Visit To Lincolnshire

    About this time last week
    I was laying down a pencil
    going through the little rituals
    of finishing a poem.
    Mine include a walk,
    so I’d grabbed a coat
    and I was on the street,
    left for the river path
    or over the old bridge,
    it could have been right,
    it could have been dark,
    but that’s not the point,
    for in this town and sometime city
    the streets keep the hours
    I need them to keep,
    shaping their mood to my own.
    About this time today
    I’m in a cottage, thatch and all,
    two miles from a village,
    ten miles from the town,
    miles from any sense of space.
    South are fields of Rape, keep out.
    West are fields of Rape, keep out.
    North is an electric fence, keep out.
    East is a Private Estate.
    The track outside is hedged and straight,
    sure that I want the village road,
    a tight little road of corners and banks
    where it’s not safe to walk.
    It’s not safe to walk
    and I’ve started to feel trapped.
    surrounded by space and Out and Off,
    there’s no one in sight but I feel control
    tugging my forelock and forcing me down.
    I’d leave but I’d said I’d stay the week
    they needed a break, I’d feed the cats,
    write in peace, the perfect place,
    three days to go, in only four hours,
    it’s three days to go.


* Terry Quinn says "I'm a medical engineer in a hospital by day and present a weekly arts show on Preston FM which takes up my evenings. Well, except when football needs to be watched in a proper football ground."

Madness Letters

 

Dream Catcher

 

Elisabeth was bored so I made

a dream catcher out of her old knickers.

Never heard a scream sound like sickness.

It was time to give up smoking dope anyway

and since she left it keeps the flies

from dancing on my eyelashes.

 

‘When the hurly-burly’s done…’

 

Elisabeth calls me, ‘I’m bored

of being a stuck-up bitch!’

I cough. From the swing in my garden

the clouds over the allotment

look like three witches fighting

over who gets to sleep with the sun.

I kick the phone into the pond.

Tell the cat on the fence to kill something. 

 

Evolution

 

Elisabeth is long gone, she doesn’t call

any more. I wonder if she still brushes

her teeth after sex. Once, we tried to alleviate

her boredom by getting freaky in a tree

but I kept dropping the bananas.

 

Giddy up

 

Elisabeth is on my mind each time

I feel boredom on my shoulders

like giving a fat child a piggy-back.

I write her name in ketchup on

the fridge, then lick it off.

Doctor’s appointment Tuesday.

 

Lady Dangerous

 

Elisabeth called! ‘Did I leave my diary

under your bed?’ I stuttered apologies

like a dog choking on a plastic bag;

the pages I didn’t burn I taped to my

mirror, all that melancholy bitterness

and hatred for men, especially male poets.

I wonder if she has ever chipped away

the Hughes from the Plath stone…

 

Last Orders

 

Elisabeth stood in the doorway

dripping with rain – I was so bored

I invited her in. We ate chicken.

We danced the funky chicken with

bellies full of chicken. We both kinda

missed the way we frighten each other.

 

Almost There

 

Elisabeth turns to me after the sweat

has dried and our pillows have tangled,

‘What happened to that nasty dream catcher?’

I pinch her cute little nose, pull a funny face,

keep her distracted. When she’s in the bathroom

I dismantle the shrine in my wardrobe.

 

Nightmares

 

Elisabeth doesn’t get bored any more.

I don’t get bored any more; we don’t

get bored together – it sounds like

laughter before it reaches high pitch,

a gasp, a wheeze, a phlegmy gargle…

At night her bra moves across the floor,

whimpers to go out for a wee.

 

Pretending to be Happy

 

Elisabeth says I’m so crazy she’ll never

get bored of me; I am constantly creating

weird situations. She wants to have crazy

babies with me. When she pops to the shop

for cider and crackers, I fall to my knees

and pray to the light-bulb. Sometimes

craziness is a choice, then it takes over

and changes colour, constantly, like a British

summer sky or a pair of white boxer shorts.

Today I am grey with exhaustion.

 

Doomed

 

The tablets worked. And the cannabis

is well out of my system – I can’t tell her

I’m better now, she’d get bored of me.

