Tag: writing

Jan, Jen or Jean, by Thomas McColl


By Robert Garnham

JAN, JEN OR JEAN

I hadn’t seen her in years.
Her name was Jan, Jen or Jean,
I couldn’t remember which.

My face lit up like a fruit machine
when she caught my glance
as we passed each other on Southwark Bridge.

“Hi, Tom,” she said,
and as if she’d pressed PLAY,
I felt compelled to take the chance.

The names began to spin inside my head –
Jan, Jen, Jean.
I pressed STOP too quickly –
I had little choice –
and settled on Jean.
“Hi, Jean,” I said.

We passed.
I pressed COLLECT,
and got a sick feeling in my gut,
as the name Jan,
for first prize,
flashed before my eyes.

Thomas McColl lives in London. He’s had poems published in magazines such as Envoi, Iota, Prole and Ink, Sweat and Tears, and has had two collections of poetry published: ‘Being With Me Will Help You Learn’ (Listen Softly London Press, 2016) and ‘Grenade Genie’ (Fly on the Wall Press, 2020). 

 

Yes, But He Lives in the Philippines, by Thom Boulton


By Robert Garnham

Yes, But He Lives in the Philippines

She said,
“And Bob’s your uncle!”
and he replied (as always)
“Yes, but he lives in the Philippines.”

And when,
the penny dropped down
they said, “and Bob’s your uncle!”

“Yes, but he lives in the Philippines.”

The words
greeted by a frown
traced down the shadow of
their nose, out the open mouth, making

the most
perfect question mark.
Bob’s dead now. So, when they say
“And Bob’s your uncle!” and he replies

he adds,
“Though he is dead now.”

He can
still remember Bob’s
body sliding out the boot
of the car, folded neatly in an
envelope.

The Elysium Fields
are located at the back of Plymouth Athenaeum.

Come Sail Away by Styx plays on loop.

He went there after Bob died
just to check his moustache was dead too.

Asked each pyschopomp
if they knew where the pot
for Bob’s wake was,
they nodded towards the casino
filled with ethereal funeral directors,

gave him directions

“Take a left.”

“Mind the ending.”

“And, Bob’s your uncle!” They said.

“Yes,” he began, “But…”

“Not anymore.” They said.

 

Two Limericks from Mark Totterdell


By Robert Garnham

Anaconda

I once had a pet anaconda,
Of which I could not have been fonder,
Though it caused some alarm
And significant harm
By its strong inclination to wander.

Stegosaurus

We take care with our pet stegosaurus,
Lest the spikes at its rear end should gore us,
As with one mighty flail
Of its big spiky tail
It could render us horribly porous.

Mark Totterdell’s poems have appeared widely in magazines and have occasionally won prizes. His collections are This Patter of Traces (Oversteps Books, 2014) and Mapping (Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2018).

 

Neighbourhood Watch, by Maurice Devitt


By Robert Garnham

Neighbourhood Watch

When she woke he was gone,
the scent of him still dawdling
on the stairs, phone
and wedding-ring abandoned
on the console table in the hall.

After three weeks, she packed
his clothes into a suitcase
and left it in the porch.
In the morning it had vanished
except for the shoes he never liked,
perched squarely on the step.

A woman down the road,
dowdy and disinterested
since her last romance,
has been spotted wearing lipstick
to the bin and the milkman
has remarked, in the form
of an open question,
how she’d increased her order
from one bottle to two.

Winner of the Trocaire/Poetry Ireland Competition in 2015, he published his debut collection, ‘Growing Up in Colour’, with Doire Press in 2018.

His poems have been nominated for Pushcart, Forward and Best of the Net prizes and his Pushcart-nominated poem, ‘The Lion Tamer Dreams of Office Work’, was the title poem of an anthology published by Hibernian Writers in 2015. He is curator of the Irish Centre for Poetry Studies site.

 

Boring, by Carl Burkitt


By Robert Garnham

BORING

10 minutes into wandering
through an M&S petrol station
I realised I’d forgotten my headphones

and the podcast I thought was boring
was in fact two middle aged men behind me
chatting about A roads.

Carl Burkitt likes to tell tales. He tells long tales, short tales, silly tales, sad tales and likes to tell them online, behind a mic, in books, in schools or on the sofa with his young family in London. Read more at www.carltellstales.com

 

How to Read at an Open Mic, by Susan Jordan


By Robert Garnham

How to read at an open mic

When it’s your turn to read
make quite sure you’re still muted.
People like to watch you mouthing.

