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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ (the poetry) WORM ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 17
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Morning Raga
It's a dazzling solo
demanding complete concentration:
nudge the sun higher
cue chittering birdsong
offer yellow-skinned bananas
to a blue bowl.
All my arms are busy.
I hum a sloka of great power.
My feet trample the hell out of
demon Inertia.
It's a virtuoso turn
and I dedicate it to you
with a cup of coffee.
You receive it and smile
holding your hand above my head
in the gesture which means
'Daughter, be always victorious.'
© Nancy Gandhi
Peggy Tahir's editor's choice. This poem has a quiet tone and great subtlety. The language is precise and conveys a slow rolling movement, similar to sunrise. This is the magic of the poem for me. Wonderful imagery throughout.
six portraits
i ria munk
flushed face amidst
colours of spring gardens,
flowers too bright for untimely graves.
ii emilie flöge
bride of fashion in a water-colour gown
flowing like a river to anthracite seas.
wavelets circle her body,
gently, on spherical fabric.
iii sonja knips
caught between fullness and emptiness,
her dress, a timid pink,
contradicts her eyes.
she faces the future.
iv eugenia primavesi
matronly, hiding her actress past,
she is a garden: peony cheeks,
anemone lips, earthen eyes.
v marie henneberg
a half-grin despairs
on this face that never laughs.
white is wasted on her.
vi adele bloch-bauer II
she stares, disbelieving -
a spectre crash-landed
in an allotment garden
after a slight spring rain.
(inspired by 6 paintings by gustav klimt)
© michaela a. gabriel
The Singing Lesson
My heels dimple the thick polythene sheet,
but leave the Chinese rug beneath untouched.
I tuck my bag neatly beneath the polished table.
She makes me ning my scales, feeling the bridge of my nose
for vibrations. When I am more advanced
I will be permitted to ning-nu. To do so now
would risk displacing the voice from its seat in the sinus.
She hammers with one sharp nailed finger.
It is a cheap piano. She does not like my diction,
unstrings the guts from my gs. My ings no longer ring.
Later the tape recorder rattles on mahogany
My small voice resonates. She is pleased.
She teaches me to breathe, raising the ribs of my back -
a heaving bosom, as she says, would be too disconcerting.
I concentrate, hold my breath, let out a steady stream
that would bend but not snuff a candle flame -
and fart. She is not disconcerted.
I tip into her hand a fistful of silver-
she charges on a sliding scale. In the hall
her stroke-skewed husband gives me sweets,
the old half sighted dog shuffles his rolling belly into my hands.
She watches me, as I descend the terraced garden.
Birds are singing. I hum. I can feel the air in my lungs.
The vibrations in the bridge of my nose.
© Helen Clare
M.A.Griffiths' editor's choice. "It is not easy to pick one poem as a favourite, but I found myself reading and re-reading this poem, charmed by the cool and lucid voice. The details are vivid and there is an unmistakable authority and precision in the writing."
The Waiting Room
The highlight of the holy year was visiting the dentist.
A sister went with her. Out of the convent, down
the drive, watching everything she never normally saw,
the world beyond their hushed walls, cloistered garden.
Turn right for the city. They observed their disciplined silence,
reading this foreign land through codes, like prayers
and charms: The Delicious House, The Frog and Bucket.
She almost said: "Do you remember when
Mother sent out for fish and chips- our holiday?" then
she remembered who she was: someone obedient to
bells; beyond place and possessions, who never
left the House except for funerals, dentists.
Almost excited at this coloured room with music
and shining people in magazines she caught herself recalling.
She folded her hands in her habit and kept her eyes down.
A child said: "Why are those ladies all in black?
Why do they have heads like the Muslim mums at school?"
Her mother, superior, shushed her. The receptionist said:
"Can I just check your name?" She turned to ask
the sister: she used to be Mary, several years ago,
then Sister Simon Paul. The other looked past her.
She felt blood rise, stain skin under her wimple.
She had to break the silence : "I do not know,
I am afraid." The clock stopped. The room waited.
© Martyn Halsall
Megaera in the Cocktail Hour
She is standing with the dark-eyed man
in the corner. He is twitchy with his glass
casting glances at the wall where the clock
escaped. It is because, his teeth remarked,
he has to be elsewhere, locking the gate
against defenders. She has been through
several sieges, has eaten ripe, unnamed flesh
and sucked on roast rat-tails.
She reaches down with tended talons,
tweaks the rule of stockings
which she wears on her shinbones
as a statement of entente.
Icebergs clink in crystal,
liners cruise proud and unprepared
across the carpet. Passengers wave
from the shore, their journey in the air.
She is growing feathers as he squirms.
She preens, pecks, crows 'Darling.'
He is nestward bound, destined
to feed her green and gold fledglings. The rush
of wings bears him out into the carpark
and pins him to leather. He has no chance
to semaphore. He misses Mayday.
© M.A. Griffiths
Christina Fletcher's editor's choice: "This poem is compulsive viewing for me. It feels like a movie and I love the wonderfully sinister star. It's such a delicious, surreal, timeless statement of female power. I chuckle every time I see the swooping finale."
Almost a Small Extinction
Nudged by the startle and swell
that penetrates the intimate dome,
her rosy fists thrum inside the womb
to The Magic Flute and she taps
up and down her bones
from one room into another, hangs
onto the cord's warmth, stands
and peers through her mother's
navel, begins to forget how close
she'd come to being dissolved,
whisked away as in a "nuclear winter."
She unwinds with a divertimento,
lets go, avoids rope burn.
In a reverie, she rides a comet's tail
propelled by star wind.
Prebirth wail, unheard, grows dim,
stammer turns into a hum.
