Picaroon Poetry - Issue #17 - July 2019
Featuring poetry by Sharon Phillips, Peter Burrows, Kitty Coles, alyssa hanna, Crystal Anderson, John L. Stanizzi, Chris Hemingway, Sue Kindon, Kathleen Strafford, Jenna Velez, Maureen Daniels, Samuel Guest, Charlie Hill, John Son, Beth Bayley, Visar, Bethany W Pope, Luke Kuzmish, Gerard Sarnat, Chris Hardy, Erik Fuhrer, Christopher Hopkins, John Raffetto, Andrew Shields, Bo Meson, Brian Comber, Martin Zarrop, Kristin Garth, Maiya Dambawinna, David Bankson, Jeffrey Zable, Rickey Rivers Jr, Anthony Watts, Donna Dallas, Chuka Susan Chesney, and Tobi Alfier. Picaroon is, as always, lovingly edited by Kate Garrett.
Featuring poetry by Sharon Phillips, Peter Burrows, Kitty Coles, alyssa hanna, Crystal Anderson, John L. Stanizzi, Chris Hemingway, Sue Kindon, Kathleen Strafford, Jenna Velez, Maureen Daniels, Samuel Guest, Charlie Hill, John Son, Beth Bayley, Visar, Bethany W Pope, Luke Kuzmish, Gerard Sarnat, Chris Hardy, Erik Fuhrer, Christopher Hopkins, John Raffetto, Andrew Shields, Bo Meson, Brian Comber, Martin Zarrop, Kristin Garth, Maiya Dambawinna, David Bankson, Jeffrey Zable, Rickey Rivers Jr, Anthony Watts, Donna Dallas, Chuka Susan Chesney, and Tobi Alfier.
Picaroon is, as always, lovingly edited by Kate Garrett.
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Brian Comber<br />
Panopticon<br />
Uncle Joe had a poster of Stalin and would put you right<br />
if you didn’t toe the party line,<br />
he denounced Khrushchev<br />
and planned purges of his own<br />
when he would turn up the white noise<br />
and break a few skulls<br />
he told us of his day at the beach, how he saw<br />
the toddler running towards the tethered donkeys<br />
and then, to follow, in this order;<br />
the desperate mother,<br />
the bank holiday crowd disturbed by the fuss,<br />
sitting up and shielding their eyes,<br />
the police calming down and fanning out,<br />
the shouting grandfather,<br />
and much later<br />
the circling helicopter.<br />
Uncle Joe said he could have stepped in,<br />
stopped the child and helped the law<br />
but he’d been in trouble for that kind of thing before.<br />
We didn’t holiday with Uncle Joe anymore.<br />
Last time I saw him he was at the windblown station<br />
shaking out a lifeboat tin,<br />
not turning to watch us go.<br />
My dad said he should go back to Russia,<br />
where turning a blind eye and seeing all<br />
would keep your apartment, a welcome at the factory gate<br />
and where the beach could be cleared<br />
with just a word from the State.<br />
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