Category: Prose poem

Me and Joanna Lumley, by Jennifer A. McGowan


By Robert Garnham 
Me and Joanna Lumley
 
I caught Joanna Lumley reaching
through the open window of a bakery for bagels
crisp and hot and frankly
 
much tastier than any dreams
that had consumed us
in our adult lives (as I said to Joanna)
 
and she agreed, then added, “Except for the Gurkhas.
I’m proud of that,” and I agreed,
then at the corner we went our separate ways
 
to stare at the sky, to dream of mountains,
of hot butter running everywhere, equally.

Jennifer spends as much time as she can in the 15th century, but comes back for hot showers and bagels.

 

Carrot, by Jenny Robb


By Robert Garnham

Jenny Robb is published in online and print magazines, and anthologies. Magazine publications include: Ink, Sweat and Tears; Dream Catcher; Prole; Orbis and The Lighthouse Journal. Anthologies include: Black Lives Matter; Bloody Amazing; An Insubstantial Universe and Despite Knowing. Her debut collection, The Doll’s Hospital, (Yaffle Press), is out soon.

 

My Son Teaches me How to Dress, by Jinny Fisher


By Robert Garnham 
My Son Teaches Me How to Dress

Last week, I staged a major wardrobe de-clutter, 
expelling my dated clothes: velvet Biba frocks 
flopped, sulking, in a heap; a purple boa
shed a turkeyful of feathers on the stairs. 
Platform over-thighs, Mary Janes, and Uggs 
trotted off to The Very Vintage Shop.

Last year, you bought sixty T-shirts at one go
from spreadshirt.com— all with geeky formulae 
and puns. In astro-language I can’t speak
or type, they jokify your starry mind
and meme the passion of your working life:
a massive telescope, its sweeping audit of the skies.

I can play that game: an online jaunt to Zazzle 
yields rainbow fabrics, wordy slogans in fancy fonts. 
I stuff my basket—fifteen hoodies and twenty tees 
should be enough to see me out: Grammar Ninja, 
The Oxford Comma, and Let’s Eat, Grandma.

Jinny Fisher lives in Glastonbury. She is published in numerous print and online magazines and has been successful in national and international competitions — including first runner-up in Prole Laureate 2020. In 2019, V. Press published her pamphlet The Escapologist. She is Principal Pusher of The Poetry Pramhttps://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=The%20Poetry%20Pram

Twitter: @MsJinnifer

 

Winter Wasp, by Nikki Robson


By Robert Garnham 
Winter Wasp
At first I thought it next door’s saw 
starting on their stack of tree trunks. 
But it was a queen

buzzing over open books
as if searching for an exact word 
on which to light

– somnolent sluggish drowsy –

anchor her middle legs over her wings 
and not turn a page until spring.
She would pare the words

and shred their letters, roll around
her regal mouth re-write them as a nest. 
Her temporary rest on Margaret Atwood

stung me to respond. Clive James, I thought, 
is not long gone and Seamus would not 
conscience such a deed,

so in the end the Oxford’s weight of words 
in common usage circa 1983
was brought to bear, pupating her into a

yellow (colour between green and orange in the spectrum) sticky (tending or intended to stick to what is touched)
splat (crush or squash).

Nikki is originally from Northern Ireland and currently lives in Scotland. She holds an MLitt in Writing Practice and Study from Dundee University and has had poems in journals and anthologies in print and online including Poetry Scotland, Acumen, Northwords Now, Under the Radar, the Lake and Scotia Extremis.

 

Facebook Update, by Kevin Higgins


By Robert Garnham

Facebook Update
after Zbigniew Herbert


I am humbled (and heartfelt) to announce that, in perhaps the greatest honour ever given a poet of my little variety, I’ve been invited to read my poem ‘What Caligula Did Next’ at the Emperor’s leaving do in the Horti Lamiani Imperial Gardens, Rome next Wednesday. If only my late Mother wasn’t ten years incinerated, she’d be so proud. Surely now, National Academy of Burnished Versemakers, here I come! It’d be a red embarrassment for them if I died still outside their walls, yowling like a stray tabby with a toothache, without the official people claiming ownership of me. I can see the scene: insignificant old me being borne through those state-moneyed gold-plated gates on a small throne by six naked minor male poets of advanced years. No one anyone’s heard of. Though they’ve all heard of each other.

