Picaroon - Issue #5 - November 2016

Issue #5
November 2016
Edited by Kate Garrett
All poems copyright © 2016 individual authors
Selection/issue copyright © 2016 Kate Garrett

This issue is dedicated to two of the most beautiful rogues the
world has ever seen
Melissa Lee Garrett
7 May 1968 – 14 November 2016
Beloved aunt / surrogate big sister of our editor; wild and free and
resilient and loving
&
Leonard Norman Cohen
21 September 1934 – 7 November 2016
Beloved poet and musician to millions; soulful and mystical and
above all human, just like you

This Month’s Rogue Poems ● November 2016
The Other Side
Ava C. Cipri
Shelter Us from the Dark Rain
Ojo Taiye
The Old Note Book
James H Duncan
Jennie
Charlotte Ansell
Medea
Monika Kostera
Ultrasound
Zoë Sîobhan Howarth-Lowe
Black Dolls
Jackie Biggs
The Mending Ghost
Lesley Quayle
47 Miles Inland
Amy Kinsman
At Noblett’s
Derek Coyle
Mushrooms
Cheryl Pearson
Beating
Bethany W Pope

Conversation with a Sister
Nenad Trajkovic
The Telling of Blue
Jane R Rogers
Memories of a Soldier’s Dying
David Susswein
A Boy’s Text Message in Headlines
Emma Lee
Initiation into the Order
Jo Burns
Bull
Brett Evans
Pick-Up
John D. Robinson
Sleeping with a Bearded Man
Shauna Robertson
When Somebody Outdrew You
Bobby Steve Baker
Dewey-Eyed Farm Girls
Holly Day
The Next Morning
Courtney LeBlanc
A Real Man
Jessica Mookherjee
My Other Coat
Paul Brookes

No Closure
Pat Edwards
All I Want for Christmas
John Grey
Caffeine
Steven Bruce

The Other Side
Ava C. Cipri
Honey please, this is me talking to you
through the looking glass. You darkened my door
along with everything else.
Stop walking, but run for your life:
become a deadly weapon; carry a stiletto, love,
if you go chasing rabbits. Men
don’t feel you anymore and I’ve given up on waiting.
Get up, admit it is over. And one pill makes you small.
I’m going back, don’t come around here,
go ask Alice.
This cento is sourced from the lyrics of Jefferson Airplane’s “White
Rabbit” songwriter Grace Slick (1967); Tom Petty and The
Heartbreakers’ “Don't Come Around Here No More” songwriters Tom
Petty and Dave Stewart (1985), and Stevie Nicks’ “Alice” songwriters
Stevie Nicks and Rupert Hine (1989).

Shelter Us from the Dark Rain
Ojo Taiye
(for Romeo)
shouldn’t i give you something else
something outside of myself
the many pastiche behind the eyes
and hands of Picasso
in the commonplaces of the asylum
in the narrow dairy of my mind
will it not shock you?
if you found out that
i am animal waiting
for a butcher’s knife;
an accident of hope
sometimes, an inverted bowl –
you wouldn’t rage in your own bowl
albeit, i am not whole
i see things in all shades of black
will the world go away for a while?
i bleed purple in places deeper than
you could ever imagine.

The Old Note Book
James H Duncan
the last thing inscribed
was “her eyes swing away
like blue jays in flight”
but it was the old note book
and I couldn’t remember
who it was about—maybe
nobody I knew, or her
though her eyes weren’t blue;
none of them were, come
to think of it
the handwriting just
above that entry read “flash
bulb morning through the
train window” in the same ink
so, a stranger then,
a woman with blue eyes
who departed a train along
the Hudson River some years
back whose eyes sail
like birds in flight
into the lifespan of another
man or woman or
some other miraculous state
of being entirely
and then, in the old note book,
a black line beneath demarcating
the years passing by
farewell, blue eyes in flight

