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~~~~~~~~~~~~ (the poetry) WORM ~~~~~~~~~~~~ 33

Welcome to WORM 33. We hope you enjoy this juicy selection of poems.

All poets appearing in ~ (the poetry) Worm ~ have granted a limited
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Don't forget that submissions are welcomed for WORM 34 and all future
issues, Send up to 3 poems, free verse or formal, to Margaret Griffiths at
grasshopper@wordbug.freeserve.co.uk .Please address any queries about WORM
33 to the same address.
All the poems I receive are forwarded (without authors' names) to my
co-editors for each issue, and the selection is made on our combined scores.

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Playing Cards with Houdini

               Juanita wants to play cards with Houdini, rip
               the tongue out of the neon beast that overlooks
               the Allesandra and walk her winnings all the way
               into next week. My whiskey is turning to water,
               her vodka is not cold enough and—if I lean close

               to the shoe, I can hear the blackjack dealer has a lisp.
               The cocktail waitress lights my cigarette and I can
               tell by the way Juanita flicks her ashes on the carpet
               she feels like being patient. Home is where the cards
               fall but the math was simpler when we ran

               out of gas and she hurdled over my dreams on the way
               to her own memories. The neo-psychedelic Muzak,
               the pill in my drink and the smoke scorching
               the inside of my eyelids all add up to her idea
               of adventure. She talks about plans of tripping off

               to exotic places—how there is nothing like Paris,
               how she wants to fuck on a hill by Sacre-Coeur. I look
               at the curve of her shoulder and the bend in her finger
               as she takes another hit and the memory of a cherry red
               Shelby with a shattered windshield makes me laugh to myself.

               The shadow in the corner of her mouth looks like a paper cut
               and the dealer slides his hand a little too close to hers, a raised
               brow tells me I better beware. Later as I listen to the sound
               of her sleep I wonder how waves would sound lying on a hill
               in Montmartre—a conch shell against my ear.

© Alex Stolis

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               The Lumps on Her Neck

               the specialist confirmed
               the lumps on her neck
               were just turtle eggs
               so now she only opens
               her legs when the milk cartons
               outnumber the eggshells

               yesterday her husband wired
               the scouts hall with varicose veins
               the call came in just before midnight
               he didn't make it
               in a mark of respect
               the taxi drove her to the airport gratis
               the networks cancelled the evening's
               weather forecast

               this time of year
               her blood congeals in water
               the hairs on her knuckles are
               surrogate mothers for orphan lizards
               for some reason
               the can opener always has
               a five o'clock shadow

© Michael Riley

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Not the Kind that Goes for Little Boys

Wally holds a gas can, waves a thumb,

stands on I-5 on-ramp, Encinitas, California,

waits for a good heart to pull over.

Wally isn't into traits and sensibilities.

He never thrusts his gun at charity,

never nicks compassion with a ten-inch blade,

never rips the tongue from sympathy,

or flays the skin from kindness.

He wants kneecaps, wants to peel them

off their joints like abalones from the stone.

He wants eyeballs, wants to scoop

them from the sockets, lay them out

like mushrooms on a dinner plate.

A car is stopping, long-bed Chevy pickup,

big man behind the wheel, silent and hard,

muscled like a framing carpenter.

Wally passes on this one, tells the man

he's waiting for a friend. He's waiting

for your mother.

© Fred Longworth

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In Memoriam

               John Betjeman cannot read his In Memoriam. Not today
                   or ever.

               So what's the use of writing another jot.
                    Why, pray,
                    endeavor?

               For he who could best compose one is decomposing. Rot!
                    away
                    forever.

               His spirit lives in every ingle-nook where England claims the heart
                    and soul.

               That poet so lightly musical, so serious and straight (an art)
                    and droll.
               Whose lines were seen and heard in every church, in every mart.
                    And knoll.

               Muckby-cum-Sparrowby cum Sphinx, County Westmeath, Cheltenham;
                    the set.

               Henly-on-Thames, also Highgate, Bristol, Clifton, Mint-on-Lamb:
                    Gazette.

               Places etched forever in his poems, each one a Betje-gram.
                    Je bet!

               We remember chintzy cheeriohs in his brilliant combinations.
                    Cheeribye.

               Farewell, so long, bunghosky, too -- Goodbye to all his permutations.
                    Never grim.
                    Never dry.

               Well, it's getting time for supper and we've had our ruminations.
                    This is him.
                    Dry your eye.

© Edmund Conti

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               Under the Influence

               First, I thought
               of poor John Clare,
               curled and drowsy
               in waistcoat pocket.

