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Monthly Archives: October 2015

Keep Poems Alive Halloween

30 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by sallyevans35 in Uncategorized

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HALLOWEEN ISSUE

Bats, crows, monsters, it must be Halloween. Buried bodies haunting the woods, it is definitely Halloween. Excellent and enjoyable poems, as always on Keep Poems Alive.

We will accept poems in any form of English and related languages if they fulfil the pre-publication requirement. This time you have one in Scots. Here’s a link to the best Scots-English dictionary, should you require it. http://www.sld.ac.uk

Also I hope you can’t count, because I had five poems ready for Halloween and another one came in, so it’s here too. The poets are Andy Jackson, David Costello, Angela Topping, P.C. Vandall, Alexander Hutchison and Rona Fitzgerald.

A few favourite poems to read every weekend. Come back next week!

KPA Under-the-Bed-300x200

Andy Jackson
An Assumption Of Monsters

He told her there was something underneath her bed,
a fiend in slumber or a golem made from dust.
He promised to protect her, with no thought beyond
the flowers and the vows. She coupled with his ghost,
cooked dinners for the shape of what he’d been.
She loved a slasher film but sat and cursed
through all his arty flicks. She smoothed the bristles
of his fur, imagined poison pumping through his chest,
and wondered if his coat concealed the bludgeon
which would one day beat her skull until it burst.

She recognised the tightening of his jaw, the subtle
clicks and tics below his voice, the way he pursed
his lips before a kiss, as if the act of mingling their spittle
could pass her sickness on to him. This was not the worst
– his tongue would burn his symbol on the mantle
of her flesh, and she would squirm and twist,
denying him again. It wasn’t always possible
to tell the demons from the humans they possessed,
or to look the monster in the eye until the final
frenzied reel, with its unmasking of the beast.

First published in 2011 in New Writing Dundee.

 

KPA horseshoe bat

David J Costello
Horseshoe Bat

It must have been a keen blade
that eased you from night’s heart.
God’s own shrapnel
creasing the dark.
Your convulsing fragment
pressure-cracking the brittle black
like ice.

Transfixed beneath I watch
you stitch yourself
back to the sky.
An invisible repair
Disappearing
as I acquire your blindness.
The whole world dissolving
around you.

You are the dark moon.
The nocturnal crescent
orbiting unseen.
The flung shape
that always returns.

The above poem won the 2011 Welsh International Poetry Competition and was published by Ponty Press  in the anthology “Welsh Poetry Competition – The First Five Years”, 2011, and on the Competition website.


merry-halloween

Angela Topping
Maggoty Johnson

In Maggoty Woods it’s dark and grim.
The worms crawl out and the worms crawl in.
Maggoty’s buried six feet deep.
He rests his eyes but he’s not asleep.

Maggoty Johnson loved to dance.
with his cap and bells, he used to prance
and caper up and down on stage.
Now he’s at the skeleton age.

In Maggoty Woods there’s no church near.
The ground’s unholy, it’s dark and drear.
Maggoty chose it specially
as the sort of place he’d like to be.

Maggoty Johnson was called Lord Flame.
Now he goes by a different name.
He haunts these woods and he haunts them well.
Sooner or later you’ll be under his spell.

In Maggoty Woods it’s dark and grim.
The worms crawl out and the worms crawl in.
Maggoty’s buried six feet deep.
He rests his eyes but he’s not asleep.

Note: Samuel Johnson (1691-1773) not the Doctor, was Britain’s last professional jester. He is buried in woodland near Gawsworth Hall, Cheshire, on Maggoty Lane. A legend says that if you call his name 13 times on Hallowe’en, he will rise up and perform for you. Everything in this poem is true.

Highly commended in the Cheshire Prize for Children’s Literature and published in their anthology Wordlife (Chester University Press 2011)

KPA Workshop

P.C.Vandall
Full of Crow

She packs crows in her freezer.
Wounded black soldiers hard pressed
in crosses and rows. In spring,

a flurry of crows take flight
in her kitchen where she divides
them into piles. She slices

off soft plum heads, plucks violet
washed wings and snaps beaks and claws.
She slits the knife down, glides it

to the anus and pulls out
innards, entrails and gizzards.
With ice chests open, she spoons

out rich blackberry centers,
mashes bits of pulpy flesh
into mason jars, preserved

in pectin. Crows taste best on toast,
bagels, hot cakes and honey
buns. They migrate to her. Flocks

of children, women and men
cloak a highway in a plume
of smoke crooked as swan wings

yet black as mail. She serves out
a murder of crows made just
right from that paltry roadside

stand. They chew bitter sweetness
from the white picket fences
of their dark ravenous mouths.