Jennie
Charlotte Ansell
You meet me from the tube,
bare feet, impossibly
micro shorts, pixie hair.
‘You could still be seventeen…
in the dark’ I say,
dodging your shove.
As if we could peel away the
years like flaky skin, go back
to the cold weather shelter work;
your nearly indecipherable
Belfast vowels, penchant for denim
and that prick, who scrunched
you into a ball until
you rolled out from under
to waltz down Brixton High St
with the gentle Italian
you couldn’t love
but who wouldn’t break you.
Not much could; incorrigible grin
and mischief, those obscene
vulva- toed boots you bought,
the time you met Prince Charles,
gave him your business card with a wink,
queen of the faux pas, regaling
any room with your tales, that laugh.
Still all eyes and legs at forty two,
talking faster than the boil of the expresso pot,
our time together in meagre slices now,
not the weekend slabs we used to have
that even then weren’t enough.

You come in for a wee while
I clean my teeth,
I’m trying to digest your news;
the Brighton house you’ve put an offer on.
Fourteen years of making the sofa cushions
into a bed on your living room floor,
in the house that watched us grow up.
I let myself out at five am,
walk into the subdued pale
of a Tottenham morning,
tell myself a few hundred
miles more won’t hurt.
Remind myself,
I’ve always loved the sea.

Medea
Monika Kostera
Mother of untouched teddies,
smooth identical dolls, and of plushie
rabbits, hanging by the ear at checkout.
Of ready-made cards, wishing on
birthdays to best dads
in the world. Of mugs
lined up, wearing
red red hearts
on their sleeves. Mother
whom no one shall mock,
not like the rest.
Holy mother, pray for us,
pray for all that has been cut
off
and thrown away.

Ultrasound
Zoë Sîobhan Howarth-Lowe
The transformation is almost complete:
an embryo suspended in amniotic fluid;
swelling as we fast-forward through months
of tentative pre-natal footage, recorded
by anxious doctors at the I.V.F. clinic.
Hold the negative up against time and watch
as it changes: a microscopic expanding circle,
throbbing with a faint pulse. A globe encapsulating
hope. See the arm as it flexes for the first time,
and the legs curl up, toes arching to touch the nose.
Months of tests and medications, daily injections
into yesterday’s bruises, result in a growing bump
that started as an uncertain blip on the ultrasound.
Now we see a somersaulting black and white image,
trying to kick its way out of the photograph.

Black dolls
Jackie Biggs
She sits in swirling dust
as she knits
with fine black yarn.
Only dolls.
Only black,
even their eyes.
All day
in a shaded room,
where the motes
float
in rays filtered
through tiny gaps in blinds,
she crochets around coal dust,
knots stitches in silk,
makes tassels.
Tiny fingers create Goya’s Black Duchess,
covered in her mourning lace,
from her hair to her tiny,
pointed shoes.
One plain one purl
and there grows the Marquesa de Santa Cruz,
mantilla floating in a breeze,
veils and shawls, layer on layer.
A fine figure in billowing skirts,
a flash of scarlet pinches her waist
above the frills and flutter of taffeta,
twisted and woven,
where lace rustles
around the swish
of satin.

She knits and
she frowns at the little blaze
of red.
Even her piano plays
only in minor keys.
All day she sits
in the swirling motes
as she knits
and knots and twirls her yarns.
Only dolls,
only black,
they sit in twilight
in perfect rows on shelves
all around the sooty room.
While in her night-time dreams a crow calls
from a lone tree,
rooks gather on great towers,
shouting their stories over
broken walls
and a raven ruffles his perfect black wings
ready to fly.
A gulp of swallows swoops low
over a locked-up memory
in her darkened life;
and the green sheen
on the black of the magpie’s tail feather
shines bright
in her closed-in mind.
Black swans gather
in their grace,
a bank of sails on a sleepy lake,
they seem made of coal,
hacked out of ancient strata,

fashioned from the gloss of black minerals.
No light escapes their slick patina,
they suck in her surprise
at seeing them at all,
and glide with it
and mill together among weeds,
trapped in tar.
Red squints of beak
show among feathers
and flashes of scarlet
bleed under scrapes.
I am the one,
the black swan –
listen
to my song.
But the chorus has no tune.
Necks curl and bend,
mirror each other,
make hearts
in their mating game,
but she sees only the tar backs,
the swan black,
and she’s gone back …
before she was born.
She wakes in the hour before dawn
to the blackbird’s song,
and a taste of bitter on her tongue.
As light seeps in through cracks,
she rises,
and looks first
to her rows of dolls.