               Then Burns
               in company with
               Kavanagh and his
               Hunter watch.

               Best to leave it there?
               Of course….but
               out comes Heaney
               with linen handkerchief
               and Wallace Stevens
               on silver spoon
               with pinch of snuff.

               MacCaig and Holub perch
               one on each shoulder—
               Perfection balances.
               Yeats sits on lorgnette
               chain. Herbert glitters on
               bright tie pin. Shy Larkin
               peeps from a shot cuff.

               The woozy troll's a dandy.
               His wink gives my head a spin.
               I smell Lowell and Whitman
               on his breath. Bob Frost
               and Ted Hughes squat
               under his brushed
               black block hat.

               Where are his lady loves?
               Christina, Emily, Elizabeth
               slip out, sleek and handy—
               gray as gloves.

© Peter Waring

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Blackbird

               This sentiment I should not share with her.
               What Stevens fails to mention, I prefer:
               the beauty of anticipating things,
               the moment just before the blackbird sings,
               when still I think that what I want is pure.

©© Stephen S. Power

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               Gaza Express

               Don't quote me, but we called it The Gaza Express,
               so many Jews on the seven-fifteen. They always
               seemed to be there before us, saving each other
               seats. They seemed to like Third Class, Non-smoking.

               Their old trick, Daily Mirror inside The Times,
               some Daily Heralds, or even a Daily Worker,
               though their suits were always good. You could almost tell
               the way they read the rest of us, through our clothing.

               We'd joke about those papers covering up
               what they really thought; respect they thought they'd purchased,
               and how we imagined they'd test each other's lapels
               between thumb and forefinger, tease and cost the weave.

               Not that any of us had ever been near Gaza.
               Mainly we worked in Salford, or near Victoria.
               Those who had been in the war had travelled a bit.
               Mostly to parts of Europe, after D-Day.

               That's what makes me remember, the late return.
               Just two of us in the compartment, our evening papers
               finished and a stop for signals. Somehow we started
               sharing our stories, found out that we'd been

               in Poland, forty-five: 'You could have been
               the corporal who opened the gates, was sick to see
               so many of us scarecrows, and the dead, stacked, so.
               See.' He took off his gold watch, silver cufflink,
               rolled up his soft wool sleeve: 'See.'

© Martyn Halsall

( Gaza Express: Editor's Choice of Arlene Ang, ' I love how this poem gives a moving and personal insight into the lives of Jews

after the war. The understated horror woven into their everyday habits makes such an unforgettable combination.' )

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               Life's Beats

               Douglas and I sit in the outdoors café in Köln
               and sip our Pilsener while the waiter tosses
               broken küchen to the sparrows. I photograph

               him with the dark spires of the Dom behind him,
               a flat gray sky; he snaps me against a backdrop
               of red, yellow, black German flags. He knows me,

               his nephew, as the Rhein flows past the green
               equestrian statue of the Kaiser, the orange-berried
               rowans. He takes a breath, hands me tight-bound

               papers from his solicitor naming me executor,
               a precise list of to-dos. But years later, he will
               forget his detailed orders for final dispersal.

               Sixty years since he jumped from the Army lorry,
               slid down the grassy bank to Recklinghausen, fell
               in love with his second wife Inge; a shrapnel scar

               dimples his back. We drink our Pilsener, bubbles rise
               in Köln's grey light. The sparrows fight for crumbs.

               © Christopher T. George

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Leda Levine

(with abject apologies to Edgar Allen Poe)

It was many and many a year ago

in the city of the bean

that a maiden there lived whom you won't know

as the beautiful Leda Levine,

and this maiden she lived with no other thought

than to be quite excessively lean.

Her mom, a relentlessly svelte size 2

with a strong Nancy Reagan-esque mien,

forever exhorted her round little girl

to never once leave her plate clean,

so we furtively went out for Szechuan food

in locales where we wouldn't be seen.

I adolesced and my friend adolesced

in the city of the bean,

and she secretly starved and she frequently purged,

poor mixed-up Leda Levine,

till she looked like an inmate of Bergen-Belsen

before we were seventeen.

And this was the reason that long ago

in the city of the bean

that an ambulance went to her house, taking

the angular Leda Levine,

and that her family's internist came

and dosed her with thorazine,

and shut her up in a locked-door ward

near the city of the bean.

Her parents, burning with shame in Back Bay

couldn't cope with their difficult teen.