Shortlisted for the Freefall Poetry contest, Calgary, Alberta, 2012, and published in Freefall Magazine. IMage: Earlshall Platter, Wemyss Pottery, Fife

Bewick

Alexander Hutchison
Aince Wuid, an Aye Waur

The dreary boys, the weary boys,
the boys that canna go –
Scrunty hens roon but-an-bens,
the quines that winna show.

Nae lowpin jauds, bit driddlan
slaw – wi skeel an skilp agley.
Mochie, moosy, mizzelt for nowt
fan aa the jaa gings by.

It’s hit the bar or hit the fleer –
(“By Christ, this sawdust’s nice, eh?)
It’s stirks an stovies: “Stookie, yer oot.
Nae need t’ speir ye twice, eh?”

Aa yon thirled, bunsucken crew
that quidna cock an crank it:
wid raither jook, or mooch a fry
– or draw yer bleed an bank it.

For dreary boys an weary boys
nae wappens in the schaw –
An aul wanthriven carlin, chiels,
is aa ye’ll clip an claw.

Scales Dog: Poems New and Selected (Salt: 2007)

KPAdoorway

Rona Fitzgerald
Samhain/All Hallows Eve

I feel your loss more at this time
with the gathering of the dead.
I wonder if you are at the doorway
waiting to move on, still.
I remember how you loved this season
with its abundance of colour – ioldaite
the last traces of our own flowering
as we head for oblivion.
Today I watched the final venting of autumn leaves
draining colour from my world
the wind raged with a ferocity that matched your own
as you fought to live and then, to die.

First published in the Dublin based Stinging Fly magazine, July 2011

Keep Poems Alive International

23 Friday Oct 2015

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Unusual forms of narrative this weekend: instructions, examination questions, a harangue addressed to a bird (why are we attracting so many good bird poems to Keep Poems Alive?) and a Gardeners Question Time question that gets out of hand. In Ira Lightman’s work, however, narrative could be said to mean something entirely different. You tell me. We’ll start with Ira’s poem, for which we have used a pdf. But please don’t all rush in with pdfs, this is an exception.

Again we are well represented internationally with poems from America and Canada as well as England and Scotland. Thanks to Robert Klein Engler, James Bell, Glen Sorestad, Vivien Jones and Ira Lightman. If you want to know more about our poets, look them up.

To send, see the first post in our August archive.

KPAmagicsquare

         Ira Lightman

KPAIrapoem

First published in Loving Phase Transitions, Sound & Language Press, Lowestoft, 1993

KPA best exams

Robert Klein Engler
Final Exam

Essay Question

Compare the touch of a lover’s hand on your shoulder to a red leaf falling on the grass. Are the weight of these gestures enough to break a heart? Make sure your answer includes a note of frost.

Multiple Choice:

a) To live without your lover is a waste of the body.
b) To live with one you don’t love is a waste of the spirit.
c) The body and the spirit are like the moon above a black lake.
d) All of the above.

True or False:

Nothing is whole that has not first been broken.

Fill in the Blank:

I had a drink with a man I knew in college years ago. He confessed he sleptwith the one I could never have. That night I dreamed I had a sore on mythigh. I squeezed it, and gold puss oozed out.

Extra Credit: Find the Metaphor-

salt
bone
snow

First published in pif magazine, October 1st, 1997

07 Ian Loch Venachar

James Bell
fishing for beginners

it is usual to have a line
           either actual or one that
is carried in the head –
success does depend on this

it is better to be as close
to water as you can – preferably
                           with a little depth – though
fish are not known for their intellect

it is good to practise not to sing
or chatter for this is serious
business and depends on
concentration from both the fish and you

it is customary to throw the fish
              the line – include bait at one end
                          hold the other – if nothing happens
be assured the fish has not drowned

it will take lots of time as all serious
fishing does – may never fini
the scale of the task is so huge –
remember you are preparing to invade another world

it is said that if you catch a fish
              and let it go the fish will soon forget
only you will remember –
good to know if continuing to fish

First published in Shearsman Magazine, 2009 and then as the title poem of the author’s collection from tall-lighthouse, 2010

KPAsnowy o wl

Glen Sorestad
Snowy Owl Snarls Traffic in Saskatoon

Where did you come from, splendid winged one?
Just passing through enroute to fields teeming
with mice and voles, nocturnal vittles?

