Category: Free verse

Double Entendre, by Jeff Burd


By Robert Garnham 
Double Entendre 

The doctor says you’ll have to
remove your pants.  You’re 
there in the exam room with 
him  and his intern.  She’s young.  
Blonde.  Her eager eyes sparkle 
as she hovers beside him.

“Do you mind if she’s in here for this?”
the doctor asks.  “She’s got
several requirements
I don’t want her to miss.”

The intern clutches a clipboard.
You imagine a neatly typed checklist. 
This next task looms at the bottom
next to a barren, untouched little box.

It’s okay with you.  The doctor probes 
and talks his way through several 
tender angles and steps aside.  The intern 
reaches for a glove, and you realize too late 
that the ‘here’ she’s going to be ‘in’ 
is much more than the exam room.

Jeff Burd works as a high school English teacher in the north suburbs of Chicago. Mr. Burd spends a lot of time writing and thinking about writing, and worrying about not writing and thinking about writing.

 

A cornucopia, by Finola Scott


By Robert Garnham 
A cornucopia

of crap and delight
my spam box overflows.
Pals tell me to clear, delete
those I’ve no interested in.

Concerned, they warn
my systems are endangered,
my back unguarded -
possibly metaphors?

Obedient I scan and identify.
Titan Power Spins -no, too late,
my Wonder Woman days are past.
Tooth Decay – really? People pay for that?
Harry’s Razor – he’s but a painful memory,

But maybe that Nuzzle mattress,
Tupi Tea Keep it Hard intrigues
(see Harry above)
and oh for a Contour Swan Pillow.
- I think of those nests at the loch.

Thanks to friends, I relish the surprise
of my winnings -today a Multi Drill King,
a Club Car Golf Cart, a cordless vacuum.
I can only be grateful for algorithms.
They know me so well.

Finola Scott confesses writing is an untreated compulsion. She’s grateful that her work appears in magazines and anthologies. She enjoys performing, finding the writing community welcoming. Her hobbies are chocolate cake, jumping waves, laughing with friends, tickling grand-girls. She can be      heard in a pub near you!
 

Pissed as a Newt, by Sarah James


By Robert Garnham 
Pissed as a Newt

The pub garden has pools
of spilt sky; the wooden tables
are rotting, the fixed benches
as immovable as rock.

Shadeless windows glare
in the midday sunlight,
making bar-proppers blink
and call for reed shutters.

The day’s fight starts early, 	
with a fast-flicking reptile
tail, riling a legless lizard
lazing in the lounge.

The last newt standing 
slams down his acorn tankard
and crawls behind the bar 
to pour a fresh absinthe.

A force not to be messed with,
he lets the gravity of upturned
stools pass him by 
and hiccups another optic.

The Newton’s Inn sign 
creaks with years of rust;
two more letters fall
face-down in the dust.



BIOGRAPHY: Sarah James is a poet, fiction writer and photographer. Her latest collection, Blood Sugar, Sex, Magic (Verve Poetry Press), is partially inspired by having type one diabetes since she was six. For her, good laughter is a natural medicine. Her website is at www.sarah-james.co.uk.
 

Lukewarm, by Terri Metcalfe


By Robert Garnham 
Lukewarm
 
I’ll forget you just like I forgot all the others.
It doesn’t matter that you’re hot
with the scent of youth, distant
 
as a phantom smell.
You’ll be lukewarm like lavender on an old hankie
once these stinking thieves of my attention
have faded to memories.
 
You’re no different.
Won’t slide past my respiratory passages any easier –
my insides stained rotten as a neglected toilet bowl.
 
Look, any minute now I’ll excite your molecules
back to life, so quit staring at me.
I offer the metallic tinged ting of the microwave,
or I can easily scald a new teabag.
 