 

If she catches me watching a documentary

on rural architecture, I leap into the air

and declare war on the curtains.

 

If she catches me reading a book

on the industrial revolution, I jump up

screaming, ‘Grapefruit promises, it’s dirty

time! Quick, grab the spade!’

 

Beyond Good and Evil

 

It gets easier, you just let go. Let go,

listen to the singing colours. Make her happy.

Loneliness is worse, no one to grin and make me soup.

It’s quite comfortable, this kaleidoscope…

 

I smile, lick my moustache and close my eyes

like Nietzsche playing the piano with sticky fingers.


* Bobby Parker lives in Kidderminster (England) has poems published in Agenda, Obsessed With Pipework, Fire, Iota, Rain Dog, Cauldron, The Coffee House, Curlew, Krax, Weyfarers, Purple Patch and Urban District Writers. He also now publishes the Last Chance Before Bath-time series of chapbooks.

Parting

I made chilli, in a pot two arms wide
with sweet peppers, tomatoes red as a beating heart,
glorious curls of onion.

There were brothers, father, boyfriend of course
to carry the wardrobe we picked
when she was just handle-tall,
the boxes of belongings gathered over years
she didn’t need me to do that

so I made chilli.
They came home later
ate it all in big hungry mouthfuls.

More things to move tomorrow

perhaps I’ll bake a cake.


* Jan Harris writes poetry, short stories and flash fiction.  She has recently had work published on Flashquake and Nth Position. 

Blindsight
 
A blind man walks an obstacle course
without bumping into a thing
 
they call it blindsight
when the brain interprets
what the eye doesn’t know it sees
 
like telescopes picking up light specks from space
or computers processing data for years
unattended except by spiders
 
who if they could read would know that at 11:47 am
a new planet was discovered
moving away from Earth at great speed
 
covered in things that look like cities


* Vanessa Gebbie is author of Words from a Glass Bubble and contributing editor to Short Circuit, a Guide to the Art of the Short Story (both Salt Publishing). www.vanessagebbie.com 

Tourist Season

we’d sit by the lake and he’d tell me stories
of the places he’d been, with convoluted names like
“Nebraska” and “Mississippi”
the difference in the way one pronounces “Kansas”
and “Arkansas.” The people in his stories
were as exotic as the places they lived—men
who cut sheet metal into animal silhouettes
bent spades into birdhouses and
turned old train cars into hotels.
I wanted to badly to be with him in Colorado
to stand in the exact spot where four state lines met
to take a small rubber raft over rocks and dangerous rapids
and survive it all. He kept saying, Next time, next time, I promise.
Next time.”

I waited by the lake for him to come and get me
waited with my suitcase packed, ready to leave
visions of Indianapolis burning holes in my brain
but he never came back to get me, never took me away.


* Holly Day is a travel writing instructor living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband and two children. Her most recent nonfiction books are Music Theory for Dummies, Music Composition for Dummies and Walking Twin Cities.

The Mother*

The woman who gave birth to me said
Stop playing around, you’re worse than the cat

So she took a bat and hit me
Over the head and kicked me
With her legs and fists
And threw a knife in the air

But only to warn me
Never to behave that way again

Days passed and years as well
Small wounds do still ache and swell
So she took the world and slipped me
Some pills, matches and lit me.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Gay Piano

My little thumb numb crawling up your bum
I want you to make me pop pop popular

Manoeuvre my tongue through your lung
Like an anchor not down to your knees
But nearer to your peen
The stirring sound of delicate pubes testickled

Where I would not close an eye
Not sleep a wink but play you
Like the gay piano you are
Pinky pink all numb crawling up yours


* Bio(degradable):
A Child was born the day her mother left their family home in anger, threatening to move back to grandma’s house, leaving her and her father standing on the porch. Staring fearfully, she turned to her daddy and asked: “Do you know how to cook?”

* The Mother was first published in Poetry Showcase online.

A bit of topical comment here by regular IS&T contributor Jonathan Pinnock – most people in the UK who watched last week's Question Time of BBC TV will recognise who this poem is about...