What a strange perch, this asphalt patch of road
to alight, the mayhem of motorists, here
in the driveway entrance to a shopping mall.

Look around, snowy star! You’ve managed
what even traffic lights rarely can with certainty —
backed traffic to a standstill with your presence.

Rare sight on any road at any time,
your sudden presence has changed the tenor
of the day, slowed the rush, brought the police

to direct traffic and ensure your safety, summone
wildlife officials to attend your needs. This small
respite from the usual urban ennui, a news item,

a driver’s anecdote, a curiosity, quickly forgotten.
Still, perhaps there’s a smidgeon of comfort we
can glean from your visit: despite our failures,

our seeming lack of will to do what’s right,
this day suggests that hope manifests itself
in unexpected places, in wee but wondrous ways.  

First published on the website, Your Daily Poem, January 2012. It subsequently appeared in South African poet Louis Esterhuizen’s blog on the Afrikaaner website Versindaba

path to Polmaddy image by Ann Cook

Vivien Jones
‘Gardeners’ Question Time’ at Polmaddy *

‘Maisie Barbour farmhand and herbalist’

‘So, what can you recommend for a raw Galloway hillside
upon which an abandoned settlement sinks in its own echoes ?
A whaleback horizon, black at dusk, guiding soft constant rainfall
onto earth pocked with rocks and fibrous grasses tough enough
to capture soil in plaited roots, our own shit for manure.
We plant in rigs, sharing the sweet west lie, only the toughest
crops will throw themselves skywards, defying the slashing wind,
onions, small as marbles, cooked whole, make pungent soup.
I gather the healing plants, for bitter gruels and poultices,
called to wounds and vomitings, my wealth in my apron folds,
I keep them from the earth with the fruit of the earth.
The children dig granite stones, stacked in cairns with which
we build an inn, we stop the pilgrims in their path to Whithorn,
faith makes them thirsty, we are rich, we have many buildings.
No more, one summer they brought the sheep and we, like sheep,
were herded away to the barren towns.
Will you make a garden here where once the stripe of the rigs told
where the fruitful earth lay ?’

* Polmaddy is the site of an 18th century ‘ferme-toun’ almost lost among the tough grasses of the Galloway countryside.

First published in ‘About Time, Too’ , Indigo Dreams, 2010

Keep Poems Alive International

16 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by sallyevans35 in Uncategorized

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Unfamiliar places, beautiful places, and potentially awkward questions dominate this Sunday’s poems, in which ladies of a certain calling, hoards of secret memories, and the desolate café of a famous painting, are interspersed with unexpected insights into the life of the countryside.

This weekend’s poems are by Deborah Tyler-Bennett, Sam Smith, Jon Plunkett, Lesley Burt, and Richard Livermore.

Bona fide poets are invited to send previously published poems for this rolling anthology. English of any origin welcome. How to submit, see the first post in August.

Different poems every Sunday, to read again and again.

KPAbawdy

Deborah Tyler-Bennett
Miss Cole at Queen-street, Golden-square

An attractive young woman, formerly of Wardour-street,
and
now reduced in price.

‘Foolish’, Bawds chide. I’m like to fall,
if George’d never come to me at all
perhaps would be well off.
Not my usual, didn’t want that much,
while fortune lasted, generous,
coming these dog days
cloaked in Madam Geneva, changed
wits, unknowing of the chiming hour.

Miss Anderson, dwelling where I once was,
sees lodgings cheapen, bids me love
better protection, rise above
a Favourite: ‘More often on his back than us!’
She’s wholly right, of course.

Latterly, I find G’s bed and board,
insist he rest when all others are gone,
George never mimicked taking me by force,
played Hazard with my purse,
once struck.

None of this made me so fond I’d want
to pull him from the icy Thames.

Shiners diminish, plate-hearted villains grin,
when he weaves near, pliant with Gin,
all they ask’s easy fleecing.
Miss A says tender girls wind up within
the Marshalsea, wait on their boys in Bedlam.

Correct again.

Yet, I recall one Sunday after rain,
glimpsing him in the street
with richly-coated men …

Raising his hat… Left them to speak …
Calling my name.

First published in Critical Survey, 22, 3, 2010, 96-97. From a sequence about Eighteenth-Century harlots and bawdy houses, the Ladies of Harris’s List. Shiners are coins.

S&B1


Sam Smith
Rhinog Fawr

Among bracken green or ginger
black rocks whiten dry. Earth’s bones
breaking through – shoulderblade escarpments,
knuckled outcrops and vertebrae ridges
piled one atop the other,
the lower painted with heather.