Unravelled yarns,
threads of black
fall in coils,
like the soft hair of
the Marquesa,
a thousand
black strands in curls and waves,
hang loose from ledges,
in the coal-dusty cold room.
And all day she sits
in swirling dust
as she knits.
Only dolls
only black
even their eyes.

The Mending Ghost
Lesley Quayle
Over time, we forgot about
the broken doll,
even though our daughter cried herself to sleep
when she dropped it and the hard skull
split like a watermelon.
My doll, precious, handed down to her.
Her conscience wasn’t easily consoled.
Her father, able to mend anything, tried,
for both our sakes, but pronounced it hopeless.
We laid its irreparable corpse to rest
on the bed in the spare room, tiptoed out
and, over time, forgot.
And for months it lay, undisturbed,
in the strange, cold room where we’d uncovered
frescoes of woad-blue figures round the fireplace,
garlands of them, bleeding into plaster, like faded
paper-dolls, a child’s finger-painted depiction.
No-one wanted to sleep in there. A room of dolls.
And then, walking past one afternoon,
the world grew small, an open door
the only clear space, framing the bed
where the broken doll lay – undamaged, mended.

The woad-blue figures round the fireplace
were fresh, their edges sharp, a fingertip of ice
on my spine.

47 Miles Inland
Amy Kinsman
Blackbeard is buried forty-seven miles inland,
in the grounds of a poorly attended church,
under a stone marked with a skull and crossbones.
He listens for the sound of Sunday school letting out,
patent leather shoes patting over the grass
in search of a stick of silver birch to serve as cutlass.
Says yes, my lass, an overhead slash will bait a crowd,
but when the crown comes calling, forget swashbuckling,
spill their stomachs on the deck or you’ll hang
and watches her whip her brother’s wrists,
jab the pointed end through the third hole in his belt,
send him crying back to mummy in the vestry.
The grown-ups count the coins in the collection plate,
brush them off, demand they play more quietly,
when she asks say don’t be daft, he was killed at sea.
Yes, and I was interred here to stop me going back
as if I couldn’t commandeer canal boat or ice-cream van,
as if my power was in my ship and not my wits.
She whirls past him overhead in a flurry of hair
and Sunday best and fallen autumn leaves, her feet,
like those before, wear down his seal incrementally
until someone yells across the yard get off the graves,
I’ve never seen such disrespect for death and
daddy takes her by the hand to pack her in the car.

Blackbeard, six feet underneath curls a skeletal hand,
his phantom tongue pressed against the cold of gold,
for a one-way trip with a ferryman that he refuses to take,
-and calls up along the path when you go out that lychgate,
kid you need not go to sea, but when you’re grown and good
and gone promise me no one will ever bring you back.
*Though it is impossible to know why it is so, children living in the parish
of St. Lawrence, Denton have known that Blackbeard is buried in the
churchyard there for several hundred years.

At Noblett’s
Derek Coyle
(i.m. Patrick Featherson, Dublin, 1900 – 1916)
If it were like
any other Easter,
it would have meant
the circus had come
to town, but it was
more like a scene
from some mad film
or cartoon. Only,
this wasn’t in black
and white. Noblett’s
sweet shop, a fantasy
world of Lemon Drops,
Clove Rock, fudge and toffee.
Those unnatural yellows,
blues, and reds.
They hadn’t even opened
the doors, no,
the mob had smashed
its windows and you were free
to crawl in through.
There was no need
for shillings, pound, or pence—
you could take
all you wanted for free.
It seemed like,
for once, this city
had given you
all you wanted,
and there wouldn’t be a price.
You would have said,
‘if it were up to me,