Oxygen

Give him the oxygen of publicity:
watch him hyperventilate.
Give him more than he can breathe:
watch his fat face grow.
See his body gorge and bloat,
then watch as he explodes.

All it takes
is a little prick.

Zombie Vision
 
A tv is simply, for those who doubt
paralysis in a little black box
a magic frame that teases and unlocks
the world in all its sonambulant charms
electronic pulse that baits and cajoles
and holds you fast in malevolent arms.

Insistant pull of of those ebony holes
unaware of sinister gravity
eyes filled up with sin and depravity
sucking the mind through the tip of a straw
filling the brain up with static and snow
with no escape from the grip of its draw.

Our saviors to battle, sinners who know
depths of addiction, the fight to get clean
from rot and the pablum that fills the screen.
Big Brother watches, marks checks on a page,
the counting of souls for final descent,
the vanquished are lost in the disengage.

And those who are fooled know not what is meant
by the hand that reaches and cries its shame
imprisoned inside this infernal flame
that inhibits all sense of the world outside
and punishes those who would dare break out;
a zombie was born, once the body died.


* Rose Morales is a poet and writer from Miami, Florida. You can see more of her work at www.Myspace.com/kinderkitty

In Unison

I am trying to imagine us – you and me, in unison.

We fit together like two puzzle pieces, your jutting edge slides perfectly into my negative space. But I fear the remaining bits will never interlock. Our pictures are too different. (Me, a random weed in your urban landscape. You, the iPhone in my otherwise bucolic bliss.)

Even my fertile imagination cannot quite envision a realistic circumstance that would lead us to the possibility of shared environments. That spot where our pictures could mingle, where divergent histories don’t clash and the clutter of our respective baggage slips beyond relevancy.

And if, by some miracle, we found ourselves alone and unfettered, I’m still unsure you would hear the songs in my breath. Or after I’d leaned into your chest and let your fingers roam my geographies, that we would follow through and take or be taken.  Not when there is so much to lose. And no certainty of what might be gained.

Yet, I keep imagining us. You and me, in unison.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Proxy

Kiss her,
and when you do
will your eyes close as your tongue presses past those lips,
and though it is impossible,
will you taste me?


* Rebecca Gaffron is a sometimes writer, sometimes procrastinator and hopes she will be forgiven for both. She can be found at www.rebeccawriting.wordpress.com

It was a strange plaster on his finger
 
It was a strange plaster on his finger. A tangle of rough, dangling white threads, snagged into play by blunt scissors. The pink of the strip, false and fleshy toned but ever so different to flesh. Curling now. Giving over into white corners, grey with fluff.
 
“I had an accident with the glass”.
 
He was seated before her. Waiting for her. He had been waiting for her for days. And finally that night the glass in him had broken. The glass in his hand had become him. Charging it to the floor he dashed his hand into the pieces. But as nobody else was there to comfort him. He had tried to comfort himself. And the hot tears of lonely comfort were his.
 
Twelve hours later there she stood, like a delicate and beautiful little owl, looking at the dark purple mark on the duvet, where he had painted a trail for her eyes. The illustrator at work on his masterpiece of misery. He knew how to lead her to him. That she would touch his hand. Hold it. He would feel her press the cut. Feel him wincing. Desperate for her fingers to feel his. To find his pain. Read it in his face as she burrowed deep beneath the plaster. His first dressing. Limp. Tattered scarecrow. Would breathe neglect and hasten her to him. Treading through the glass she made a shocking face and his eyes filled wide into downtrodden black.
 
In those first few hours, there again was the music he liked. He told her that it was the choice of American college students but that he didn't mind that. He liked it anyway. This music lived the days and nights of his pain. Danced his pain. And the even skip of it trilled away in the background like a blind songbird oblivious to his weakening. Even the shattering glass had only silenced that trilling for a moment. The notes lay in the pieces of glass on the floor with the dawn and the daylight as he held his gaze fast to the door through which she was going to walk. Through which she did walk. Walk into the ten minutes after which he was going to tell her that he had smashed the glass on purpose.

 
* Helen Pletts is a regular IS&T contributor. She was born in the UK but now lives in Prague in the Czech Republic, where she teaches creative writing.