Category: Parody

To Professor John Henderson, by Maria Andrews


By Robert Garnham

To Professor John Henderson, about my/his belly.

John,

Would be great to cut a fine figure.
I do, says your belly,
Swaying on my two pins.
Uh huh? I’m listening, I say.
Yeah, I cut a fine figure of a Henderson belly
asking John for a hug.

You’ve got persistence going for ya,
I give you that. Yeah I have,
my/your belly drawls,
taking a long drag of a cigarette,
I’ll ask him till the day I die. I placate curve
with smoothing palm.

Are you thinking about John now?
John Henderson belly closes her eyes.
Yeah. All his vocatives rolled
into one tumbling waterfall of cadences.
What about his ablatives, his hyperbatons?
All cases. All cadences. One long

Belly schmoosh. His semantic analytics?
His patterns? His parsings? His epics?
His topsy turvey word order?
My belly is opening her lips, lost
for words. His exploratory thematics?
She’s gone, lost in loin-louche.

Maria Andrews is a short film maker and photographer who occasionally gets published in poetry mags (Polka Dot Ceiling, Still Life) and was once published in a collection (Bloody Amazing). Her current alias is a puppet called Leopold, who is a London correspondent for Helmiflix.com She likes belly laughs. manifestafilm@weebly.com.

 

Reincarnation Revenge, by Catherine Doherty Nicholls


By Robert Garnham

Reincarnation Revenge

If I come back
I’ll be a flea,
A sexy flea
who’s bitchy

Throw wild flea orgies
in your bed,
and bite you
’til you’re itchy

Winner of no Poetry Ireland Competition, or any other competition, no published debut collection, nothing printed anywhere else yet except here. 
Her poems have been nominated for nothing so she’s nominating this poem to go on this page – a great place to start nominating. 

She is the curator of nothing. Her anthology doesn’t exist, yet she keeps going.

 

Vege, by Julian Matthews


By Robert Garnham

VEGE

Hey, remember me?
I am the leafy vegetable at the side of your plate that never got eaten
The one your mother insists is good for you
I lay there getting cold and soggy until the meal was over
You waited — until she wasn’t looking
Then receded on tippy toes and tossed me in the step-bin

These days, you speak of being organic and eating brown bread,
brown rice, brownies made of all-natural black beans,
fairtrade cocoa and grass-fed butter
You carry a metal straw and forsake plastic
You are an environmental warrior
A climate change defender

You do yoga and meditate and stand on your head
You attend retreats on mindfulness — to empty your mind
You go to the gym to stretch your body to its limit and call it de-stress time
You eschew coffee and prefer green tea
You drink cold-pressed juices made of avocado, cucumber, carrots, celery and pumpkin
You speak of their antioxidant properties and gloat about the anti-aging glow of your skin

I was the leafy green you threw in the bin
I still remember mum insisting that wasting me was such a sin
You are vegan now —

I win

Julian Matthews is a former journalist and trainer finding new ways to express himself during the pandemic through poetry and fiction. The Malaysian-based poet is published in “Unmasked: Reflections on Virus-time” (Heliconia Press), an anthology curated by author Shamini Flint, Poetry and Covid (poetryandcovid.com), a project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, the WordsFest Zine (Insomniac Press), Borderless Journal, Nine Cloud Journal, Second Chance Lit, Poor Yorick Literary Journal and Wingless Dreamer

 

Two-day soap sud death dance, by Gary W. Hartley


By Robert Garnham

Two-day soap sud death dance

Cars washed. A million cars washed
Baby Shark sung without enthusiasm
In a million supermarket aisles
To juvenile audiences
Already considering it passé
We are all passé
A nation of proud plastic polluters
Big-mouthed bottom feeders
Believing we’re on top, what we’re used to
What we’re told is true
By Jeff Stelling on Soccer Saturday
And other pundits
We should do something
About that overhanging tree
We should pull up grass
And lay down the latest AstroTurf
We cannot enjoy what we have left
In fact, we flatly refuse
When it all falls
We will treat it as the longest weekend ever
WAHEY
Buy in crates upon crates of Corona beer
In deepest irony
Until we run out of that
And all the other stuff
Then what? Put baseball bats through flatscreens
Blame it on them next door
Congregate in imaginary corridors as if in queues
We’re fine, they’re fine, we all say it
And to be fair
To be honest
To never be anything other than honest
That will just have to do.