Spend most of your time
shuffling through your papers, saying,
‘I’m sure I’ve got it somewhere.’

Give a long, rambling introduction
about how your father used to go fishing
only this poem isn’t about that.

Keep your head down over your copy
or hunch up, squinting at your phone.
At all costs avoid facing the camera.

Ideally, print your poems
on the back of private documents
and hold them up in front of your face –

bills and bank statements are ideal.
That way you’ll keep the audience’s interest
and get lots of comments in the chat.

Read in a poetry voice that goes up
wherever you’d expect it to go down.
Draw out the last syllable of each line.

If you read a second poem,
say, ‘I’ve only just written this
and haven’t managed to revise it yet.’

Before you finish, do apologise –
if you haven’t done so already –
for not having written your poems better.

Sit staring vacantly afterwards
so people don’t know if you’re done
then forget to mute your coughs and slurps of tea.

 

4 By Bloody 4’s, by Lisa Lopresti


By Robert Garnham

4 By Bloody 4’s

Huge SUV, 4 by bloody 4,
Parked right outside my front door.

In narrow Edwardian city streets,
Those 4 X 4’s like to retreat.

I can admire the metallic paint,
That the late evening sun warmly glints.

But there is no light streaming through,
My tall beckoning windows as it ought to do!

The pollution that these vehicles exhale,
Dust’s lungs and glass in dirty veils.

My city is not 4 X 4’s natural habitat,
Country lanes and tracks is where that’s at.

But what about the snow!
4 by four drivers want to know.

Well in our cities, those 2 days a year,
Mean you should stay at home and drink beer.

Lisa Lopresti (she/her)is a poet from the statue toppling City of Bristol. She has been broadcast on BBC Radio Bristol and published in magazines and anthologies. Lisa performs in spoken word events and has found this both terrifying and exhilarating. She likes to convey poems to portray, this life.
https://lisa-lopresti-poetry.webnode.com/

 

Cocks, by Mohammad Zahid


By Robert Garnham

Cocks

Things were never easy
nor were they hard
The conflict was an unending one
with seven blind men groping the elephant
rightly at all wrong places.
For the onlookers it was a comic show
For the blind men a harsh reality.

The hens kept clucking
Perhaps giggling at the eternal dilemma
Humans faced while deducing
the evolutionary equations
about who came first,
the clucking hens
or their encapsulated embryos.

The poor cocks were left unattended
Till they ran unbridled
like their human homonyms.
They too sometimes became easy
and sometimes hard.

Mohammad Zahid is a poet and translator from Kashmir, India. His maiden poetry collection The Pheromone Trailbagged the Best Book Award from the Academy of Art Culture and Languages, Jammu &Kashmir in 2015.

His poetry has appeared in many Indian and international journals. He is a translation editor for Kashmiri Language at Muse India and Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Arts.

 

Double Negative Party, by Melanie Branton


By Robert Garnham

Double Negative Party

There ain’t no party like a double negative party,
ain’t nothing better you can get.
You think that sounds exciting?
Well, you ain’t heard nothing yet!

There ain’t no party like a double negative party.
Nothing never felt so great!
Don’t never start till midnight
and don’t never end till really late.

You’ve heard that they’re “bad grammar”?
You’ve heard they “don’t make sense”?
You’ve heard they are “confusing”,
sound “uncouth” or “cause offence”?

The French use double negatives!
The Polish use them, too!
There ain’t no foreign language
that supports that snobbish view!

They were used by William Shakespeare
and Chaucer! Goodness sakes!
Ain’t no-one gonna tell me
Will and Geoffrey made mistakes!

There ain’t no party like a double negative party –
the guest list’s full of stars!
Ain’t no-one who is no-one
would give that bash a pass.

There ain’t no party like a double negative party –
Not nowhere in no nation.
No-one don’t want nothing else –
just an invitation.

Melanie Branton is a spoken word artist from North Somerset who is totally obsessed with cats, linguistics, Vikings and vegetables. Her published collections are Can You See Where I’m Coming From? (Burning Eye, 2018) and My Cloth-Eared Heart (Oversteps, 2017) melaniebranton.wordpress.com