Singapore side-street
They spray the hanging duck
with hot water
in this restaurant
a converted British shop house
no. 9
was once an opium den
now a whorehouse
with a
peking duck restaurant
fowl between chopsticks
what's she saying? Shit,
I can't understand Cantonese.
the converted British shop house
is painted all red
after eating the duck, a little
beer in my system, cigarettes down the pipe
I saunter in
there's more Cantonese and a lot of looks
like I'm not supposed to be there
I hate this about the Chinese here
they don't tell you you're embarrassing yourself
they only look at you like you are
I can still taste the peking duck
a man peers over his newspaper
hang me up and spray me
with hot water. some older woman
in an apron should steam me, she's now
cutting garlic on a table with a beer ad on it.
if I were photoshop I'd get really posterized
maybe even go a bit cartoon or neon
the lights would dim
I'd be surrounded by beautiful, exotic young girl
who want to share a bed with me.
I walk out, silently. Anything but to get embarrassed.
• Ralph-Michael Chiaia is an experimental poet. More about him at formonksonly.blogspot.com
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Thursday, May 15
Singapore side-street
by
Charles Christian
on Thu 15 May 2008 05:15 PM BST
Wednesday, May 14
New haibun by Tish Davis
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 14 May 2008 03:53 PM BST
Brother of the Sea
Lake Erie – blue water and sky become one. I sit in the sand not far from the place along the channel where my father and I used to fish. The beach is smaller now, cluttered with garbage cans and signs. The driftwood too, scattered along the edge, entangled with leaves and plastic bottles. The gulls return again and again to the edge of the pier as they did when we cast our lines. My father would tell the same story every time I was bored. The Iroquois, a confederation of five nations – Seneca, Cayuga, Onodaga, Oneida, Mohawk – defeat the Eries… I remember our bobbers rocking back and forth in these waters – the only legacy that bears their name. receding tide another feather stranded • Tish Davis lives and writes in Ohio and is a regular contributor to IS&T Tuesday, May 13
John Irvine gets minimal
by
Charles Christian
on Tue 13 May 2008 04:36 PM BST
This is for all of you who have struggled with poetry forms...
I’ll write a sonnet... I’ll write a sonnet about a haiku (ironic that, if I say so myself) or maybe I’ll pen an apt senryu and leave the cinquain to rot on the shelf. I’m not really sure which type I should write, so many species of sonnet there are... but as they say she’ll be right on the night, no doubt my brain will be up to full power by the time the soup and wedges are done. Haiku are more than a clever wee verse, a gift from the Land of the Rising Sun, a haiku must always be rather terse. This pith of a moment, no more or less, has taken me fourteen lines, I confess. • IS&T regular John Irvine describes himself as "an Old Aged Pensioner in New Zealand with delusions of immortal failure, a cynical view of life and a mole under his left arm." Monday, May 12
Burma comment by Chris Major
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 12 May 2008 11:53 AM BST
Once again our favourite concrete poet Chris Major has a pertinent comment to make about current affairs...