I’d have a day like this
every week of my life.’
I had read about you
and forgotten, until
a child sucking a lollipop
saw you come back to me.
Your face blended
with that black
hard rock of solidified sugar.
I could see your tiny fist
wrapped tightly around
bright red gobstoppers,
only this wasn’t some cartoon
smash and grab, a comic
strip. This was life.
Which means, you were dead meat.
There were centuries
of evolution behind
the small steel bullet
that pierced your leg,
a swift blink of an eye
from iron-age axe-heads
to the machine gun, that rifle.
Connolly shouted out the order:
“Shoot some looters!
Shoot them blasted looters!”
This bullet was made
for a child, this bullet
was made
for you.

Now, you will never get
out of these woods.
In your dreamland pastures,
Clove Rock grows
on apple trees,
and Lemon Drops
pepper the fields
like dandelions.

Mushrooms
Cheryl Pearson
They raise the roof with
nudging skulls. Not loud. Not fast.
But overnight, the earth pours down
from their soft caps, and in the morning
there they are: darkly-skirted,
faces tipped to dappling light.
Pulled, they smell of earth, and damp.
Rub soft as suede
in your palm's cup.
What do the dead know?
The mushrooms know.
They borrow their frills from burial gowns,
bloom from ribs like tumours.
Under, they are ridged like open mouths
where tongues moved once.
Where only worms move now.
Their grey juices spit at the grill.
Dark sparks from a fire.
Can you taste the old language
when your teeth split the skin?
Agaricus bisporus. Agaricus campestris.
Lost hymns found by a choir.

Beating
Bethany W Pope
My door was always locked from the outside,
so I pried the paint away from the frame
of the third-story window and slid down
the long copper gutter-spout, pretending
to be The Amazing Spider-Man as
I rushed towards the frozen December ground.
I wasn't wearing anything. My clothes
were taken from me when I came in from
work. I kept a huge pair of overalls
in the shed with the boiler. Slithering
into this borrowed skin, I tried not to
think about the kittens who were born here,
who I fed and kept secret until their eyes
opened and they wandered out into the yard.
I tried not to think about their bones and
bloody pelts scattered, bright, against the grass.
I tried not to picture the red teeth of
the lawn edger or the grin of the boy
who’d fallen dreamily in love with death.
Dressed, I flew for the barn where the new-made
steer were kept until the date of their slaughter.
Their door was never locked, and it was breathwarm
beneath those eaves. When I made my calls
home (under supervision) I made up
stories about making pets of these calves.
I wanted to save them and I couldn’t,
except through stories. In reality,
the most I could manage was some mutual
comfort. I wandered from stall to stall, bathed
in the spoilt milk of their breath, lying down
against their soft, fattened bodies, feeling
the slow throb of their hearts through the taut drum
of my skull. Their pulses beat as slowly
as my mother's when her veins were flooded
with prescription morphine. Sometimes, I slept.

Conversation with a Sister
Nenad Trajkovic
Translated by Danijela Trajkovic
everything had to be
a compass needle
remains inhibited
cloudy sky
fog outside
your path chooses you and steps on you
the days we spent in reading
I was told that we should make better use of
yes ... it’s about that time
we have sidelined the mind
to get the answers always at hand
nothing ... I repeat it had to be
you walk halfway around the world
people are everywhere from the blood
sharp things already in speech cause pain
regret doesn’t ask for forgiveness but deletion of guilt
therefore we need to find hope
it is always inside the things we still love a little bit
and this brings us back
today children do not read
poor imagination takes over the world
so there is hope for it
A in the Klassenbuch
no one should understand a writer
parents eat their children’s happiness
their successes chuck on the table with friends
smallness grows out of the big needs
and detects you inconclusive

