~~~~~~~~~~~~ (the poetry) WORM ~~~~~~~~~~~~ 23
 

Never Mind Monet

Adirondacks in the background:
little girl in a canoe, shoulders freckled from the sun.

She wears blue hat with floppy brim, hair bleached to gold.
Lake Luzurne was hers, father told her so

and the lilies thought it fine. They put magic in her head,
flowers grown in water! Tiny miracles, mother said.

When her skin paled in Fall, and her golden hair was gone,
she remembered stars in a wet velvet sky. Father promised

they'd return to the lake in July. She wished it true,
told the doctors her bones were filled with flowers.

A bigger girl in a canoe, another summer day.
Freckled shoulders, hair of gold. Never mind Monet.

© Lori Williams

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Bill Loses Susan

The ring-road is a cold-molasses drift.
I slalom through the Sunday morning slouch,
accelerate against an amber, shift
a lane to navigate a snarl, and couch
a curse as rain begins; it’s nip and tuck.
Meanwhile my mind engages in a graphic
rapprochement rehearsal; then my luck
expires. I’m cordoned in a stall of traffic.
The light remains interminably red;
ten carlengths back, a million miles from her,
I hear the jet-thrust roaring overhead.
The scathing gibes of self-reproach recur.

My past and future’s on an outward Jumbo.
The wipers whisper :"Dumbo, dumbo, dumbo . . . "

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Poetic Justice

When I was twenty-six and arrogant,
I'd never have considered dating you.
You're short, and no one under six-foot-two
could make the cut back then; and you're a gent,
complete with tie and suit, while I was bent
on finding someone macho, someone who
could operate a lathe. You'd have been too
effete, with your soft hands and Polo scent.

A dozen years, three jobs, two cars, a ring.
No longer arrogant, no longer cute,
belatedly I've changed my taste in men.
These days it's you who do the winnowing,
and I'm the chaff. The irony's a beaut:
you might have loved me if you'd met me then.

© Rose M. Kelleher

( Poetic Justice : Editor's Choice of David Anthony: ' The Petrarchan's the most challenging of all the sonnet forms, and the craftsmanship here is impressive.

The old, elegant structure is freshly deployed to enliven a contemporary theme. Note the flawless volta at Line 9 and the perfect close; also the natural, seemingly effortless flow, which could only be achieved with great effort .' )

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Advice to the Unwed

I married his house.
He married my daughter.
What followed that folly
hadn't oughter.
But it did. Now I'm hid
under a mountain of outside id.

Here's the moral: If you can
and must marry, marry a man.

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Grasshopper

There wouldn’t be a blade of grass for kilometres
on show at the Conference in the Dark Vaulted Theatre
outside, the road that brought us here

video cameras are researching our schooled faces
our hands palm down on our papers on the melting table
our shuttered eyes staring down the limelight for later

he lands with a spring-loaded click on my paper
out of the colour of the Australian veldt
like a trick of nature.

© Jennifer Compton

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sizzling summer

who has prepared us for this:
picture-book skies, eternally
cloudless, shamelessly blue,
flowers fainting on balconies,
tar melting beneath our feet?

who's taught us not to swoon
as humidity hits us underground
where rush hour crowds flash
wet stains in armpits, deformed
like crashlanded flying saucers?

what sins are we meant to expiate
in this air-condition-less hell?
who wants to torture us into
revealing secrets, night after night,
as the moon sweats in a brilliant sky?

no relief, no rain; a complete absence
of wind, except when the west
suddenly blackens with promise,
distant thunder growls like a dog
whose bark is worse than his bite.

© michaela a.gabriel

( sizzling summer : Editor's Choice of Matt Williams:' It takes a concentrated poetic sensibility to stay angry in the face of
languid urban summer heat. Such acidity in the face of brilliant weather - like Blake with a very bad hangover.' )

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Arriving KwaZulu-Natal (rain)

Rain into my heart and sing away
the tube, newspapers, supermarket queues;
Rain into the earth and wring the mud
of blood, virus, tuberculosis, me
- top ten rich under my umbrella
of banana leaf - burr the soil
to light sand, light enough for the light-
handed man working the beach, who says:

'I want to study in England.
Get rich, baas.'

Rain to beat the hibiscus black and blue:
or drum the great white to the river mouth:
or green the sugar cane: or bless the yellowcake.
Rain and sing me to the red farm earth.

© Matt Williams

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She walks beside a blue, translucent bay,
past fishermen intently mending nets;

conspicuously, they look the other way.
Feigning indifference, she plays the coquette's
cheapest trick. Once, for her, lithe athletes leapt
to pluck bright garlands from a wild bull's horn,
then, as the unsuspecting city slept,
beguiled by Theseus, she eloped at dawn.
Abandoned now, the blowsy concubine
of Dionysus, she cannot help recall,
amid her wanton pleasure, nights of wine
sweet-talk and sex - that sad, expectant girl
who from the quay watched his dark sail unfurl.

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Winning the Cotswolds

First prize was going away. The competition
demanded answers: What is the river called
at Coln St-Aldwyns? Where are two churches found
connected with John Keble, priest and scholar?

First prize for two was two nights at The Inn.
An article quoted brochures: It was old
when Christopher Wren was drawing up St Paul’s.