Yes - this was the reason, (as all women know

in the city of the bean)

that they shipped her off to the Hartford Retreat,

deserting and hurting poor Leda Levine.

And I can't eat ice cream without having a dream

of the beautiful Leda Levine,

or nibble french fries but I feel the sad eyes

of the beautiful Leda Levine.

When I order roast veal I will let it congeal

as I stop while ingesting a fine 4-star meal

in bistros where it's chic to be seen

in the city of the bean.

© Mitchell Geller

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At Dinner with Shuk Ling

               It is a philosophical conversation
               and I am convinced she is wrong.
               Breathing proves it. So does shitting.
               Life is a process of letting the universe
               pass through us. Gamma ray, oxygen,
               stool. Is it Buddha who said…
               or was it Confucius, blah, blah, blah.

               Elsewhere, a small hexacanth
               filtered by an oyster in a shoal
               on the coast of the Bering, cracked
               by gull, particulated, eaten by a King
               Salmon running up the Kusk
               caught in net, ends in a small
               boy in a small village.
               He is not special.

               Dog, cat, walrus, bear, fox, whale,
               Man have been vermiculated.
               Extracted at 10 meters in length,
               like a tape rule, like a magic trick
               with handkerchiefs, the helminthic
               sheath, a wet ribbon on the floor,
               then flushed, then furling through pipes.

               The fish bladder soup is bitter
               with ginger. The tripe spiced
               with hoisin sauce. We are all
               the same. Hollow. A worm peaks
               out of the dark cave of a body.
               Some of the universe passes
               through our bodies. Some

               of the universe stops and feeds.

© David Koehn

(At Dinner with Shuk Ling :Editor's Choice of M.A.Griffiths,' A dark and fascinating meditation on the chain of life, to which I found

myself returning several times. The writing is accomplished and displays a precision and virility which particularly appealed to me.' )

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              Adagio with Bad Acoustics

               The old pianists gather in a room
               perfumed with unguents. Dust
               motes visible in pointillist light
               mizzle the air when anyone moves.

               A woman with pain-pink joints
               splays her fingers for the audience,
               blasphemes against the drunken god
               who sculpted them. Despite hot soaks
               in morning basins, there is an ache
               in the marrow.

               She takes her turn at the piano;
               when the last note dies like a name
               she can't recall, a patter of applause
               bursts where bravos once echoed,
               the sound skidding toward memories
               that insist they are still there, a mirage
               rippling on the horizon, a slow bell tolling.

© Cheryl Snell

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Piano Nobile

Cinch your belt and straighten up, then tilt into a contrapposto stance

and practice pausing: glance ahead as if you were a dancer

halting, poised, attending to the barest breath of cue you know

will soon require you to lilt onstage: perfect the ways you wait

in public: following a rubric of propriety and politesse, address

the empty air as if it were a scrutinizing sea of cultivated eyes intent

on sizing up your next and every move: remove all doubt, brush every

unseen awkward worry out and off your sleek and gleaming skin:

the piano nobile is lit, the string quartet begins, your moment to arrive

is nigh. Or so I dreamed last night imagining what I'd feel like when I die.

(piano nobile:Italian,“noble floor”, in architecture, the main floor of a Renaissance building)

             Where He Is

               An austral sigh entices wind-chimes to their tinkling,
               teases tulips into silent sway among their ordered beds.
               Beneath the weight of rocking-chair and flesh,
               verandah boards croak out his nocturne, leisurely legato.

               Three steps down and to the right, a wizened wheelbarrow
               slumps; its broken spoke wheel and rain-split handles contradict
               the care displayed within its rim—
               his scented clumps of marjoram, mint and thyme.
               All the while, a citronella candle-flame pirouettes
               around its wick, smoky tutu swirling
               in a pas de deux for him and the mosquitoes.

               The stately cape of weathered oak that looms
               above the mottled grass and shingles
               reminds of strengths from acorn days;
               gnarled-bark skins display the growth
               of both—he who sits and that which stands.
               An earthen curtain backdrop moves
               by rock, then pebble and grain;
               unseen by rheumy eyes,
               it travels time-worn trails
               as he does.

               His corn-cobbed puffs of satisfaction
               mark his place,
               a static silhouette
               upon the surrounding mercury.

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Pygmalion Tricks the Eye

               My prize piece stands in glass, sculpted with pride
               and years of care. (Though people claim my hands
               are adamantine, leaving a tattoo
               on everything they touch!) I loved creating
               this statue, which I call My Trophy Wife.