 Saturday, May 10
Mixed reviews – and new sites to check out
by
Charles Christian
on Sat 10 May 2008 10:28 AM BST
• My old friend Alexis Byter has just launched a prose and photography blog called, appropriately enough, Words & Vision. It is only just starting to carry content but if you are interested in prose poetry and 'street photography' check it out – or even better bookmark it. www.wordsandvision.com
• Next up, regular IS&T contributor P A Levy says he has "been working hard on getting a new web site up and running – the clueless collective’s magazine of poetica is a spoof of some of the more, shall we say arty and pretentious, literary magazines. I have to confess that it’s all me; I’m the guilty one. I wrote all the rubbish. Anyway, if you get the time please pop by and have a browse at www.cluelesscollective.co.uk and I shall try and entertain you." I've checked it out – it definitely does entertain – Dick & Tom's guide to poetry should be included in every creative writing course. • Finally, long-time stalwart of the UK haiku and haibun scene Stanley Pelter has a new collection of haibun out. Called insideoutside (published by George Mann Publications, ISBN 9780955241574) and featuring an introduction by Diana Noel, this really should be called something like The Dangerous Book of Haibun for Boys (and Girls) as the contents, aided and abetted by Stanley's pen & ink illustrations, push the form into a far more edgy zone than you normally see with haibun. I liked this collection (tho I can imagine some people being frightened by) not least because it makes you think, whereas all to often haibun just lull you off to sleep. You can order insideout direct from Stanley for £8.00 + £1.50 p&p (contact him direct for euro & US dollar rates) by emailing spelter23@aol.com Friday, May 9
New flash fiction by Patricia Mullin
by
Charles Christian
on Fri 09 May 2008 07:57 AM BST
Soft Angular
It is a familiar journey, three hours there, if I’m lucky, the same back. The traffic is heavy, lorries throw up dirty spray. I pass the house. * Clink, clink. The fork taps the glass bowl. Egg whites gradually frothing to soft triangular peaks. Mummy has her pretty apron on; it has sprigs of flowers on it. Her arm is tired and I offer to take a turn, but I am too small and I have to be lifted onto the chair. Four years old and strong, my arm won’t get tired, or so I believe. Within minutes I am returned to the floor. Meringues. Someone special is coming for tea, I don’t ask who. * She is folding and refolding. The handkerchief is labeled with her name. They have spelt it wrong, added an S. ‘They lose everything here, you know’. She is lost. ‘Did you expect daddy to die?’ It was a year ago, I explain gently. ‘No?’ She says shocked. The hands work the small cotton square into an oblong. ‘Someone is living in our house, a woman.’ ‘Yes, they have a little boy. It’s a family home again, which is best.’ ‘But where will daddy go when he comes out of hospital’. ‘He isn’t with us anymore. We lost daddy a year ago. He was very ill’. The handkerchief is now the smallest square. ‘No? Oh yes, I remember, was it a year…no. Weeks, a month at most.’ The handkerchief is spread wide and the creases smoothed out. She pauses, sighs. ‘Did you expect daddy to die?’ It is the fourteenth such question. She folds the handkerchief in half and in half again. The rope-blue veins stand proud of her skin. The small cotton square becomes a soft angular peak. The traffic is lighter. I pass the house and turn up the music in the car, muffling the clink, clink. • Patricia Mullin lives in Norfolk is an artist and author of Gene Genie and a graduate of Norwich Art School's Writing the Visual MA. Thursday, May 8
New poetry by Will Collins
by
Charles Christian
on Thu 08 May 2008 09:07 AM BST
It's the start of the fly-away holiday season, and I think we've all been here...
Please Read the Safety Instruction Manual He donned a yellow jacket, pretend blew down a red whistle. Then he pointed in front Of himself and to either of his sides. As he did so a woman’s voice spoke in flat monotone. Cramped on and around a uniform row of blue seats with seatback videos and built-in drink trays, was his section of almost nine hundred passengers. Three or four rose to switch places during his pre-flight performance. It was his first flight, so airborne colleagues placed peanuts in his replica seatbelt; they fell to the floor as he held it up and opened it but no-one laughed or even saw. Some were attending to crying children. A lot were fumbling in their hand-luggage. At his estimate over half of them had drank alcohol in the lounge before boarding. In the portion he would be tasked with the evacuation of in case of emergency nine were occupied by literature. Seven of those the overpriced in-flight duty-free catalogue. • Will Collins is studying creative writing at Winchester University Wednesday, May 7