my day though
distracts lullabies
all on the run
elusiveness increases

The Telling of Blue
Jane R. Rogers
If it’s a tale of the usual, then:
maybe that wet stone cribbed under the Moon,
Cornish fishermen at night,
Picasso’s painting of a female lover,
traditional Bristolian glass,
or the dying of light after a fire’s embers burn away.
That star we haven’t landed on yet,
that is told Blue.
But this is a tale of something new:
when a ransom is unpaid, they search,
access ‘best gore’, ‘execution porn’,
see the click-tick of…
Prisoner. Captor;
view in frames,
the click-tock of committed men,
listen to the spasm of dying cells
where a blade’s sweep
is filmed and flicks back
to a reflection they no longer know
leaving the space behind the back of that head…
a mystery.
And then maybe off camera, they imagine
the back of an empty pick-up truck, waiting. And maybe
think of a shark in formaldehyde
retailing at six million pounds.
If it’s not of a story of the usual then,
it’s one of who stacked sand when the tide was in.
Water cleaning up after the execution
that is told Blue.

Memories of a Soldier’s Dying
David Susswein
i. the ancient stares at the young
Did I zip my pocket,
forget my thermoflask,
close the front door,
turn off the gas burner,
open the loft window,
kiss my grand-niece
good-night when I looked in,
Tuck the duvet close to her chin.
Did I wish this was not Friday
did I wish I was someone else’s son
did I wish I had never asked
the question every bright-eyed boy
asks his father: ‘what did you do in…’
well, tsk tsk this is just another birthday,
just another birthday of sorts…
A birthday for beautiful death.
ii.
the wife stares at her wardrobe
I got the clothes back
they sent them in the post.
wrapped with strings and brown paper
the clothes smelt acrid, sulphurous.
the left breast had been eaten by hungry
moths in transit, the crotch gobbled at
till it had quite completely torn:
the moth had even seemed to leave
brown stains, dozens of streaks and spots

from cuff to seam.
I woke up from feeling the uniform,
it’s coarse texture or ruthless smell,
and remembered vulgar graffiti:
“You can take your king’s shilling
and slowly, Shove it up your Arse.”
iii.
the angel wishes for a different master
In those days,
there was no social state
no worker’s relief, no safety net
They lived and died by the work of their hands.
But he had no fucking hands.
your emperors and rulers,
time-and-motion-men at Peter’s Gate
Had hacked them Off, discarded them in a plastic bin
marked “Surplus Men”.
iv.
the soldier looks at his past
He was seven and grinning wider then
his cheeks could safely tolerate,
chasing down marching army bands,
his skipping gait in time with their
bassfull drums alone.
He was fifteen and grinning like a lamprey,
winked his careful ways to the front.
he laughed in the mud [always liked to make a splash!]
he laughed with all his new mates, smoked a cigarette
[his first time] Smiling still, he did his duty

he tried his best! and his best was more than good enough,
he even caught grenades and tossed them back!
Till he didn’t.
But he never once looked into a German’s face,
Or starred into any single enemy eye.
At home, the prosthetic was good enough,
at least he didn’t complain.
He sometimes looked at his medals,
with a distant look to his eye,
but he could not pick them up.

A Boy’s Text Message in Headlines
Emma Lee
Fifteen people rescued by one boy’s text
Pashto-speaking boy, fleeing Taliban, sends text
Unaccompanied minor texts for help
Boy texts in broken English.
Fifteen refugees saved from suffocation
Fifteen migrants found close to death
Fifteen immigrants found in lorry container
Fifteen immigrants, assumed illegal, detained
One man arrested for illegally assisting entry to UK
Arrest made as police investigate lorry containing migrants
Police investigate immigrants in lorry, arrest made
Frumpy: Duchess of Cambridge in Indian-designer dress
(Ahmed, aged seven, sent a text message to an aid worker which read:
“I ned halp darivar no stap car no oksijan in the car no sagnal iam in the
cantenar. Iam no jokan valla”. [valla - I swear to God]. Police used GPS
to track the lorry he was travelling in to a services stop at Leicester
Forest East which led to the rescue of 14 people on 8 April 2016.)

