched in all its branches,
But not a nut was there.

"Oh, little tree," I begged,
"Give me just a few."
The little tree looked down at me
And whispered, "Nuts to you."

Alan.

The acrid fragrance of your stain-coated jacket and
the poorly-kept perennial imperial point
you out.

Indicating to polite company
that you would not be found easily
acceptable.

To be shut out,
kept away from the top table.
Not allowed to enter into any hallowed home.

However,
the badge you wear on your flat cap
telling those you meet that you'd want them
"OUT ON N30", indicates, to me at least,
that you possess something of a sense of
solidarity, with others if not yourself.

So try to continue to keep you head above
the deep, dark, murky waters
where at least you may
find a measure of acceptance
with those who share
your taste in swimwear.

Absence by Carol Ann Duffy

Then the birds stitching the dawn with their song
have patterned your name.

Then the green bowl of the garden filling with light
is your gaze.

Then the lawn lengthening and warming itself
is your skin.

Then a cloud disclosing itself overhead
is your opening hand.

Then the first seven bells from the church
pine on the air.

Then the sun's soft bite on my face
is your mouth.

Then a bee in a rose is your fingertip
touching me here.

Then the trees bending and meshing their leaves
are what we would do.

Then my steps to the river are text to a prayer
printing the ground.

Then the river searching its bank for your shape
is desire.

Then a fish nuzzling for the water's throat
has a lover's ease.

Then a shawl of sunlight dropped in the grass
is a garment discarded.

Then a sudden scatter of summer rain
is your tongue.

Then a butterfly paused on a trembling leaf
is your breath.

Then the gauzy mist relaxed on the ground
is your pose.

Then the fruit from the cherry tree falling on grass
is your kiss, your kiss.

Then the day's hours are theatres of air
where I watch you entranced.

Then the sun's light going down from the sky
is the length of your back.

Then the evening bells over the rooftops
are lovers' vows.

Then the river staring up, lovesick for the moon,
is my long night.

Then the stars between us are love
urging its light.

Gone by Imtiaz Dharker

I see you have been and gone.
Such a small space between
your being here and having
been, just the bedroom door
ajar, and in the kitchen
the kettle and your cup still
warm. You forgot
your umbrella, and now it has begun
to rain. In my mind I see you
turn and look back over your shoulder
towards this room, your
umbrella and me holding on
to it.

Attraction.

the moon pulls the water
the flower pulls the bee
the horse pulls the cart
and you hold me.

Long Weekend.

stretching out
to try reaching
for the future.

back arched, releasing
a tension unheeded,
so made pure.

days on fire
nights of rum
the hurt let alone.

leave the dog
to chew on it,
say bye bye to the bone.

A Butterfly in the British Museum by Kelly Grovier

Smuggled in on a schoolgirl's cuff,
its brushed wings dusting
the cabinet edges - agate seals

and scarabs, a charlatan's scrying
crystal and the turquoise teeth
of an Aztec skull. Spinning

to kneel, she shrugs loose
her knapsack, scrabbling
for sketchbook and pen,

when suddenly her wrist blossoms,
takes flight, meets itself
in a ricochet of glare -

its hieroglyphs ghosting
into cartouched tombs.
For an instant, the mystery

of the living and the beauty of the dead
flutter in the glass; impulsive
lenses zoom too late!, too late!

as the soul of a doodling girl
vibrates to the sky-light's deep,
unpinnable blue.

Elephants Vs. Insects by Allan Ahlberg

The Elephants and the Insects
Came out to play a match
They trampled in the jungle
Till they cleared a little patch.
They scuttled round and trumpeted
Just glad to be alive
Until the half-time whistle
when the score was 15-5.

The Insects in the second half
Brought on a substitute
A modest little centipede
But, brother, could he shoot.
He ran around on all his legs
Beneath the tropic sun
And by the time he'd finished
Well, the Insects, they had won.

"Oh, tell us" said the Elephants
"We're mystified indeed
Why wait until the second half
To play the centipede?"
"That's easy" cried the Insects
As they carried off the cup.
"He needs and hour
to sort his boots...

And tie his laces up!"

From: A Red Cherry on a White-tiled Floor by Maram Al-Massri

You should not
have touched my hand
and left it dreaming
of your touch.

You should not
have kissed my lips
and left them burning
for your muffling caress.

You should have
remained quiet
so that I would not stop
hoping.

Frozen Through.

standing over glacial space
mutely reaching to embrace.
heads hung, coldly conceiving
the kinetic absence
of a still hole filled in.
missed gurgling of good times gone,
faded now the star's gone on.