Starters and puddings each around five pounds.

The writer had been. Found characterful interiors,
delightful fabrics, generous baths, floral prints,
tea-makers and tvs in every bedroom-
each of them different- young, efficient staff.

The writer had been out and found the sheep
slit-irised, golden eyed before his full
English breakfast, drafted a scriptural image:
The Bible is full of flocks. Some thoughts on cloth,

once half the country’s exports, and foundation
of wealthy churches rich in dark gold stone.
More scribbling: Arlington Row, the weavers’ houses.
Lovely spots - Eastleach, Kelmscott, Buscot Park.

Green side shoots of Olde England. Keble rode
out from his Oxford lodgings every Sunday,
bought herring and potatoes at a cottage,
hooves striking sparks across the clapper bridge,

to teach the children in his father’s parish
about sheep, shepherds, danger, cost of love.
He knew these hills; their storm lash and speared light,
blood soak of poppies staining fields of bread.

© Martyn Halsall

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Domesticated Non-Debutant

His sculptures hide in closets, under beds
in dresser drawers or spanning rafter chords.
They're always insects with antennaed heads,
thoraxes shaped like shields and legs like swords.
"I used to sculpt my figures in the dark,"
he muses, "when the vision wasn't there.
Appendages of metal, like the shark
with surgical precision, rip and tear.
Scars I abhor, they're curious tattoos,"
he tells the yielding critic he creates,
"and animals, such things belong in zoos,"
he says, proceeding with his list of hates.
He hasn't shown a single sculpture yet.
He's not an artist; he's an artist's pet.

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Emily felt an old brass ring tightening
around her finger, heard links creak
around her strait waist, tight as family;
and saw the circle of lamplight
squeezed smaller and smaller
as she squinched her eyes to read
the notes perched on her small piano.

She clung to that, her rosewood raft,
like a stowaway suddenly wrecked
without ever strolling through the ship
to enjoy the starched napkins,
the monogrammed cutlery and crystal,
the curliques upon the menu.
Emily feared she would be rolled up
like bills in a man's pocket
amongst the must and fust
and fingered things.

One night, she unlaces her stays
for the final time and scratches
her latticed skin luxuriously.
Everything falls away easily, the skirts,
the petticoat, earrings, necklace, name.
Only her long hair bleeds a little
as she sheds it. She dresses in shirt
and britches, folds her future
into a carpet-bag, and quits the Old World
for the salt of the New, her small breasts
bound flat, but not with whalebone,
her face buoyed by decision.

One day she will uncurl like camellia petals
but now,she furls into hard green bud,
throwing thorns over her shoulders.
Out on to the lawn and the moon's fresh O.
Sister, fare well, but never farewell,
for her rise will be your music and her pale face
the ivory of keys.

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Ballet Teacher's Catechism

You'll practice every day until you die.
When years of sweat have dried, call it Art.
Eight en croix, thirty-two on each side.
You kids only like the easy parts.

When years of sweat have dried, call it Art,
glittering threads whose weft you never see.
You kids only like the easy part.
You don't understand the work behind simplicity.

Glittering threads, the weft you never see -
beauty is woven on a loom of pain.
You don't understand the work. Behind simplicity
is a dancer with a one-pointed brain.

Beauty is woven on a loom of pain.
Only repetition can make a movement pleasing.
The dancer with a one-pointed brain
trains sinew and bone past habit and reason.

Only repetition can make a movement pleasing.
Eight en croix, thirty-two on each side.
To train sinew and bone past habit and reason
you'll practice every day until you die.

© Rachel Dacus

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It seems no time since warmth replaced the cold,
and nature’s careful plans were first displayed
in buds along the foxglove’s stem, arrayed
profusely and preparing to unfold.

Tall tallyman, I know the price you pay!
Your clustered blossoms nodding to the dawn
fade one for every evening, as you mourn
the counted fall of every summer’s day.

Too soon a wilder wind arriving, scours
the season’s bright creations, stripping bare
the hedgerows and the woodland clearings where
you sacrifice your last and lonely flowers -

still beautiful, although the best are past;
and missed the most, because they were the last.

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Dunglark

dunglark
wheelheap
skybarrow

wheelheap
dungbarrow
skylark

skyheap
dunglark
wheelbarrow

wheelbarrow
dungheap
skylark

© John Carley

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First Post

Welcome 'persibish' to Sonnet Central.
Your handle seems familiar, have we met?
Although there's much to praise here, the octet
employs a strange rhyme scheme that's detrimental
to your poem's success. Best avoid slant rhyme -
like stone and frown within a formal verse,
inversions in line 6 just make things worse,
(though 'sneer of cold command' is quite sublime).
Who's Ozymandias - some obscure pharaoh?
You have prodigious talent, but lack craft -
the simple diction found in the sestet,
could be used throughout, IMVHO.
The more you post the better you will get.
Good work. Well done. Please post your second draft.

( First Post : Editor's Choice of M.A.Griffiths: 'This wickedly witty poem will strike a chord with anyone who has ever used an online poetry-board, and nearly made me snort coffee over my keyboard when I first read it. I would love to read Shelley's reply.....' )

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Acknowledgement:Ballet Teacher's Catechism was originally published in Rattapallax.
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Author's contact details:

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