Initiation into the Order
Jo Burns
Shake hands with treasurers. Pay off an SUV.
Tip your caddy with crumbs. Park in captain’s spots.
Your cards will read Doctor honoris causa (bought)
Your subtle name drops will be golden confetti.
Don’t mention the girl who said No, please stop!
(Paid termination. She turned out quite tricky.)
Pledge allegiance to Mammon. Until it’s internal.
Dupe the domestic, the quiet, the humble, the small man.
Your pawns under cover; play out Rome, Minoa,
or Harrapan. Be an Emperor in your own book.
Pierce peace with a Pfff! It’s just pure abstraction.
Be thuggish. Be thorough. Incite the infernal.
Use and abuse the phrase necessary evil,
Forget what is evil, or even what is necessary.
Start believing that necessity has evil within.
Squint blind, when fate fishes and slice those lines.
Be the stone in the pool that skims, never sinking.
Think without living. Live hard without thinking.
Wake empty each day, flecked with self disgust.
Gasp in deeper and deeper. Blow yourself up.
Your skin translucent. Your truth stretched taut.
Now recite after me: I will heal, conceal, and never reveal
any part of the secrets or mysteries,
which may have been known, or shall now be shown to me.

Bull
Brett Evans
On the piss with Daedalus,
in the snug of The Bull, no less.
He drained his pint of Speckled Hen
and bade farewell to all his friends,
“It’s no place for my son.”
All jaws dropped (it was his round),
an awkward hush, then speech was found.
“You cannot think of leaving us,
you know we all love Icarus
and drinking’s just begun.”
“I want to see him carve a life,
not waste it in this den of vice.
He has a head for dizzy heights,
no stomach for our drunken fights -
so boozers he shall shun.”
This genius bought one last shout,
we drank his health and he was out.
Followed by the hobbledehoy
whom we had cherished since a boy,
for families we had none.
Icarus’ searing slide
blues guitar could charm the tides,
bring tears to Willie McTell’s eyes,
and at the bar we all took pride
in the house of unrising bums.
Of course he joined the 27s -
we’d taught the boy there was no heaven
to reach and that the Devil’s music
soared on scotch. But he abused it.
Don’t we feel such cunts?

Poor Daedalus returned a wreck.
The Bull refused to stock the meths
that he required to speed up death.
We didn’t drink more, did not drink less –
refused to cut out fun.
So first we toasted Daedalus,
waxed lyrical on Icarus,
two clever dicks now lost to us –
we have but one life therefore must
live low, avoid the sun.

Pick-Up
John D. Robinson
I had dropped by to pick-up
some blow;
‘It’s not been a good day’
he told me;
‘Rikki came round
earlier and she wanted
sex and I didn’t feel like
it, I’m tired and I told her
and she got wild and
told me she had
another boyfriend and
she started screaming
and then before I knew
it, she was gone’
Shit I thought
I’d like to have
problems like that,
just the one time
would be good.

Sleeping With a Bearded Man
Shauna Robertson
When I was twenty, if you’d mentioned
that by the time I was thirty I’d
be sleeping with a bearded man,
I’d have probably dropped my cider.
When I was a cider-drinker, if you’d implied
that by the time I took neat gin I’d
be divorcing an Argentine accountant,
I’d have most likely sprained a lime.
When I was lime-compromised, if you’d hinted
that once I was single-kidneyed I’d
be making five fools of myself with a khaki-shorted cattle rancher,
I might well have choked on my ocelot tartare.
Probably best then
to leave things as they are.

When Somebody Outdrew You
Bobby Steve Baker
(After Leonard Cohen)
The hitch-hiker’s guide to extramarital affairs
chapter one: Be clear on this. Time is the enemy.
Best case scenario is twice, say one week apart.
First time, in the brief throes of alcoholic bravado
half real attraction half the thrill of being bad. Next
a safely planned triste at a neutral location, never, ever
at your home or the others, unless you truly want out
of your marriage and if so for God’s sake, man up.
Make this second one longer and don’t start off drunk.
And – that’s it, stay and smoke a cigarette if you like,
but get out clean and do not line up a third one. Move on
to somebody new. If you don’t, next thing is you’ll be begging
for sex to fix what sex is only designed to break.
You’ll end up standing in the rain while she puts
another notch in her rugaet barrel
before you even know you’ve been outdrawn.