 

Golfing Heaven, by Paul Francis


By Robert Garnham

GOLFING HEAVEN

I hope there’s golfing heaven.
I’m sure there’s golfing hell.
I visit it most weekends –
I know it really well.

The devils haunt me from the tee
They mock my grip, my stance.
“Should you be doing this at your age?”
They think I’ve got no chance.

I shan’t give in. Some practice swings,
I‘m made of sterner stuff.
They smile and clap sarcastically
As I blaze into the rough.

The bunkers seem to chuckle
They’re driving me insane;
The way my chip shot hits the edge
Then bounces back again.

There’s the giggling of banshees
Who devour my inner soul
As once again a two-foot putt
Goes bobbling round the hole.

So as my scores get higher
Par threes take six or seven
I like to dream of changing course –
A move to golfing heaven.

Where drives zip down the fairway
Chips always reach the green
And wedge shots from the bunker
Are the finest ever seen.

It’s hard to pick a highlight
When everything is fine;
Was it the eagle at the fifth?
The albatross on nine?

The clubhouse beer is nectar
All members are my friends.
The round is only eighteen holes
But the feeling never ends.

For there’ll be no more sorrow
In the solace I have found.
They’ll smile and say “Tomorrow
We’ll play another round.”

Paul Francis lives in Shropshire, and is active in the West Midlands poetry scene. He has won three national competitions, and in 2020 came second in the Beyond the Storm poetry competition (2,381 entries). His most recent collection is Rescue from the Dark (Fair Acre Press, 2021).

 

King Roger, by Melanie Branton


By Robert Garnham

King Roger

Roger de Mortimer, 4th Earl of March and 6th Earl of Ulster, was heir presumptive to Richard II between 1382 and 1398

King Roger! We nearly had a King Roger!
So, did we dodge a
bullet or should we, in fact, bemoan
the fact that Roger never, ever
made it to the throne?

When Richard needed spies,
then he applied for the position.
So, Roger went to Ireland
on a very secret mission.

He skulked about and got himself
in thrilling scrapes galore.
Was he James Bond?
No, he was Roger, more.

To blend in with the Irishmen,
he found it a no-brainer
to paint his face a lurid blue
and wear the brat and léine.

So maybe he went AWOL,
but I can still relate if
he got a little overkeen
and went a little native.

Some said he took it way too far,
some said, “He’s off his trolley!”
but I say, like the pirate flag,
Roger was jolly.

Roger’s story reached its end
in 1398.
He walked into a brigands’ trap:
they fell upon him, straight.

They knocked him off his horse
and then they pummelled him about.
Alas, that was the end of him:

Roger was over and out.

Melanie Branton is a spoken word artist from the Bristol area. Her published collections are Can You See Where I’m Coming From? (Burning Eye, 2018) and My Cloth-Eared Heart (Oversteps, 2017). She is inordinately fond of hats, historical linguistics, and porridge.

 

The Neighbour’s Fish, by Lynn White


By Robert Garnham

The Neighbours Fish

The neighbours had asked her to feed their fish.
They were going on a short holiday.
It sounded straightforward,
should have been straightforward.
“But I overfed it,” she said,
“and it burst open,
exploded
all over the place.”

She looked glum.

“But that wasn’t the worst of it.
Next thing is
the dog’s eaten it.
And that wasn’t the end of it,
next thing is
he started to be sick,
just puked it up all over their carpet.”

She looked glum.

“The carpet’s wrecked,” she said.

First published in Scrittura, Summer 2020

Bio: Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Rhysling Award. https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/

 

Bubble Wrap Blues, by Pete Mullineaux


By Robert Garnham

Bubble Wrap Blues

Stack away the coffin boards – pack away the nails,
moor that boat for Avalon, lower down the sails.
Place me on a bed of foam before I take a nap,
swaddle me in comfort,
bury me in bubble wrap.