Here houses built of mountain rock,
blisters with angles they hunker
free of outside ornament
ducking the clutching wind.

Within clouds, imprisoned by the weather,
only their habits for company,
here grow the gentle madnesses
that come from mountain solitude.

Mouths that do not open between meals,
or only to chirp endearments to a pet,
maybe make sarcastic riposte to a mantel photo,
come to be surprised by an answer,
astounded by an interruption.

Here where the moss grows
and the wind blows cold or wet,
but always blows;
here innocent foibles are formed,
a nation’s character shaped.

first published in The New Welsh Review, and was shortly after included in the author’s 1997 Odyssey collection Skin&Bones. The accompanying image is by Lyn Sutterby.

KPA chickenshed

Jon Plunkett
A chicken shed full of secrets

I did not set out to visit
this chicken shed full of secrets.
But one thing led to another
for that is the way in this strange place.
One neuron fires the next
and encoded data emerges
from recesses or chemical pools,
synapses or electrodes –
mysteries yet to be unlocked.

Suddenly I am here,
a place I had no idea I carried with me.
A wooden structure
the size and shape of an old ridge tent.
No longer occupied.
The sun is shining on the surrounding field.
Grasshoppers are rubbing their knees.
Inside the shed is a box of gathered things:
I remember calling them my secrets.

It appears they have lived up to their name.
But my question now is not
what those things may have been,
or if some trigger exists
that will draw them from within.
My question is:
how many other chicken sheds
have I carried through the years
and what lies behind their flimsy doors?

First published in Open Mouse, 2010

KPA cup-of-coffee-beans

Lesley Burt
Nighthawks

Past midnight: streets are silent; nothing stirs;
no pigeons, cats or traffic. Not a soul
is out there; though unlit rooms – with shutters
like eyelids partly open – seem watchful.

Inside the diner is a different world:
fluorescent light on yellow walls and chrome.
A jukebox plays and coffee cups are filled
by staff who mention wives asleep at home.

A girl feels safe within four walls,
strong men around the place; outside you never know
who waits for you in shadows, still unseen.

And anyone who passes by this scene
might watch from darkened doorways over there,
as if this window were a giant screen.

Lesley Burt

(Nighthawks, painted by Edward Hopper 1942, Art Institute of Chicago)

First published in the Interpreters House, 46, Feb 2011

KPAheron

Richard Livermore
The Heron-God 

The angle-poise heron darts
a spear into the river, parts
the water as did God the sea
for Moses and the Jews to flee.

And for all the fish can tell,
the heron is a god as well,
who parts the water from the sky
and singles out which fish should die.


First published by The Reader, based at Liverpool University, 2010

Keep Poems Alive International

09 Friday Oct 2015

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Office life is the same the world over, it seems. Two poems of resistance to the problems of earning your crust, with an analytical look at a timekeeper. As for birdwatching, nothing is as it seems, while disaster can strike at any time around you and leave you miraculously unscathed.

This weekend’s poets are Martin Golan, Maurice Devitt, Carolyn Oulton, Scott Edward Anderson, and Sarah James (not to be confused with Sally James whose poem appeared last Sunday).

Different poems every Sunday, to read again and again. How to submit, see the first post in August.

KPA officedoor

Martin Golan
Job Interview

His desk is nightmare huge
swimming through the blueness of his room
His body shakes in robot-jerks
his fingers rattle on your resume

He glances at your life: the yawn
of lonely years you stifled shut
with outstretched dates. You ooze
enthusiasm, alertly cough
You explain the reason for insane acts
Your words have no substance, they sputter and gasp
toward the ceiling, bubbles
from a deep-sea diver’s mask

He is younger than you
has never been outside of things
never drowned in the order of his days
or yearned for what he already had
or mourned what he had not yet lost
You cry, you scream, you leap
on the desk and dance, singing
madly to yourself
And when you leave
his door will not close properly

First published in the Paterson Literary Review in 2012, issue 40.

2015-10-01 16.18.17

Maurice Devitt
The Watch

When tidying my house
I found your watch,
once splendent silver,
now a dappled snakeskin

of rust, fixoflex
set like crooked teeth.
I was seven
when I picked it up

to try it on.
Anti-magnetic.
Shock-resist.
Water-proof.

Each word a challenge.
Thought I could make
the hands go backwards,
wanted to open the back

and find the 17 jewels.
It stopped one day
at two-fifteen
and held its breath

for thirty years.
I wind it now
and the mechanism spins
through memories of you.