To Blandly Go, by Neil Fulwood


By Robert Garnham 
TO BLANDLY GO …

In the great lost episode of Star Trek
the inexplicably renamed Captain Keir
pilots the Starship Empty Promise
on its five-missions mission to seek out
new economies, use clean energy
for all intergalactic travel (the tax-
payer still picking up the tab, natch),
expedite self-referral to Bones
after briefly Googling one’s symptoms,
make the streets of the Federation safe
(tough on Tribbles, tough on the causes
of Tribble), break down barriers
to becoming - well, not a Starship captain,
obvs, but at least a spaceport sanitation
officer - and to blandly go where every
second-rate opportunist has gone before.

Neil Fulwood lives and works in Nottingham. He has published three full collections with Shoestring Press and a volume of political satires with Smokestack Books.

 

Platform 7 – with Apologies to William Wordsworth, by Ben Macnair


By Robert Garnham 
Platform 7 - With Apologies to William Wordsworth

I wandered, lonely as a train spotter,
that floats on high over platforms and rolling stock,
when all at once I saw a crowd,
a host of train drivers,
beside the cafe, beneath the eaves,
and thought what a strange sight were these.

They spoke of the time it took to get from
London to Carlisle,
in their eyes a look of romance,
on their lips the hint of a smile.
Continuous as the track
that took them away,
and bought them back
They reminded me of Ivor The Engine,
and Jones the Steam,
as vivid in life as in any dream.

The platforms filled with a giddy dance,
of people with journeys, to jobs, families,
and maybe to some romance.
A train spotter could not join in the revelry,
for unlike everyone else, he could never be free.

The weak lemon drink, the out-of-focus photos of trains,
discussing the findings with strangers on the internet
and for some, that is enough.

 

Collage Machine, by Carla Scarano D’Antonio


By Robert Garnham 
Collage Machine
 
Before the sun is the sun
Inhale exhale
Shine bright
 
Stay play say
Name hard sharp
Cake lake
 
Today is your day
Make it happen
Join the human
 
Be wild be wild
Wonder the universe
The desolate melody of the spoons
 
The skylark voices
The kaleidoscope
Of the rock and roll

Carla Scarano D’Antonio obtained her MA in Creative Writing at Lancaster University and has published her creative work in magazines and reviews. She published two poetry collections, Negotiating Caponata(2020) and Workwear (2022). She was awarded a PhD on Margaret Atwood’s work at the University of Reading in April 2021.

http://www.carlascaranod.co.uk/

 

Starless, by Patrick Chapman


By Robert Garnham 
Starless
 
Set to amuse an empress of India, diamonds are
not even fruit – but flush with satsumas
 
alone, try getting someone to love you for
money. Made in the whirl of a stellar
 
ballet, tangelos yield to the cut of my Japanese
blade. The crush of my hand makes me wonder
 
how diamond and orange are brought to our shores –
and what old blood we spill into new Mason jars.

PATRICK CHAPMAN has published nine poetry collections since 1991. Other books include a novel, three volumes of stories, and a guide to the work of David Cronenberg. His next poetry collection, The Following Year, appears from Salmon in 2023. He lives in Dublin.

 

Double-speak, by Margaret Kiernan


By Robert Garnham 
Double-speak

-after Pablo Neruda, Walking- around.

 

I am sick of being the target, a patsy for all those money-making swindlers

 out on a spin. Those double truthers lisping tongues on the fame game.

The fiddlers on how to write their family history, their gutter minds dawdling.

I am sick of neon-lit evening scenes on a boulevard somewhere, the rich and restless gossipers
 sniffle, refuse to be the first to leave, polish off their double-speak.
I am sick of it all, the single supplement, the Friday take-out meal, unclaimed lotteries, and deals.

I’m the one to do tasks in full, only find them send back, again I am too swift.

I give the street beggar my last coins and laugh uproariously when a driver in a Mercedes arrives to fetch him and bring him home.

Today, I read that somewhere, far away, a scutching fire cleansed. End.

Margaret Kiernan

Margaret Kiernan s an Irish author, and a Best of The Net Nominee, for 2021 and 2022. She writes poetry and prose and is widely published. She writes with Over-the-edge, Galway. Her background is in social justice and Diversity.