Take down the big marquee – pay off the cabaret,
cancel the choirboys and girls – come back another day.
Hold back the holy waters, the tree bark with no sap,
let a band of homeless sing –
‘bury me in bubble wrap.’

No bankers to hold the handles, no regulator prayers,
no corporate greed to drive the hearse, no soft landing soothsayers.
No message from our leader, no sentimental crap,
give me a dry-eyed crocodile,
bury me in bubble wrap.

If I rage into the night, can’t take it on the chin,
find it all too much to bear and go without a grin –
let the feelings run and run like a leaking tap,
lend me a suit of armour,
bury me in bubble wrap.

Farewell world it’s been a gas, a never ending joke,
banana skins to beat the band, fun-loving goats to poke.
Laugh me forward to my spot, place me in the trap,
bundle me in comedy,
bury me in bubble wrap.

Life is just a holiday, brief relief from nothing,
huff and puff and other stuff, we get on by bluffing.
But even an off-performance deserves a slow handclap,
minimise the damage,
bury me in bubble wrap.

What’s done is done, no mileage in regret
if it wasn’t exactly all my way, too late to get upset.
The exit doors are beckoning, time to mind the gap,
don’t spare the layers,
bury me in bubble wrap.

Pete Mullineaux has published four poetry collections, most recently How to Bake a Planet (Salmon 2016) – “A gem” – Poetry Ireland Review. A new collection is forthcoming in 2022. He’s been interviewed on RTE’s Arena and also had three plays produced by RTE radio. His work has been described by reviewers as ‘profoundly sensitive’ ‘gorgeous and resonant’ & ‘grimly funny’, and comparisons made with Roger McGough, John Clare, John Cooper-Clarke and Pete Seeger. His debut novel Jules & Rom: Sci-fi meets Shakespeare (Troubador UK) was published in April 2021, (‘Certainly worth a gander’ – Irish Times). following an ebook version in 2020. Website: petemullineauxwriter.com

 

Instructions for reading a gas meter, by Ama Bolton


By Robert Garnham

Instructions for reading a gas meter

1. You’ll need a pen and paper and a torch.
2. Open the door of the cupboard in the corner.
3. Move the vacuum cleaner and the two pairs of boots.
4. Get a brush and remove the cobwebs from the meter.
5. Lie down on the floor so that your face is level with the meter.
6. If there isn’t enough room for you, move the sofa.
7. If you can’t move the sofa, get help.
8. No, not me. You know I’ve got a bad back.
9. Press the button.
10. No, the other button.
11. If you can’t read the numbers, get a magnifying glass.
12. Press the button again.
13. If you still can’t read the numbers, get your camera.
14. Turn off the flash, if you can remember how.
15. If you can’t remember, find the instruction manual.
16. No, I don’t know where it is.
17. Try the top drawer in the kitchen.
18. Under the mousetrap?
19. Press the button again and take a photo.
20. Quick, before the number disappears.
21. Maybe use the zoom?
22. Try again.
23. That’s better.
24. Upload the photo and write down the numbers.
25. Go to the website.
26. The password’s in the blue book under G for Gas.
27. Enter the reading.
28. Yes, I know it’s a smart meter, but the new supplier can’t read it.
29. No, we’re not changing back.
30. Cheer up; you only have to do this once a month.

 

Sleeping Legion, by Jennie E. Owen


By Robert Garnham

Sleeping Legion

They’re all here tonight you know,
every face you’ve ever seen
flickering behind your eyes like cherries
spinning like bells
they put on a show
as you push off your blankets
then swaddle them again.

Your old maths teacher chases you
to the edge of the cliff,
a book of equations in one hand
a garden gnome in the other. Whilst
a midwife leads you
down endless
hospital corridors

where at the end
you’ll find nothing but the check-out boy,
the one with whom you locked eyes
over a cucumber
and a packet of hob nobs,
last Tuesday.

Jennie E. Owen’s writing has won competitions and has been widely published online, in literary journals and anthologies. She teaches Creative Writing for The Open University and lives in Lancashire with her husband, three children, and cat.