Karaoke Queen
Blue streaks in her hair
To match her top.
Face no longer dull but
sparkling with the joy of singing.
Kids queue up to
the lady with beautiful rippled brilliant white hair,
who repeats in her soft Geordie voice their choice of song
and with gravity takes them down along with their names
for the karaoke queen.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I don’t like coke
“Cups ready for coke”
“I don’t like coke”
The words judder out.
“It’s all we’ve got
Look everyone else is having some.”
The others sit compliant
edging the table, blanched
by the unhomely lights.
You eat and retire to your compact room
setting to work quietly smearing the walls
You say most eloquently
exactly what you think
of that drink. I silently agree working
slowly and deftly with gloves,
bucket, water and sponge.
* Sonia Jarema describes herself as an allotmenteer living on the edge of London and has recently performed her first public reading of her poetry.
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Thursday, April 30
Sonia Jarema is just a karaoke queen
by
Charles Christian
on Thu 30 Apr 2009 11:27 AM BST
Wednesday, April 29
Helen Pletts is riding the Prague Metro
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 29 Apr 2009 09:02 AM BST
Prague Metro
The single glove resting above the button-click-press peel-paint-scraped ticket machine, where the coins are rust-rubbed, roughly, beside the slot to make them easier to digest before the ticker-tick paper regurgitation. Heel-click-turns behind me, crowd proceed to the snake-mouth-slit-click ticket stamp, to be side-stepped, swiftly to the stairs, with the force-flow of frost tunnelled air push-pressed ahead. The suck-seal break of rubber slides back, before the off-tune duo resonate-departure-notes tirelessly trill. * 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. Her latest collection can be bought via the IS&T chapbook shop. You are welcome to visit www.stem-of-quietly-disarrayed-fertility.com Tuesday, April 28
New concrete poem from Chris Major
by
Charles Christian
on Tue 28 Apr 2009 08:53 AM BST
As the fallout from the police violence at the recent G20 conference in London continues, Chris Major sends in the following comment...
 Monday, April 27
Roberta Swetlow reacts to a 'modern classic' she recently read
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 27 Apr 2009 02:21 PM BST
Book Report
The words crumble into sand before I can cement their meaning. I’ll never see the finished product. Whether a post-modern mansion, a tower rising past the clouds or a penitentiary, it shall remain a puzzle I no longer want to solve. My mind is fractured from trying to sweep the grains together and assemble a stable structure without a pattern; I'm hungry with an appetite that can’t be sated with sour crumbs buried in debris. * Roberta Swetlow attempts to make sense of life from Regina, Saskatchewan, with assistance and frustration from her husband, cat, and adult offspring. Sunday, April 26
New collection by IS&T contributor
by
Charles Christian
on Sun 26 Apr 2009 11:07 AM BST
 Regular IS&T contributor Casey Quinn has a new collection of poetry out. If you click on the attachment (see below) there is a PDF document containing the full blurb for Snapshots of Life along with some samples of Casey's poetry – including i want to be just like John Wayne which was first published on IS&T.  1 Attachments
Free-range literary husbandry
by
Charles Christian
on Sun 26 Apr 2009 11:00 AM BST
Our thanks to the American poet Eileen Sullivan for forwarding this item on to us...
Eileen writes... This came across my desk from the editor of a literary journal here about a reading series she is doing called Free Range Reading. At the end of the announcement she gives this explanation: "Freerange is a method of literary husbandry where the authors are permitted to write, read, and roam freely instead of being contained in any manner. The principle is to allow the writers as much freedom as possible, to live out their instinctual behaviors in a reasonably natural way, regardless of whether or not they are eventually killed for meat. In practice, there are few regulations imposed on what can be called free range, and the term may be used misleadingly to imply that the writing product has been produced more humanely than it actually has been." Saturday, April 25
Jac's on the road again
by
Charles Christian
on Sat 25 Apr 2009 10:57 AM BST
Road trip through Utah
Snow sketches the mountains, shading the Wasatch into monochrome, grey clouds crest the summits. Driving through valleys stretched between ranges, earth turns from dun to red tufted with yellow. A falcon soars. Rivers of cars, trucks with gleaming chrome funnels, stream through the wide and barren land. Service station shop – elk heads above the freezer stare at candy bars Red rocks guard river-carved canyons. Trees reach up, dotted with pale green leaves. Looking through the waterfall to blue washed sky, a rainbow wafts through spray, into the orange water of the Emerald pool. A white cat crosses the tarmac in Hurricane its blue shadow long * Jac Cattaneo lives in Brighton and writes at the Fiction Workhouse. An artist by training, she is interested in the crossover between the visual and the verbal. She has read at Short Fuse, Sparks and Tales of the Decongested and was shortlisted for the Asham award this year. She is currently working on a novel. Thursday, April 23
Jim Murdoch's gasping for air
by
Charles Christian
on Thu 23 Apr 2009 03:00 PM BST
TRUTH'S LAST GASP
Breathing means nothing. Breathing means everything. Each of these statements is true. Both are always true. Not breathing means something but it can mean something else. Both of these statements may be true but not at the same time. Breathe. ( ) Eventually it will all become clear. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ SYNAESTHESIA I hurt in orange, yellow purple and red acupuncture feels like a rainbow and love is the brightest white I've ever seen. * Jim Murdoch can be found at his blog The Truth About Lies. Actually that’s a lie. He’s sitting in his flat in Glasgow right now. Or maybe not. http://jim-murdoch.blogspot.com Wednesday, April 22
Peter Weber is in an extreme place
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 22 Apr 2009 09:21 PM BST
Extreme Places
Sometimes when I'm stuck, I will crave a change in the weather, the more dramatic the better. High winds, torrential downpours, floods, tornadoes ... wait, take that back, no tornadoes or flood. More Sunshine, heat wave, humidity and so on. Or a change of scenery, either via the natural progression of seasons or physical transport elsewhere. Anything to help stave off autopilot and keep moving in some perceived direction. The thing about other places, though, you have to change your mind to suit your new surroundings. In some sunlit desert landscape you move to avoid the heat of day, your activities are governed by how long you last between glasses of water, and where do you find those glasses? In some cold, wet northern coastal terrain the air begins to erode you down. The moisture from the sky, more often than not, it seems. You see trees bent over from forces of wind or driven rain. Not a great time to take a walk in the park. Though, out of the black and blue there comes a crazed Wind Surfer to show us how to ride the weather, no sweat. Its too cold to sweat. Who's complaining? * "My name is Peter Weber. Biographical note: E flat. Half baked, fully fledged, out of the frying pan but still a bit raw." http://pilgebump.wordpress.com
New haiga by John Irvine
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 22 Apr 2009 01:08 PM BST
 * John Irvine is a regular IS&T contributor – and the editor of the new Anomalous Appetites anthology mentioned earlier this week. |
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