               Observe the faithful features:
                                                         silicone
               lifted and separated to construct
               a canyon;
                              legs like flower stems that blossom
               into her miniskirt, and teeth not yellowed
               but shining ivory;
                                        the lips inflated,
               collagen mattresses designed to soften
               even the hardest blow;
                                                her eyes transfixed
               as if they glimpse the cyclops cigarette
               I'm holding (smoking's tough to quit, you know);

and sweaty sun-blond hair that hangs like ropes.

               The devil's in the detail if you look
               closely: five chunks of arm wedged out, soft cork
               beneath a knife. What's that? You say you saw
               her move? No, an illusion of my craft—
               the contrapposto makes you think she lives.

(Pygmalion Tricks the Eye :Editor's Choice of Charles Cornner, ' This poem demonstrates a sort of controlled menace, in which

the speaker intimates that he believes a certain kind of permission from his Galatea, almost as if this kind of sculpture is a love rite

of a cruel and twisted kind, with utter disregard of the victim.' )

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               Snow Path

               New year's litter of colored paper,
               nothing will be remembered right.

               Bare branches splay
               against the sky like mindless scribble.
               The best season is silence.

               Wool and cross-stitch of frost,
               snow—

               in their fretwork,
               every parting lip is closed.

               Fir-circled field,
               untrodden path,
               this morning I'm first to find it.

               I've forgotten what I wished for;
               perhaps it has come quietly.

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Dougie's Balzams

               Perhaps the brown wax seal will never be broken.
               And perhaps the Rigas Melnais Balzams
               will rot in complete absence of light, sealed
               behind the glaze of the cool ceramic bottle.
               Christ, what darkness and mystery. I wonder

               how will it smell, opened after forty years?
               Does 45 proof pure Latvian grain spirit
               still preserve herb, root, flower and juice?
               And how would it taste, this old, black Baltic brew
               he brought from Riga in a time of iron rule

               and left untouched in a cupboard until he died?
               We took it with boxed Czech crystal,
               the unused Russian lacquered spoons
               and cross-stitched cloths in tattered cellophane
               to fill a space that remains empty.

               We hid it behind Marx, guzzled our way home
               through single malt and spluttered homilies,
              across tear-soaked chicken tikka. The same diet,
               day after day, until the cask ran dry and
               not a chicken was found between yeast and barley.

             And now I hold it in my hands. Cold vessel.
              Born-again Muscovite friends tell me it contains
              a balsam (in short supply) that cures body
              and spirit. I do not think I will open it yet:
              I am tired of intoxication and certainty.

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              Slush Pile

               In some respects I like this, even though
               the workmanship's not great. Who'd rhyme 'today'
               with 'day'? This one's arcane: what does it say?
               Two down now; just two hundred more to go.
               Call that a poem? Prose! And this is so
               Poetic. Why must people disobey
               the basic rules of syntax? No. No way,
               and No, and No, and No, and No, and No,

               and......Oh. Here's something special: see it shine.
               It coruscates: a lantern made of gold
               revealing vistas formerly unseen.
               I sense the presence of a noble soul
               who dares to go where others have not been.
               Ah, now I recollect: it's one of mine!

               © David Anthony

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Acknowledgements: In Memoriam previously appeared in 'Light Quarterly'.

Dougie's Balzams previously appeared in 'The Reader' (University of Liverpool) #12

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Author's contact details:

David Anthony.......................http://www.davidgwilymanthony.co.uk

Scotty Blake.........................obsidian@airnet.com.au

Edmund Conti.......................Edmundpoet@aol.com

Christina Fletcher................. christinasJF@aol.com

Mitchell Geller...................... PMMBOB@aol.com
Christopher T. George............editorcg@yahoo.com

Martyn Halsall...................... martyn.halsall@ukonline.co.uk

Guy Kettelhack.....................GuyBlakeKett@aol.com

David Koehn.........................david@tailwindinc.com
Fred Longworth .................. stereo1@cox.net

Stephen S. Power.................snow1985man@yahoo.com.

Michael Riley........................michaelriley476@hotmail.com

Steven D. Schroeder..............steveschroeder@usermail.com

Sarah Sloat...........................sloatsj@yahoo.com

Cheryl Snell......................... cherylsnell@hotmail.com

Alex Stolis........................... Baudelairious@aol.com

Peter Waring.........................parkhouseplants@aol.com

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Compiling Editor: M.A.Griffiths (grasshopper@wordbug.freeserve.co.uk) .
Associate Editors: Arlene Ang (aumelesi@libero.it) and Charles Cornner (psalmtone@mindspring.com)

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