In two hours it gains
twenty minutes,
keen to catch up
on everything you missed.

Appeared in the Phizzfest Anthology, 2011 as a runner up in the Phizzfest Poetry competition

KPAtelephone

Carolyn Oulton
The Reception of South Square

Gray’s Inn, where portly types
separate their plumage to get hands
at trouser pockets, squat
personages, mute from a slight distance,
words banked up like sandbags in the sun.

Either side of the arch company buildings,
one used now for conferences, down
to a basement with boxes of files against the wall.
On its other side supports Reception.
company of duly bored ambition drifts to watch.

New important person trying hard
in answer to my joke,
to stress his own unfitness for the answering of phones.
Gallantly deferring to my skill
in deprecation of his intellect.

Today I am not answering the phones.
I shall let them ring all weekend.
Spare no thought for bans forbidding temps
to send personal emails at half minute intervals
thirty five hours in the week.

One phone call I smile for, when it comes
an hour or two beyond this early morning, where
I watched across the window as your face
slowly merged with sprays of leaf,
an arch of green and cream and so from sight.

First published in South in 2004.

KPA warblers

Scott Edward Anderson
Confusing Fall Warblers

“You changed your name from Brown to Jones and mine from Brown to Blue…” George Jones

Was it Hank Williams
she called the Nashville warbler,
or was it the black-throated blue?
Was it Wilson’s warbler
she heard in the bog up north
chattering chi chi chi chi chi chet chet?

Yellow-throat or orange-crowned,
from Tennessee, Connecticut, or
Canada, the prothonotary
clerks for the vireo from Philly,
who is neither lawyer nor warbler,
but is often mistaken–

Was it the hooded warbler
that startled her from the thicket,
or mourning warbler’s balancing notes
chirry chirry, chorry chorry,
that made her cock her head
to listen for its secret?

And tell me, tell me truly,
was it only
that sad country song
playing on the car radio
that made her cry?

(After Roger Tory Peterson’s A Field Guide to the Birds, plate 52)

First published in the literary journal Isotope and later in Fallow Field, Aldrich Press, 2013

1-line 1 pic 1(1)

Sarah James
Unsubmerged

In Dominica, an earthquake cracked
Roger’s home like a walnut.
His wife’s omelette pan skipped off the stove,
their bed hopped the floor, chairs
pirouetted into shaking walls.
But cotted snug in a box for their breakfast –
half a dozen eggs, unbroken.

Visiting his mother in Grenada,
a hurricane peeled her house like an orange.
Winds stacked roofs, turned
tamarind trees into mops, uprooted
nutmeg plantations but left the glass
of his daughter’s portrait a smooth,
unrippled ocean.

Half-submerged in New Orleans, Roger’s shoes
walked in pairs on water. Tables arked,
chairs waded out the doors
and dead rats trailed the apartment stairs,
while his daughter’s dress
hung freshly pressed on her bedroom door:
dry and pink with flowers.

Shortlisted in the Plough Prize, 2009, and first published in Into the Yell, Circaidy Gregory Press, 2010, which won third prize in the International Rubery Book Award 2011.

Keep Poems Alive International

01 Thursday Oct 2015

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The memories, the hawk, the rabbit, the woman considering herself as a portrait, and the demoiselle. That’s a hefty lot of self awareness for the week. More poems to be read again and again.

The poets are Irene Hossack, Pete Mackey, Wynn Weldon, Sally James, and Uche Ogbuji.

Previously published poems are welcomed for this rolling anthology. Different poems every Sunday.

kingshousefire

Irene Hosssack
Love Letter To My Family 

I remember everything. I remember for instance
a birthday meal at our favourite restaurant,
all of us dancing in the hallway at the bells,
spinning on the carnival rides at the Kelvin Hall,
building snowmen in the grounds of that
awful hotel on Christmas Eve, our wildness
not welcomed there. Joints and tarot readings
late at night, Wayne’s World on the TV,
eating noodles and pizza from down the road,
past the church and the City Bakeries. James Taylor,
and Shelleyan Orphan on CD.

I remember the beauty configured in snow-weighted trees
seen from the train as I travelled North, writing letters to absent friends,
wishing to stay here, not capturing but remaining somehow like this.
Lying under stars in the snow, enchanted, not feeling cold

and the dark-white-frost night lit by the moon and the stars.