KEVIN HIGGINS is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events in Galway. He has published five previous full collections of poems: The Boy With No Face (2005), Time Gentlemen, Please (2008), Frightening New Furniture (2010), The Ghost In The Lobby (2014), & Sex and Death at Merlin Park Hospital (2019). His poems also feature in Identity Parade – New Britishand Irish Poets (Bloodaxe, 2010) and in The Hundred Years’ War: modern war poems (Ed Neil Astley, Bloodaxe May 2014). Kevin was satirist-in-residence with the alternative literature website The Bogman’s Cannon 2015-16. 2016 – The Selected Satires of Kevin Higgins was published by NuaScéalta in 2016. The Minister For Poetry Has Decreed was published by Culture Matters (UK) also in 2016. Song of Songs 2:0 – New & Selected Poems was published by Salmon in Spring 2017. Kevin is a highly experienced workshop facilitator and several of his students have gone on to achieve publication success. He has facilitated poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre and taught Creative Writing at Galway Technical Institute for the past fifteen years. Kevin is the Creative Writing Director for the NUI Galway International Summer School and also teaches on the NUIG BA Creative Writing Connect programme. His poems have been praised by, among others, Tony Blair’s biographer John Rentoul, Observer columnist Nick Cohen, writer and activist Eamonn McCann, historian Ruth Dudley Edwards, and Sunday Independent columnist Gene Kerrigan; and have been quoted in The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, The Times (London), Hot Press magazine, Phoenix magazine, The Daily Mirror and on The Vincent Browne Show, and read aloud by Ken Loach at a political meeting in London. He has published topical political poems in publications as various as The New European, The Morning Star, Dissent Magazine (USA), Village Magazine (Ireland), & Harry’s Place. The Stinging Fly magazine has described Kevin as “likely the most widely read living poet in Ireland”. One of Kevin’s poems features in A Galway Epiphany, the final instalment of Ken Bruen’s Jack Taylor series of novels which is just published. His work has been broadcast on RTE Radio, Lyric FM, and BBC Radio 4. His book The Colour Yellow & The Number 19: Negative Thoughts That Helped One Man Mostly Retain His Sanity During 2020 was published in late by Nuascealta. His extended essay Thrills & Difficulties: Being A Marxist Poet In 21st Century Ireland was published in pamphlet form by Beir Bua Press this year. In December 2021 Kevin was both expelled from the British Labour Party, of which he was an overseas member, for publishing his poem ‘Tribute Acts’ in Socialist Appeal magazine and, on the very same day, awarded ‘Poet of The Year’ at the Labour Heroes Awards event at Conway Hall.  Ecstatic, Kevin’s sixth full poetry collection, will be published by Salmon in March.  

 

Tripping with TJ, by Steve Bailey


By Robert Garnham 
Tripping with TJ

by Steve Bailey

 
Tom Jefferson, while working on something profound,
Was surprised and distracted, buy a soft knocking sound.
"Do come in," he called out, "My daughter so sweet."
And tell me, dear Patsy, do you have my treat?"
 
"A traveler," she said," from far New Spain,
Journeyed through the cold and rain
He brought you these buttons and said with a grin
You should chew on them all for the mescaline."
 
He took all the buttons; she gave him a kiss.
For the next several hours, his mind she would miss.
"A truly new world now I shall see,
So, thank you, now leave my darling Patsy."
 
Strange images jumped in and out of his mind.
Tom found himself flying through centuries of time.
No longer was he in old Monticello
Not frightened was Tom. Instead, he felt mellow.
 
He was still in his country, but it was all rather odd.
The twenty-first century made him rather slack-jawed.
In each of the houses, colors made a box glow.
And from this same box, endless chatter did flow.
 
Close to one house, Tom moved in for a look,
Then a dog began barking, thinking he was a crook.
When its owner arrived, he called it Big Burr
It was snarling and snapping, this ugly old cur."
 
"This is my guard dog, and friendly he's not.
If he had a gun, he would so take his shot.
Come now, Big Burr, you're annoying us so.
Harassing a POTUS! To the doghouse, you go!"
 
Delighted, TJ responded with glee
"The doghouse is where A. Burr should be."
"A leader bad Burr would never make."
"A. Burr is a scoundrel. A. Burr is a fake."
 
"Whatever you're on, I certainly am not.
Can I offer instead a few bowls of pot?
The election returns are now on TV.
Come in the house and watch them with me."
 
On a couch, they then sat and toked on a pipe.
Watched talking heads talk and heard all their hype.
"So, this box called TV decides how it goes?"
And the candidates come from one of its shows?"
 
"The box, it must like you. It's as simple as that.
Did you notice we talk like The Cat in The Hat?"
"A cat in a hat? This is something new.
I tell you I'm learning, one thing or two."
 