Sheathed in a caul, braced
to be born, she will soon know
her voice, fill unworn shoes
marking time.
© Marilyn Injeyan
Why risk your arm with a greedy lover?
a toad would love you better,
sit grinning by your side,
hear your murmurs to the wind;
a bear would dance you round
nuzzle your ear, bristle up close,
snuffle the lines in your hand;
spiders would spin you a dream,
hurl you wild-eyed into the night,
leave you in silken bonds;
a snake would swallow its tail,
shed skins to make you shoes,
draw crazed circles in your mind.
No, best give me your arm;
I eat well, don't need
to devour the hands I hold:
we two are of a kind.
© Christine Boursfield
Designer Waitress
Madam, do you think I have designs on your husband?
I have no such designs.
Your husband is very gracious, it is true
and his wallet is expensive pig-skin --
yet I am not drawn to the little hairs which protrude from his nostrils.
I do not wish to finger his temples.
His short pink neck does not entice me.
I have no designs on him.
If I had designs, though, if I had any
they would be very grand designs.
I would paint him naked in my bathroom,
O aging Cupid;
I would place a burning arrow between his teeth
like a cigarette;
I would drape his vanquished shoulders
with lust and ashes.
But I see these designs in your eyes searching mine
and I have no such designs.
© Helena Nelson
SELF ASSEMBLY
- a minute
Lost the instructions weeks ago
and didn’t know,
a foolish thing,
that this would bring
disaster. Clueless, I will try
once more. Then die.
Or fall to bits.
Kids are in fits
MDF in heaps, and each bolt
weird, to a fault.
I wish I’d paid
for ready-made.
© Philip Burton
A Letter to My Brother
Rain dapples the sidewalk
in the heat of a late summer sun.
When I wake from my nap,
the concrete may be dry
or wet like a tortoise
basting under a Mojave sky.
My roof is repaired, metal shingles;
the ceiling still stained,
floor buckled from the flood.
I look for rain in Li Po's poems,
I find ponds and river rapids.
My brother wrote me a letter
but I have not answered him.
There are cherries to pick
and paths to shovel -
but he knows I do not like cherry pits
and I have a bad back.
Here between salt shores,
the mail is slow and may not reach
my brother until the basement overflows.
I miss spring's sudden showers
and the call of the ringneck.
© Gary Blankenship
of what do the old men speak
and what do the old men speak of
these men still young in mind
but carrying six and seven decades
of life upon their shoulders
where do their thoughts travel
when the conversation is relaxed
the beer cold
and the open fire ablaze
~
...can you see why I get angry
when she is so demanding so unreasonable
she is eighty-nine and still
she treats me like a second-best child
me my friend
her eldest
who's done everything for her all these years
ha
at least yours can do something for herself
my father took to his bed
for five whole years before he died
had to be cleaned when he soiled himself
didn't recognise me in the end
wouldn't have mattered who cleaned him
or if it happened or not
think yourself lucky
~
... but there were some that survived the war
and only afterwards were killed
forced to march through slovenia
all the way to belgrade in no shoes
shot dead as they fell
my father had to take food for them
with his horse and dray
I was only a young rat
but I saw them
yes and I read just not long ago
that some survivor told of a factory site
where they herded 2,500 of the poor bastards
and then mined the place
blew them all up
the papers said he told them where to look
to find the mass grave
only bones of course
but there are still some that remember about it all
oh yes there are still plenty of secrets
they don't know what they'll find now they're looking
and they don't know from when either
~
.. when I was in the army
everyone but two of us
signed the red book
my captain called me every kind of fool
for saying that I was catholic
told me I'd never get a job
would cause grief for my family
but I said to him
my deda and my baka were catholic
my mama and tata were catholic
my little daughter at home was christened catholic
who was I to say that I wasn't a catholic
oh you fool he said
we could educate you
we could elevate you
we could make something of you
but you are a catholic
you are good now for nothing
that was in '53
by '56 we were out of the country
my people had something
they had a house and a little land
every day I rode my bicycle past that house
on my way to work
our house and we had no rights to it
every day that burned me
I was supposed to go in the army in two weeks
but already had papers to leave for germany
I went to the army man and asked to be excused
they had taken everything
they didn't want us so we would go
if they would kindly excuse my army service
the captain looked at me and said no
you owe the army eighteen months
someone from the town was working as an assistant
just outside the door when I came out
he said what's up
so I told him
he looked at me a minute
took my papers and went in to the captain
he was gone a long time but then comes out
said just one word to me
run
so I ran my friend
I ran all the way to germany
~
why were the girls of gat so much prettier
than the girls of vel-ish-kov-tsi
they weren't prettier at all
don't you remember maritsa and helena
militsa and the rest
ho boy they were good some of them
do you remember militsa was one for the boys
she'd be out the back with someone
and her mother turns up
we'd say she went the opposite direction
I saw her not long ago
said she was glad she sowed her wild oats
and was able to settle down
vel-ish-kov-tsi girls were good
the reason we got on so well
with girls from gat
was that we finished work at the factory at 9:00pm
and went to that dirty waterhole to bathe
the gat girls finished work and went there too
so we swam together and got to know each other
they used to say that you dived under
to check what they were wearing underneath
yes they used to say that
and I did
but the water was so dirty you could never see anything
but it was good to tease them
~
there's no one left there anymore
all the old crowd are dead now
no point in going back just to see a cousin
twice-removed on my mothers side
all of that is finished now
still we did all right
in germany and australia
let's take a look at the tomatoes in the garden
you don't get tomatoes like this in germany
© Frank Faust
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Compiling Editor: Christina Fletcher
Associate Editors: M.A. Griffiths; Peggy Tahir
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