New poetry by Roddy Williams
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 07 May 2008 10:49 AM BST
the 100 minute bible
a new short bible’s in the shops, like god’s highlights for part-time belief. it has the good bits like genesis with the snake and special effects. not much begatting. i think i will wait and buy the director’s cut with the sodomy and the selling of daughters in a two-disc set. • Roddy Williams lives and works in London. A radical atheist, his Haiku Diary of Common Sense can be found at http://hairybloke.blogspot.com/ Tuesday, May 6
Two pieces of life by Jim Bennett
by
Charles Christian
on Tue 06 May 2008 09:35 AM BST
25
along West 23rd is the Hotel Chelsea a place people go to talk to ghosts in the damp walls feet and carapace scratch turn crisp loose wallpaper into a sounding board the sound of beds thumping against partition walls moans and cries tears and shouting time hangs in the lamplight suspended in dust at breakfast artists writers would be artists would be writers take a communion pancake slop syrup just like Hemmingway Ok they say it’s not like it should be but it sure is close 26 the tarmac footpath serpentines alongside the church wall now in summer the surface bubbles and the edge like a mountain range full of tiny volcanoes of tar waits to erupt children with magnifying glasses focus sun spots on ants that wither and die in flames and smoke as the deadly beam finds them around the children crowds push close watch the tiny pyres while they wait one last time for Elvis • These are extracts from 56: a life in pieces – you can read a copy of the full version of 56 for free by visiting www.poetrykit.org/56.pdf For more information about Jim Bennett visit - www.poetrykit.org/jim/index.htm or www.myspace.com/merseypoet Monday, May 5
Geoff Stevens goes decimal
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 05 May 2008 09:52 AM BST
THE DECIMALISATION OF EMILY
Emily is 36.48 years old she's 1.65 metres tall and measures 36.38 27.2 and 36.33 recurring She weighs in at 128.54 pounds as her weight hasn't got used to kilograms yet She has regular habits 0.84 of the time goes to bingo 1.6 times a week and watches 14.7 hours of telly 14.6 hours of it bad telly She goes to bed at 23.2 hours and gets up at 6.8 a.m. to 0.75 of a bowl of muesli and 3.6 fluid ounces of skimmed milk Emily has sex 1.9 times a week 0.97 of the time with her regular boyfriend and achieves orgasm .03 of the time with the other guy She has 2.5 children which confuses the family allowance people but saves on one pair of trousers Emily records all these details of her life accurately 0.86 of the time in her diary Emily thinks she has at least .95 of her finger on the button but in fact she only knows 0.4 of it all Emily is too clever by 0.5 • Geoff Stevens is a regular IS&T contributor – he's a poet and a painter and editor of the Purple Patch poetry magazine. Saturday, May 3
Chris Major says "Just say no to drugs"
by
Charles Christian
on Sat 03 May 2008 03:21 PM BST
 • Christopher Major is our favourite concrete poet.
IS&T readership hits new high
by
Charles Christian
on Sat 03 May 2008 09:21 AM BST
Ink Sweat & Tears' readership for April hit a new all time high with 10,001
distinct hosts served and just over 17,000 page views recorded. Thank
you.
Friday, May 2
A haibun for the holiday weekend
by
Charles Christian
on Fri 02 May 2008 01:16 PM BST
Spring is in the air, there is a holiday weekend in the UK and it's time to relax – so here is a new haibun by regular IS&T contributor Mike Montreuil...
WEEKDAY PICNIC Its one of those picture perfect days. You arrive with your girlfriend and easily find a parking spot away from the sun. You smile at each other, as a chickadee announces his claim to a place he will not share with another, and laugh when a sparrow decides to fly through. mid-day sun – slowly eaten sandwiches harden in the heat A light breeze blows her hair onto her cheek. You attempt to calmly place the strands behind her ear, but the urge to nibble her lobe takes over. She smiles again and takes your hand. Warmth radiates from hers to yours. Everything is perfect. The world is at peace. a jet takes off towards the north – a warm silence broken Lunch over, you take her hand once more and begin the walk you have promised each other. Trees are in bloom and a multitude of flowers hang from their branches. Life has begun in this city park. Even the crows have begun their nest building. along the path an open condom pack our stifled laughs This afternoon will not end, you tell each other. But the increase in automobile traffic tells you otherwise. Soon, the realities of family life will take over and the day will turn to dinner and the homework that needs to be done. rush hour traffic – an eighteen-wheeler blocks the way home Thursday, May 1
Two poems by Belinda Dale
by
Charles Christian
on Thu 01 May 2008 08:34 AM BST
Entropy
