~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ (the poetry) WORM ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 15
___________________ _____________ ___________________
___________________ _____________ ___________________


He Was Beautiful …

Outside M&S three hours a day, four days a week,
he plays Cavatina.
His guitar case, with float,
chinks with single January coins. He'd had dreams
like the hairdresser he sees at the upstairs window,
who reminds him of his daughter, looking down on him.
He’d come 2nd. twice in the Talent Show at Clacton,
Duane Eddy on a borrowed Gretsch with tremolo-arm,
bright-eyed, fourteen, and no longer a virgin.
Then played on the same bill as The Hollies:
the widest of flares, lead guitar with The Five Believers,
all their own songs and a contract with A&M Records.
After that it was Country and Western in Forfar
where he’d been roughed up for playing harmonics
with the fiddle player’s under-age sister and wife.
Then downhill all the way, through bedsits and Johnny Walker,
to squat between curtains of dog-piss on his own pitch.
His little finger stretches, those plaintive single notes
worth a 50 pence piece from the 40 year olds;
then, head at arse level, back to the chord until summer
when he’s Glenn Raymonde again at Prestatyn,
60s songs between bingo: Concrete And Clay -
You Really Got Me - Walking In The Sand.

© Bob Cooper


Morning Call
(For Mandrake)

I’ve been asleep a hundred years at least.
What’s keeping you? Is something wrong?
It’s my finger nails, isn’t it? Yes, it's my nails.
Well, yours would be long
and trailing the floor like curling straws
if you’d been waiting as long as me.

And my hair is much longer
(you like long hair)
- long, and silver-grey as the sea -
you can drown in it, bury your face,
whisper my love. Then come to it: this,
the lip touch I’ve slumbered for. The Kiss.

Yes there are briars. So what?
Times change. Get a rotivator.
In my dreams I see helicopters whirling.
So many ways of getting through.
Men are hard to motivate. Or
you could try the web, though I might,
in the absence of kisses, sleep on.
On the other hand -
on the other hand -

do you think that’s actually what I want?
A hand in marriage? a royal spouse?
another lover? My dear
I am weary of bed in this slow-thinking land,
I am weary of satin-enveloping sheets,
I am weary of sleep. Fantasy makes me
yawn. It’s dawn.
Phone. Wake me.

© Helena Nelson


Sibelius Day

Tuesday was normally Sibelius day, iced sound
vicing the cottage, muffled drum roll of sea
turned grind and rear of floes, the razored wind
humbling the tundra under a bloodshot sun,

an orange wash. Behind closed eyes he saw
moraines along the melt, sheened glacier walls
and felt scree threaten the scrabble of his boots,
racked shingle and the rubble of shifting cobble.

Awake, the bay road empty. He could walk
half the curl after dark and see no lights,
most cottages just lived in for brief weeks
of ink-wash, Mozart light, he'd nod

towards them between sketches, notes for winter,
fulfilling the usual paintings, seascapes, bays,
sanderling skittering in and out of the ebb.
Wednesday was Elgar, laments of parallel greys,

foreshore, the Sound, the island's rumpled plaid,
skies rigged and hoisting gulls. He gathered wood,
drew drifts of cruising smoke; oak, beech, adagio.

© Martyn Halsall



Laura's Feet
(with apologies to Petrarch)

I love Laura's feet
so small and so neat
still sweet in the heat

when she slips off her shoes
I smell violet cachous
the breath of her toes
like the sanctified rose
exhaled from the gloom
in the tomb
of a saint

which she ain't.

© M.A. Griffiths


Les Origines du Langage (Painting by Magritte)
"A Stone Which Does Not Think, Thinks The Absolute" Magritte


What was the first word like? A grunt, a high pitched keening
Over the body, the first emerging, the other, leaving. Was it ever
A word, or simply the body letting air rush to the surface, like
The heart trying not to drown? Then the deep intake, the fresh
Smell of birth, that bloody welcome. Or death, that sour odor the
Body produces like old wax, thick, crepuscular.

Only the stone at the cave's entrance could hear, or perhaps the
Women in attendance who would make cooing noises, like thin
Birds flying in and out of a dark place, trying to navigate by light,
by instinct, their dull grey wings and dun bodies always hungry.
Or perhaps it was rage: all the metallic voices of blood and copper
Bound up in one unearthly scream. That would be the first word.
That would be the last.

© Adrianne Marcus



North From Zimbabwe

Giving a lift to a friend of a friend,
sun a husk over western moors,
he played Bhundu Boys on his walkman;
glanced up near Durham, "Big farms.
But bigger than these near Hararé."
Passing Lindisfarne I turned east,
"North Sea. Goes all the way to Germany."
"North Sea … in the east?", he grinned
changing tapes.

We stopped, stood by the car;
heard one owl croon, another reply;
sounds that might have been waves,
or trees, or both; nothing else.

"Holy Island. If the tide was right
we could drive there."
Then I talked of Cuthbert
who’d struggled all night at prayer
until otters surprised him, warmed his feet.

He smiled, "I like your story.
tell me; have we far, yet, to go?"
and began to talk of children, wife,
cousins, church, good harvests.
On Berwick bridge, past midnight,
we crossed the border singing.

