Category: poetry

Moral Limbo, by Ben Macnair


By Robert Garnham 
There is a new game,
it’s named after a place,
one of those existential places
that people who don’t spend much time with people
know about it.
We shall call it Moral Limbo.
 
Shall we play?
It is not a competition,
We shall play it more for the kicks
than the kudos.
 
How low can you go?
Lower than a snake?
Lower than a raindrop?
How are your ethics?
Your sense of empathy?
Are you doing things for the common good,
or what you can get away with?
 
Nose in the trough,
riding the Gravy train.
Playing moral limbo.
How low can you go?
Letting everyone else
take the strain.
 
I will tell you all about I, Me and Mine.
How low can you go?
I can only go this low,
as I haven’t got a spine.

Ben Macnair is an award-winning poet and playwright from Staffordshire in the United Kingdom. Follow him on Twitter @benmacnair

 

An Ode to Monty Don and the Pet Shop Boys, by Robert Garnham


By Robert Garnham 
Disco in your greenhouse, Monty?
Flat cap rapping in the growbag scene.
I licked the outside of your shed window
While you were live on air,
The glass compressing my tongue into a
Flat pink slug.
It’s such a pane.
And it tasted to mallard shit.

I’ve always felt like a weed in the bedding
And I’m being hoed by Monty Don.
Why can’t we be proper mates?
I’d hang around him as he propagates.
And I’d wobble his bundle is to make
The morning dew
Rain down on his craggy Easter island statue face.
Is that a tear, Monty D?

I saw him out by the shed he was sprinkling his seed,
Tender frost-hid cuttings and I thought, indeed,
We always cut off more than we need.
Let me sniff your corduroy trousers, Monty D.

And here come his footsteps a-plodding and he’s
Got his garden shovel raised and you can tell
By the way his eyes glare as he holds it in the air
That he means to crack it down with venomous fury
On my head
And that’s when I shout,

Disco in your greenhouse, Monty?
I’ve got the karaoke set up and here’s
A parody of the Pet Shop Boy’s West End Girls
Except it’s about chocolate bars,
Do you like chocolate bars, Monty?
Do you like chocolate bars?

Sometimes you’re better off in bed
There’s a Twix in your hand
You wish it was a Flake.
You think you’re bad,
Totally incapable 
The nutrition guidelines and the ingredients table
In a Toblerone
Or a Kit Kat Chunky
Call the policeman
I hope he’s quite hunky
Running down
To the shops
To get a Dime Bar
Or a Yorkie.

In a sweet shop queue with a Cadbury’s Twirl.
Whole nut boys and Toblerone Girls.
In a sweet shop queue with a Cadbury’s Twirl.
Whole nut boys and Toblerone Girls.

Too many Mars Bars
Wispas and whole nuts
Kit Kats on posters
Too many doughnuts
Iced 
Glazed
Jam
Plain
Which one
Shall I claim?
If you got to pick out nuts
From a Fruit And Nut
What you got left
Is just a whole nut
It’s like a boiled egg,
Which do you choose,
The hard or soft option?

In a sweet shop queue with a Cadbury’s Twirl.
Whole nut boys and Toblerone Girls.
In a sweet shop queue with a Cadbury’s Twirl.
Whole nut boys and Toblerone Girls.

Monty Don’s face peers
From the compost heap
Like the moon rising over a
Mulched desert planet
And a sneer plays around his lips.
Come here, you bastard, he says,
And enough with the sweet talk.

Robert Garnham has been performing comedy poetry around the UK for over ten years at various fringes and festivals, and has had three poetry collections published by Burning Eye. He has made a few short TV adverts for a certain bank, and a joke from one of his shows was listed as one of the funniest of the Edinburgh Fringe. He was recently an answer on the TV show Pointless and, very briefly, on Britain’s Got Talent. His short stories have been published widely.

 

Sorry, by Emma Purshouse


By Robert Garnham 
Sorry 
 
this poem is pretty shit 
I must apologise for it. 
 
It has rhyme in its defence 
though its rhyme, is not immense 
 
It has no similes, nor metaphor. 
I’ve no idea what it’s for. 
 
It doesn’t seem to say a lot 
but one thing it hasn’t got 
 
(which is a plus I have to say) 
is a shard, or soul, or heart cliché... 
 
...and now it has. In that last verse. 
I fear I’ve gone and made things worse. 
 
At least I’ve got the deadline nailed. 
Yesterday? Oh fuck, I’ve failed. 
 
Yes, this poem is pretty shit 
and I apologise for it.

Emma Purshouse is a writer and performance poet from the English Black Country. Her poetry is published by ‘Offa’s Press’. Her debut novel ‘Dogged’ came out with ‘Ignite Books’ in 2021.

 

Packaged, by Beth McDonough


By Robert Garnham 
Packaged

Stiffed over a couple of continents,
you arrive, a strange-patterned flatness.
My six pairs of vacuum-packed socks.


A minimal method to post merino,
knitted-up bits of running Greek keys,
orange chevrons and lined tiny fish.

One dozen ribbed ankles all drill up one side.
Flip over for overlaps of bright toes.
Sealed-in little labels offer real heat.

But, I must burst your pristine rigidity,
pierce your unbubbled tight wonder,
turn you into soft, just workaday wear.

 

Homing hairbrushes, by Sarah Dale


By Robert Garnham 
Homing hairbrushes

In appreciation of Douglas Adams,
who first noticed where biros go.
 