"I want to say more, but now I forgot.
I say it's delightful, this stuff you call pot."
"This has truly been fun; I want you to know.
But the magic is leaving, and so, I must go."
 
"The questions I have for you come in a bunch.
Can you come back tomorrow and join me for lunch?"
But the room it was empty, it was easy to see,
No answer was coming. He was gone, POTUS3.
 
Back in his room, in dear Monticello,
            For a time, TJ just sat, a reflective old fellow.
            "How was your trip?" young Patsy inquired.
            "You were gone a long time. Are you newly inspired?"
 
"I thought that my buttons would take me to God
To see if he's real or show faith is a fraud.
But that did not happen. No secrets unlocked.
Unless what we call God is this strange-looking box."
 
"I'm done with the buttons, though I liked them a lot,
I think I'll be better, just toking on pot.
The fate of the nation, it's easy to see,
Rests not with the people, but with a box called TV."

Steve Bailey is a freelance writer living in Richmond, Virginia. There he writes fiction, creative nonfiction, long and short stories. He has two novel-long manuscripts in search of a publisher. His writings are at vamarcopolo.com.
 

Recycling is good for the planet, by Finola Scott


By Robert Garnham

Recycling is good for the planet

Seeing my ironed socks, polished glass
friends declare he’s servicable, a keeper.

But they don’t know, can’t imagine
his moonlit yearnings, his penchant

for rubber – not lingerie but stationary.
The flip side of those origami scribbles

fluttering from pockets, the notes stuck
on the fridge urging me to eat his plums.

Let’s not speak of housework. l say
live and let live, but dusting in a wet suit?

Vacuuming in lederhosen? Buffing
me in the buff? Even Alexa has given up.

I tried – took him to my book group
to the Ukulele girls, to Capoeira. No takers.

So next week he’s going on Freecycle –
Banker, slightly worn, one careless owner.

William Carlos Willams was not harmed 
in the writing of this poem. 
 

Bohemian Raspberry (Liqueur), by Vanessa O’Rielly


By Robert Garnham

Bohemian Raspberry (Liqueur)

I drank a little Amaretto with my Nan
Crème de Menthe, Crème de Menthe will you drink a cold Tango?
Thunderbolts, White Lightning, very, very frightening me
Galliano, Galliano
Galliano, Galliano
Galliano, Aperol, Limoncello

 

Corpus Christi College has no pastry chef, by Natalie Shaw


By Robert Garnham

CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE HAS NO PASTRY CHEF

Also the gold pelican on the JCR wall has gone,
as I believe has the JCR itself.
This despite the fact that Jack Turvey
stapled himself to the pelican and the wall
to prevent its sorry loss.

I digress: without a pastry chef and with the sorry loss
of the pelican, poor Corpuscles
have sorrier options. Adam Spicer,
senior Corpus sous chef and Masterchef:
The Professionals quarter-finalist

has been blamed for the crisis.
With no pastry chef,
a dearth of formal halls; the passing
of the loving cup in a silver horn
must pause. Worse, students are forced

to breakfast at Catz or possibly Fitzbillies:
the sole college founded by townspeople
in 1352, site of the oldest living court in Cambridge,
home of the hideous Chronophage and Parker Library,
now with no cake to crumb in fledgling mouths.

 

Is Poetry Pointless?, by Alanna Hammel


By Robert Garnham

Is Poetry Pointless?

I don’t write poetry
I don’t think I ever will
It’s a rotary system
It’s one aim to kill.

I admit I did once overdose
On Lowell’s polyphonic prose.
You don’t see that lot nowadays,
With your Robert Frost
Or your Terrance Hayes.

They have all moved on to screenplays
If they do write it is melodic phrase.
What does pointless even mean?
Without purpose or meaning?

Purpose in poetry is fairly drastic
Some just want a book to read quick.
I doubt most poetry would please the reader
Unless you care for iambic pentameter.
I can see the poet waving its beater
Easy to confuse with the grim reaper.

Poets are killers
I’ll say it again
From your Rupi Kaur to your Dickinson
On rhythm the poet stabs to death
That’s about as good as poets get
While the poet goes through the alphabet
And thinks for a minute about their next sonnet.
Being struck by lightning odds at 500,000 to one
But Increased massively by reading John Donne.
They say you are what you eat
You also are what you read I learnt that from a man with a degree in ‘filíocht’
Little did he know his future would have sucked.
Writing poetry is pointless
I’m telling you now
That’s coming from someone who doesn’t know how.