© Bob Cooper



Yussef

Yussef vanished. I often picture him as he was -
aching to fight. Wise child eyes that shot right through me
and the round scar on his leg. He used to say
"You know the gas has gone when the flies come back."

"You can cross any Green Line with a credit card." -
that's what he always thought. I sat alone in the ruins
of Salamis and considered how close we were - just
a small wide space - how distance can't be measured in miles.

During those long years friends died but Yussef vanished -
somewhere in an office of UNWRA in Vienna.
A senior post. An expensive flat. An arranged marriage.
Killing time. Waiting for the gas to clear.

Note: UNWRA (un-wra) U.N. Organisation for Palestinian affairs

© Christina Fletcher

.

Single

This has nothing to do with sex.
I don't like to have my tongue
in my own mouth;
not to mention yours.

The feel of wet muscle
inside my ear
makes my skin crawl.
Chin bristle on my neck
makes me want to scream.

I don't like to be breathed on.
If I feel your breath
on my skin;
you're entirely too close.

I hate saliva and sweat
and the sleek, sweet stink of sperm,
but this has nothing to do with sex.

This has everything to do with
inner privacy, which
has to do with how
after a shower
I tug my underwear up
before I remove the towel.
How tightly I cross my legs.

How I always sleep covered
with my mouth firmly closed
and one eye open.

This has nothing to do with sex.
This has everything to do with
the terribly intimate relationship
I carry on with myself.

© Maryann Hazen-Stearns



dog in garbage can


saran wrap and ziploc
transparent blossoms on roses

screw top wine bottles <BR> lawn ornaments

morning paper and enquirer
dance out of step

o and rosie
wallflowers

chili
spinach salad
tuna helper
splattered art discarded

for pepperoni
sausage
olives
cold cheese strings

anchovies spit into ditch
pineapple saved for dessert

thanks given for plastic cans

© Gary Blankenship



Easter Love Sonnet

I wrote a sonnet upon your Easter bonnet
but, for all my English Lit., I couldn’t make
the poem fit.

The sonnet was reduced
by frill and by pin,
by ribbons, rucks, and satin bows.
And those fiddle bits that hang loose
im- -posed
tucks in the rhythm, laciness of metre.

Though I could not appropriate
enough space on your bonnet,
be patient. Tie the string.
The final couplet will be there
to kiss you,
underneath
&nbsp; your chin.

© Philip Burton



gravel and shell

I believe I will die a bent and wizened shape
in a contorted body frame
it is because of gravel gravel and shell

when I was a young boy the gravel
at the roadside from the blue-metal and bitumen edge
to the gutter and the adjacent footpaths
was taken from the banks of same local creek
that wound its way through the granite gorge
that ran down through the woolshed valley and connected
with the waters flowing through the old el dorado
gold field gem stone creeks one and all

I walked everywhere in those times
with the characteristic posture of a pedestrian fossicker
hunched shoulders and head leaning forward eyes to the ground
I was a collector of gem stone crystals
and possessed a great cardboard box full of 'clears' and 'smokeys'
cut-glass inner surfaces rough rock exteriors
all to be had at the cost of keeping an eagle eye peeled
and watching where I walked what was beneath my feet

I lost all my crystal treasure
misplaced somewhere between my adolescence and adulthood
but I still remember the thrill of unearthing
&nbsp; an innocuous rough rock protruding innocently enough from the road verge
until forcibly removed by scrabbling kicking and gouging
to reveal the reflective smoothness of hidden facets
to hold it against the sun to prove the degree of transparency

I'm older now in the city by the bay
I walk for my health and an overweight condition
I am not a shell collector no truly I am not but
I like to examine them pippis and snails that leave patterns
in the sand beneath the shallow waves
then wash up empty on the sand fragments of fan
occasional urchin balls sans prickling spines
and lately abalone shell with its nacreous pink-tinged luster

everyone around here can find abalone shell no surprise in that
there was a whole industry based around it on the bay and the only fun
is in finding a shell whole as large as the palm of a hand
without holes worn by sand or broken from the action of tide
I have found variations minuscule versions no larger than a thumbnail
each one smaller than the rest and too deliciously fragile to be ignored
I am searching them now each night on the beaches of the bay
as I walk for the sake of my health
with hunched shoulders and head leaning forward eyes to the ground
for no good reason save the collection of small treasure

I believe I will die a bent and wizened shape
in a contorted body frame
it is because of gravel gravel and shell

© Frank Faust

___________________ _____________ ___________________

Acknowledgements: 'He Was Beautiful' appeared in PINOCHIO’S LONG NEB, Smith Doorstop, 2000; 'Les Origines du Langage' from the chapbook 'Magritte's Stones' (Published by Lapwing Publications, Belfast, N. Ireland, 2001); 'Yussef' appeared in 'The Reader' issue no. 8, 2001.

___________________ _____________ ___________________

Compiling Editor: Christina Fletcher
Associate Editors: Terri Eynon, Simon Barraclough
Editorial Assistance: Sally Evans
___________________ _____________ ___________________