She lies inert, in her hand the phone waits static. Wears a smile like the other girls. Hair straightened - - salon shine, because she’s worth it. Perfect skin, regular uniform teeth; she flips through Cosmopolitan magazine. The phone rings; ‘…like, …yeah, …y’ know’ pink bubblegum tones. She fits in just like the other girls. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ watching the rain from my window I am watching the rain from my window it bounces on the red brick of the street it slides down gutters, down roofs, down chimneys it slips from streetlamps, and signs, and leaves it ripples in puddles driven by the wind it scatters under cars and booted feet it swills into grids, into drains, into streams and I watch from the stillness of my room, - unmoving. • Belinda Dale is the secretary of the Chorley & District Writers Circle and has had several poems accepted by Decanto magazine. Wednesday, April 30
Two pieces by Deborah Bates
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 30 Apr 2008 09:38 AM BST
white ink (07134 258796)
there it sat - the numerical love note written on a napkin. never had a 3 or a 7 shined so bright. even to a magpie. the 0 swirled like a whirlpool of disappointment, while the winking eye of the number 9 mischievously giggled at her misfortune. funnily enough, the symmetry of 8 mirrored her enviable hourglass figure, but this was not enough to make him come. 4 sugars dove into her latte, whilst the number 1 stirrer rippled through the foamy ceiling of her coffee. Evelyn had never much cared for the 2 step, but she would gladly perform it with the boy. 6o'clock came and went, as did the regulars. Tommy and Jane disappeared like the bacon does from Tommy's plate. (and sometimes even Jane's.) the fish hook of 5 had pierced her insides, at least the belly ache felt like it. she slid down number 7 and hit its blunted door at the end. rejection. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Pumpernickel Timeline The smell of sour kraut on your breath permeated the room, as your Budweiser belly came towards me - the iceberg threatening the titanic. Your fraying round the edges, old grey y-fronts are the opposite of an aphrodisiac; and the disappointment beneath them ever more so. The young girl of 1971 found you charismatic, and beguiling, like the ballerina ornament in my grandmother's front room, that I so longed to touch as a child. The woman of 1982 found you shaking with fear in the waiting room of the building that gave birth to my girls, yet still you were my second kidney. This year sees an old man, lethargic and unwilling to change. Beside him, a woman who would die before leaving. For better, for worse her vows read. Yellowish curtains that used to be white are drawn around me, still endeavouring to protect me after all this time. The bed slumps, groaning as your weight hollows it out, and I sigh as I get caught in the wave. You pick your Reader's Digest of choice and settle, as my Mills and Boon gets racy - The climax of my night. • Deborah Bates is studying for BA Hons Creative Writing and says her ambition is "to spend my life writing poetry bathed in the sunshine of Tucson". Tuesday, April 29
Prose poetry by Sharon Petts
by
Charles Christian
on Tue 29 Apr 2008 08:24 AM BST
Sex With David Attenborough
Have you noticed the way the way David Attenborough says sexual? Sek-sule… He just has to put those syllables together and you're in the realms of two slugs dangling from a thread of mucus beneath a branch, glutinously entwined for hours, artfully backlit so every trail of spittle and glue is captured. You’re out on the Galapagos with the slow clamber, rock on rock, of the giant tortoises, or with the tree frog beating her bodily fluids into foam, her legs like egg whisks, while the males peer over her shoulder like children waiting to add sugar to the meringue. He might even be saying asexual, not speaking of sex but of its absence and still it’s there in the air like spores, making you sneeze. Bacteria, apparently, swap bits of themselves with any passer-by. The bonobos are bonking with one eye on the cameramen, a perfunctory fuck, sociable as an air kiss or handshake. When we're not watching, they light candles, take luxuriant baths together and coil in Tantric postures for days, festooning the trees like the erotic sculptures on Indian temples. The lust of the universe cast in stone. • Sharon Petts lives in Kent and is working on a novel and an MA in Creative Writing at Kent Uni. She adds "I'm very happy to find a magazine exploring this area. I'm studying with Patricia Debney on the prose poetry module at Kent and have become very excited about the prose poetry form and then very frustrated at the limited attention paid to it. So good on ya." Monday, April 28
Say it - by Jesica Flowerdew
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 28 Apr 2008 08:36 AM BST
Say It