Dewey-Eyed Farm Girls
Holly Day
you fuck your way across the country, peddling
Bibles and gas-station condoms
I read your letters
you can’t come home right now
you can’t get enough.

The Next Morning
Courtney LeBlanc
I remember the train ride,
people going to work,
tourists looking at maps,
my short skirt conspicuous
in the bright light
of the next morning.
I left you still sleeping
in your bed, tip-toed
out with my heels in my hand,
grabbed a cup of coffee
at the corner market
and caught the 6:30am yellow line train.
I thought only of getting home,
of my dog who surely needed
to pee, of the bitter burn
of coffee on my tongue.

A Real Man
Jessica Mookherjee
First you were a boy, on our way home from school,
you lit my cigarette and laughed as you watched
me pretend to smoke. Taking drags, we both felt sick.
And you, saw us in the pub,
your shoulders broader, said, what are you doing,
with him, come and see what a real man feels like,
I pretended I didn’t notice, didn't understand
your hungry looks.
It was that first time when you seemed so beautiful
I couldn’t quite look, that we pretended
to be just friends, and you, pretended we were just mucking around,
drunk, you grabbed my feet, pulled me off the bed...
much later, it was still you – making me
that weird vegetable dish, we watched X Files,
drank fizzy German wine and all our friends were jealous
because we had carpet in that basement flat.
Then you came round for beers, watched us fight,
saw me rip out my heart for him, you
came, whispered to me, come and see what a real man feels like,
I wasn’t ready for your big heart
and I waved you away so many times.
The you that went to Australia, the you who became a doctor,
the you that fell in love with me outside some swimming baths,
said you wanted to grow tomatoes and children together.
Then you were in front of me, with slow eyes,
over a desk at work. Your shoulders were magnificent.
My friends were jealous because we bought a home together.
Once, at night, you cried real tears, told me; this is how a real man feels.

I was frightened of real plans, I did nothing,
when the house fell apart you did nothing and I spat
that you were not a real man, so now I wait at train stations,
petrol stations, stationary shops, I will recognise you –
I will recognise your real man’s eyes.

My Other Coat
Paul Brookes
I left my past life in my other coat,
in my other wardrobe,
in another world, this morning.
This other pocket holds my life,
an elastic band that wraps your letters
to me, a rusty steel washer and orange peel.
My other coat smelt of the ashes
of your letters, so I let it hang unwashed.
The rusty steel washer held your favourite seat together.
I peeled the orange, put the peel in my coat pocket while I
watched flames lick around
the perfumed words in your letters.
Now I wear a different coat.

No Closure
Pat Edwards
mum had a rattling tin box of buttons
mostly small white from shirts
but size and colour were no obstacle
now I fear buttons in a crowd like this
alone doing their job on clothes is fine
but a dirty mass of them is nauseous
all the sweating skin they have been near
all the fingers which have fumbled them
making haste to undo, cursing resistance
then flying across the room to land in dust
gathered up for mending and repair
but for me there will never be closure

All I Want for Christmas
John Grey
some flakes of snow,
a busted shutter,
a creak here, a wooden sigh there,
a lone pigeon roosting on the ledge,
an unwatched movie on the television,
a fresh anthology of inspiration,
a glimpse of how it was, how it will be,
a body of my choosing,
a brain to work the controls

Caffeine
Steven Bruce
It’s said that
when you die
the last thing
to go is your
hearing.
Can you imagine it.
Lying there, helpless,
and just after the death
rattle you hear, in the panic,
Oh fucking hell,
He’s dead.
He’s dead.
He’s dead.
Imagine that.
It’s enough to keep you up at night.

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