Poem by Penelope Shuttle

A poem stays awake long after midnight
talking you from room to room

does not care that walls have ears
las parades oyen

A poem prefers tin to silver,
silver to gold,
gold to platinum

Every year
a poem tosses a young woman from the cliffs
to the rocky sea below

A poem accidentally sends the entire letter f
off to Florence

but keeps the letter t
in a matchbox, like a tiny contraband tortoise

Sometimes
a poem is your only daughter

busy and happy in the world,
China or Spain
abundancia de riqueza

Like the partial Angel Gabriel
in Santa Sophia
a poem is half-gold, half-invisible

A poem will do things in England
she'll never do in France

It will take more than ten thousand lakes
for which minnesota is famous
to drown a poem

The poem pauses now and then
to look at nothing-much-in-particular

A poem likes scraping and burnishing
the prepared surface of the etching copper,

is frequently found note-taking copiously
from The Fantastic Historia Animalium of the Rain

A poem makes herself as tiny as a waterbear
or a tardygrade,
a mite able to survive freezing, boiling,

able to go into suspended animation
for one hundred years, if need be

shivering timbres running right
through the lights.

stop a runaway pram as it plummets
down the hill to mortify for such
a certainty as to be unstoppable.

but you do
manage to stop it.
somehow throwing an entire
sinewously wrapped up
package of pain in the way of hurt.

yet all will
hail heroes until

they

fall.

Passionately.

Once so close
Wild dogs
Could not have torn us.

Bonded.
Super glued together.
Not a crack
Between
To let daylight in.

Couldn’t see the trees, just the wood.
Loved what we wanted, coz we could.

The Meaningtime by Adrian Mitchell

Bananas and bicycles are beautiful animals
Elephants and waterfalls are wonderful machines
Show me a bucket and I'll bite you a biscuit –
Now you know what the universe means

Scary

the suspect package
lies in wait
filled, perhaps,
with fiery hate
or just clothes and a radio.

everybody has
to wait
outside, in the nipped
night air.
anywhere but here

so we all go to the cafe
for tea and anecdotes.
protected by an
arm wrestling authority
that ain't sure why it's there.

Parlour-Piece by Ted Hughes

With love so like fire they dared not
Let it out into strawy small talk;
With love so like a flood they dared not
Let out a trickle lest the whole crack,

These two sat speechlessly:
Pale cool tea in tea-cups chaperoned
Stillness, silence, the eyes
Where fire and flood strained.

Algebraic Heartache

2 + 2 = 5
the maths is all wrong
nothing adds up
all has gone for a song

can’t seem to formulate
a corrected answer
want to believe I
could just stand a chance

to make it ok again
make it alright
lost all blindsided
and can’t find the light.

Simon Turp RIP

On golden sands stands young Vinny,
next to him the deep, cold sea.

Holding tight in gentle grasp
a slender thread, that does hold fast

a kite to Gaia, life and hearth
to all that exists here on earth.

In the heavens soars the kite,
floating free no need to fight

with clouds that don’t hold any rain
precipitate of cold, hard pain.

The string it breaks, the kite it falls
Vinny cries out, much appalled.

The kite, you see, no longer flies,
it hits the ground and Vinny cries.

And the Others by David Berman

Some find The Light in literature;
Others in fine art,
And some persist in being sure
The Light shines in the heart.

Some find The Light in alcohol;
Some, in the sexual spark;
Some never find The Light at all
And make do with the dark,

And one might guess that these would be
A gloomy lot indeed,
But, no, The Light they never see
They think they do not need.

Swimming to Work on My Bicycle.

The water hits like a wave. Slapping
me about with closed fists,
a proper beating. I
wend away while
brutal blows
keep on
raining
down on
my head now
drenched. A drowned
rat, caught splat, slap
in the middle of a blind storm.

Delay by Elizabeth Jennings

The radiance of the star that leans on me
Was shining years ago. The light that now
Glitters up there my eyes may never see,
And so the time lag teases me with how

Love that loves now may not reach me until
Its first desire is spent. The star's impulse
Must wait for eyes to claim it beautiful
And love arrived may find us somewhere else.

An Acrostic Poem for Ralph.

Rearing up he roars
And though his spittle
Flies I find it
Funny that my
Little friend can show such
Enmity toward a
Stranger of his own morphology.

That he seems to feel such
Hate leads me to
Expect

Ghastly things would sure occur were I to
Even think
(Ne’er mind
The risk to me) of
Loosing him,
Even though he
May well want me to
And, although I love him so, I’m
Not prepared

To pay for any damage. I mean,
Have you heard how
Unreasonably priced
Going to the vet can be nowadays?