And later, spending hours arguing lovingly
on the subject of truth and cultural difference,
trying to understand chaos theory
in between the sups from cups of Cadbury’s Crème.
Resting on Sunday afternoons with the fire blazing,
hearing ghost stories from uncles with not long to go,
giving us goosebumps on our skins, making
them so vulnerable and human as if for the first
time. We all share this desire for the inexplicable,
we share a family tree in whose roots we are entwined.
Always remember,
my spirit lives amongst your chaotic laundry
and microwaved Marks and Spencer’s food.

First published in Poetry Wales, April 1997. 

img224

Pete Mackey
The Hawk

The hawk changed by the second
Each scrap of grey Ohio sky
With the difference of its motion

Over the leafless trees and fallow
Black earth of early winter
Around that interstate we drove

After we buried him. I thought
A griever’s thought: It’s a message,
A quick, half-conceived thought

Trying to become belief. As if 
The dead spoke in miraculous flight
Almost too quick to see—as a bird

Then a bird of prey. He’s gone.
That’s the cold truth. Stop thinking
That hawk followed something.

First published in 2007 in Innisfree Poetry Journal.
Image: Adam Grim Photography

KPAlost glove

Wynn Wheldon
The Glove
                   for Pom

Ten of us perhaps had already passed
and it was you, my friend, with whom I walked,
who noticed first the baby rabbit
bang in the middle of the lane, on its side,
an eye open, lightly breathing, barely living.

Obviously we had to put it from its misery.
I remembered killing a broken-winged pigeon
with a shovel, how it took two whacks at least,
how something inside it refused to die
or something inside me lacked courage to kill.

But you looked about, saw a single old glove,
mangy, filthy, forgotten at the wayside,
and declared that “that’s what it’s there for”,
took it from its yellowed plot, curled it in your palm,
and tenderly scooped up the baby rabbit,

and set it upright off the beaten track. We stared
for half a minute: no motion, but not dead either.
You were sanguine: better closer to the earth,
come life or death, than exposed on the path.
I was waiting for you, so you moved first.

I was waiting because whatever sentimental
anthropomorphism I had just witnessed
seemed not that at all, but a lesson in love,
and you do not leave before your teacher.
And you may wish one day for such a glove.

First published in The Interpreter’s House 49, 2012

KPAwomanstudyingportrait

Sally James
Portrait of a woman

No Pre-Raphaelite ever painted me
No Madonna image reflected in my eyes
Or fallen woman begging for redemption,
I can only be found in the peaceful and tranquil setting
Of a Constable, whose rolling downs and trembling streams
Are the hallmarks of my anatomy,
Mother nature in repose perhaps?

Lowry captured my humble origins,
In his sad and lonesome matchstick figures
As they dash their weary way through street and town,
And, in my persecuted moments,
Turner captured me in his sunsets,
As the blood of the innocents splattered upon canvas.

Only Picasso knew me as I really am
As the dismembered being with the seeing eye,
Trying to make order out of chaos,
Yet, I am no masterpiece of classical imagery
Caught upon canvas,
I am the microscopic dot
Where pencil sketches begin,
To be moulded and shaped to life’s situations
By many gods, but dominated by none.

Then, when the great eraser of all time
Envelops me in her darkened mantle
And banishes me from being,
I will still remain, for those who have eyes to see,
The projected imagery of woman and the mother of time.

First published in Openings 8, Open University Poets Anthology 1990.

img228

Uche Ogbuji
Demoiselle

     What’s happenin’ Butterfly?  What’s happenin’?
— Ladybug

Let’s go over this again…

Got people swaying like
Brown Grass.  Mud sucking up
against our toes, horns blowing salt
Through our noses.
There’s a flower now.

Red like liquor in a brother’s heart,
Pushing through the joint
Like it’s about to break free.
But that can’t be your lipstick
Cause you wear no lipstick:
You’re a soul flame.

Every bush has its berry
With soft fingers and a long tongue,
Slow, wide open like a Sunday afternoon.
But she doesn’t fool me,
Alcohol all on her breath
Like a ghost in the window
Of an abandoned house.
Her hips don’t tell my hands like yours.
You’re a soul flame.

I know you’re hiding warm coals
Deep in your belly
And I need an oven to dry in—that’s word.
So settle in against my chest—
Don’t mind my wet shirt.
It’s about a quarter to the moon
Ripping Scorpio in two,
And pouring stars on our faces.
I’m open like naked skin on a summer night,
And you’re a soul flame.

“First published in Corium Magazine in 2010, issue 2.”

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