Subdue me Make a berry jewel In the furnace of your throat Hold it on your tongue Hang it in the air Make Me Wait, Roll it from there Into my ear. Make me submit, Start to say it Swallow it, Let the colour of the thought Fill the air A hue of desire A tracing. Translate it, Say it And Subdue me. • Jessica Flowerdew says "I've always written poems, since I was a child but I've never really been confident to do anything with them. I did an English lit A-level but didn't do very well so I've never pursued any kind of creative writing training. I'm a philosophy student, there are some great literary figures in philosophy – I particularly admire Schopenhaur's work. He wrote brilliant aphorisms, they encapsulate so much and have no formula except their shortness. I've barely shown my work to anyone but your website seems kind of anonymous and I had an unusual burst of confidence!" Sunday, April 27
Friday, April 25
Two poems by Richard Wink
by
Charles Christian
on Fri 25 Apr 2008 06:52 AM BST
There is an army of THEM
dipstick depravity crossed swords, intense dribbling over suicide girls I'm wearing tight Lycra tonight swapping pillows with a model in drag caricatured braggart deep coma python. Vomiting captivity from a stolen armchair ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Poor Henry I asked Henry why he kept a picture of Audrey Tautou in his wallet he told me that every day he wanted a glimpse of a goddess Surprised with his sickly strong words I reasoned with him that he keeps a picture of a woman he is never likely to meet he told me the glorious guilt of distraction kept him on his feet A jazzy tune floated from the corner jukebox taking away our conversation For a moment I was distracted by something beautiful gripped by glorious guilt • Richard Wink is a poet and raconteur from Norwich, UK. He writes, he sleeps and sometimes he gets lucky. Thursday, April 24
New flash fiction by Sarah Black
by
Charles Christian
on Thu 24 Apr 2008 08:08 AM BST
45 Seconds and Gone
That teacher with her smiling face, she’s always, how was your weekend? My fist in her fucking mouth, that’s how it was. I ought to tell her, just to watch her eyes, all caring and shit, get real hard and cold. Those soft eyes, that would be too fucking funny. So this is what I’d tell her. D picked me up on Saturday night, and he was already wasted. We were gonna go up Lukachukai Mountain, just hang out. There were these guys with him. I’d seen them around school. They had the shit, I don’t know what it was, something clear like vodka mixed up in one of those two liter Dr. Pepper bottles. Whatever it was, it got all of us off quick. Me and D, we go off a little way in the woods, have some privacy. We’d talked before about how we’re gonna do it when we’ve been going together a year, we talked some shit about getting a hotel in town with a nice, soft bed and room service, cause I was a virgin, but it wasn’t like that. It was right there on the ground, those Aspen leaves brown and wet underneath me, stinking wet earth, and D pulling at me and then he’s inside. It was fast, forty-five seconds and gone, and it’s burning down there, and wet, I don’t know, blood or something. The sky was cold, man, so black, and the stars up there just staring down at me like all these eyes, like all these grandmothers’ eyes. They were looking down at me laying there in the dirt and the leaves with my pants off and I could hear what they was calling me. D rolled off and I was getting ready to heave so I crawled away next to a tree. I’m throwing up and somebody grabbed me by the waist and shoved inside me from behind. It wasn’t D because I could see him passed out and whoever it was, he had big hands, all rough, and I could feel something tearing, like I was on fire down there and I squeezed my eyes shut so I don’t have to see. Those big hands on me. When he was done I just stayed there with vomit and wet leaves all under my knees and hands until I don’t hear them no more, but they don’t go. They was just waiting for me. I put on my underwear and jeans and sat down next to D. He was still passed out, his face half in the muck. There were three of them. They tried to make a little fire, but it just kept smoking, so they sat there and drank out of the bottle and the one in the middle, he passed it over to me again. He had big hands. They just sat there and watched me with their yellow eyes, like wolves. I ought to tell that bitch, with her soft face and her eyes all caring like she really gives a shit. I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna watch her eyes turn cold like those stars. I’m gonna tell her, that would be so fucking funny. She asks me one more time, I’m gonna tell her… • Sarah Black has published short fiction at Word Riot, Flashquake, Slow Trains, The Angler, Rio Grande Review; novels with Loose ID, MLR Press; erotica at Clean Sheets and Ruthie's Club. |
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