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."