Hairbrushes have now joined
biros and socks as sentient life forms
with an irresistible  homing urge –
watch them wriggling through
those ladders in time’s fabric,
catching their bristles
on filaments of space
off to their ideal planet
where every surface
is as smooth and bald
as a billiard ball.

After a misspent youth in libraries and museums, and some time in between, Sarah has finally achieved her dream job in Lichfield working for the Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum (and book shop). She writes for fun and enjoys swimming.

 

I Thought I Would Be Invisible, by Karol Nielsen


By Robert Garnham 
I Thought I Would Be Invisible

I was at the pharmacy and I buzzed the clerk to unlock the vitamins case. I asked him for the Centrum Silver. “But that’s for women over 50!” I said, “I’m old enough.” “You don’t look it,” he said. The extra padding in my cheeks from Covid weight probably makes me look younger. I still get hit on even with my extra pounds. A cool dude downtown kept repeating, “I’m trying to get your attention!” A man in my uptown neighborhood stopped me to ask for directions and then he said, “Can I ask you out for a drink?” My downstairs neighbor who is subletting from coop owners stopped me on the street and asked me to have coffee with him. The next day when I came back with coffee after six am he opened his door without a shirt on. He was so disappointed I already had coffee. I thought that I would be invisible by now. It would be nice sometimes.

Karol Nielsen is the author of two memoirs and two poetry chapbooks. Her full-length collection was a finalist for the Colorado Prize for Poetry. Her poem, “This New Manhattan,” was a finalist for the Ruth Stone Poetry Prize.

 

A Practical Woman, by bern butler


By Robert Garnham 
A Practical Woman

She used to sigh
throw eyes to heaven
push feet, irritated, into slippers
at first comedic bars of Yakety Sax

when nurses in scant uniform
came on, to buzz and bend
in frantic rhythm round
the suspect wheelchair patient,
pursue in tottering, mindless
swarm, the masquerading nimrod
in the fleeing doctor’s coat.

While we guffawed merrily,
in a fashion then acceptable
for dullards and buffoons
she made toast and tea for us
noted contents of the cupboards,
rinsed cups and spoons,
pushed home the bolt –

used Page 3
(if one snuck in)
to light the fire
in the morning.



From Galway, Ireland, bern butler’s work has featured in Force 10, Ropes Anthology, Galway Review, North-West Words, Abridged, The Ireland Chair of Poetry, Dodging Rain, The Madrigal, Gnashing Teeth, Cuirt New Writing Showcase. She holds an MA Writing from NUI Galway.
 

On taking a poet to bed!, by Rona Fitzgerald


By Robert Garnham 
On taking a poet to bed!

 A big decision, I take my time
savouring lines   images   moods
metaphors. Considering palette.
 
Soft greens, vivid blues
maybe some orange zest
 no red-hot lines or purple prose.
 
Yeats on tranquillity
 
Bee loud glade
leafy islands, flapping herons
drowsy water rats.
 
I’m partial to the waters and the wild, ready for dripping peace
 
Mind you, I like the muscularity of Robert Bly.
He’s nocturnal a walker like myself.
 
His lines about unknown dust waves breaking on shores
Energetic, maybe too much activity for night.
 
In the morning, I’m weary from pondering and wandering.
 
More drowsy water rat than graceful heron.
 
Ah, solitude, a book!
 
But I ‘m aware of the perils of eating alone
the benefits of sociability
 
I’ve read about long lasting Ikarians.
Morning rambles, herding sheep, coffee at three.
Aperitifs at 5.00.                                                                                                                          
 
So I ask Shamus Heaney to stop digging
to join me for an Irish fry-up.
 
Before you can say rashers there’s Jimmy Joyce
and Sam Beckett at the table.
 
Insisting, if you please they’ll both have eggs Freud!

 

Rona Fitzgerald ‘s poetry is published in UK, Scottish, Irish and US, 
in print and online. 
 
Recent publications include Dreich Number 8, Season 2, April 2021, Littoral Magazine 2021, The Brown Envelope Book, 2021, The Arbroath Anthology 2021, Marble Broadsheet September 21, Fixator Press September 21, Dreich Season 4 no 3 2022, A Fish Rots From the Head, Culture Matters 2022.
 

The Bonxies, by Tonnie Richmond


By Robert Garnham 
The Bonxies

They are the bad boys of the north,
nobody is safe when they’re around,
ready to mug you at a moment’s notice.

They’ll steal your lunch as soon as look at you,
don’t care a toss about your hungry kids
waiting at home to be fed. 

They’ll swoop down, stab you, stick the boot in,
grab your stash without a moments thought.
Happy that you’ve done all the work.

Thugs. Pirates. No moral conscience at all.
Off they’ll fly, your fish in their beak,
taking the spoils back to their young.


————————————————————————
Bonxie is the Scottish word for the Artic Skua
Tonnie Richmond has, since she retired, spent her time either doing archeology or writing poems. As the digging gets harder, she finds writing a slightly easier choice. She has had several poems published and is currently working on a collection of poems about Orkney.
 

English Spelling, by Sarah Lawson


By Robert Garnham 
ENGLISH SPELLING
 
Practically since the dawn of history
English spelling has been a mystery.
And everything you ever learn’ll
Not prepare you for the r in colonel.
Do not expect a tidy law
To explain the end of Arkansas.
Spelling is just a rough mnemonic
And not reliably always phonic.

Sarah Lawson lives in London, originally from Indiana, educated in the US and Scotland; has published poetry pamphlets and two collections; translates from French, Spanish, and Dutch; has also written one play, one novel, and two memoirs.