~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ (the poetry) WORM ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 16
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Thumbscrew

Poetry bores me.
I think I will become a poet
so I can bore people.

Inflicting boredom’s not so far from pain.
I have always been interested in pain.

I had never thought of poetry like this
till now. I am less bored than I was.
I think dinner can wait.

I have written a lovely poem about a thumbscrew.
Let me show you my new metaphor.

© Helena Nelson


The Lone Star

See him walk
past Netto in his black Stetson, loose-knotted red bandanna,
pearl buttoned shirt, patterned leather waistcoat, belt and boots,
the spit of Cheyenne, The Virginian, or Rowdy Yates from Rawhide,
then pause, roll a smoke, and, like a Marlboro advert, light up

and everyone, tonight, as the sun sets over the Ouseburn’s Rio Grande,
will call him "Stranger" as he sips his two fingers of Red Eye in The Raby,
decide if his accent is still Tyneside or Texas, hear that everything that
hurts
"is just a flesh wound," and believe Apaches, one of whom is a secret blood
brother,
watch over him from Presto’s roof. But, for now, he stubs out his cigarette

slowly pushes the Job Centre’s double doors open, fingers his UB40,
and, after checking over the hombres in the A to L queue, moseys over,
knowing all he must do is keep himself to himself, watch his back,
say "Yes Ma’am" and "Yes Sir," and unless someone’s hand moves mighty fast
just smile.

© Bob Cooper


Tired

As if in the school sick room with the sound of the secretary’s heels
on polished wood fading away, the dials on the old teak wireless
turn and it tunes in once more to a voice with the pitch and fall
of your mother's.
The needle scrolls through London, Welsh and Midland
you get off the tube at Holborn or somewhere, after trying not to feel
the breath of someone chewing gum by your ear, and you've hummed
a slow tune so hard, you're walking it against the street's quick pace,
no idea the ground you've covered.
Somewhere down my street, once
a boy was arrested - his cuffed hands held out like a prayer and the muscles
of his back stretched as if they might burst into wing and it seemed
the policeman said hey a little softer than usual.
And now this girl
knocks on the door saying, I need to talk to a woman. It's raining hard,
she’s no coat or umbrella, and no-one’s around, although through the wall
they’re singing hymns – you can hear the organ, but not the words.

© Helen Clare


ethereal garden

a
clay frog
sits in the
crook of a tree
nearly hidden by
the dried leaves of a large
bird of paradise, while flies
circle, then land, upon orange
and purple blossoms so heavy with
sap that they hang over the garden fence.

© Terrie Relf

ethereal garden (John Carley's Editor's Choice)
This is a poem of gorgeous absence. The reader might ask questions, but the poem does not. A single sentence broken arbitrarily, or an entelchy... an infinite moment of revelation? Whatever. Flies or no flies, the clay frog is unmoved.



Ready for the Show
The house was like an auction or a fair
until the lot of us were safe in bed.
-Charlotte Mew: The Quiet House


I, hammering away at Baudelaire.
You round me. Witches from Macbeth
never in a line, tripping on spills of toys.
"This doll is the wicker queen. This."
"No, have one who squeaks evil noises."
The play, like a ghost train, couldn’t miss.

Five full faces, bidding for an audience.
"Five minutes. Less. Four. Or just three."
"So short you’ll have it in a sentence."
"Come and watch our puppets, Daddy."

Such intimate theatre. And no two acts
the same. The affecting silences, the shot
glances, the instant re-writes, edits
on the hoof, the ever-stirring pot.

© Philip Burton


Bread and Butter

In my day we 'made do'
stale became fresh
Bread and butter pudding
pulled us through
All you need is
Bread
Butter
Raisins
Eggs
Sugar

When you say bread
do you mean any bread
or do you mean
brown, white, naan,
pitta, soda or
a baguette?
Butter?
Salted, unsalted?
Is there such a thing as an organic cow?

Raisins
That should be easy
a partially dried grape
not too wet
not too dry
Eggs?
Free range,
brown, white,
small, medium
or large?

Sugar?
White, brown,
cubed or granulated?

I told you to 'make do'

Mother, I can't 'make do'
choice doesn't allow you to

© Lynn Owen


Next Year in Jerusalem

I pretend-read my book
drowse

Stuck in LAX
with dogs sniffing violence

Next Year in Jerusalem
Passover prayer answered
I await my plane

Crowds eye one another
watch for a gun to flicker
a knife to swing

Shuffling for survival

The Midwest thunders a tempest

I pace the Via Delorosa
in airport daydream
plant a paper in The Wall's crevice
wail the Garden of Gethsemane
heaven-ascend The Mount

I sweated three jobs for this trip

Plane alights
Weary faces search
me others
for hopes or fears

A man stiff with resolution sits next to me
He wears a yarmulke
grows payos

He reads a prayerbook
pleads for peace

© Ryfkah


On Ageing

Have you ever thought about us growing old together?
I sometimes think that I'm already too old for the places
that my mind wants to be and for my various desires,
but that's a solitary thing. I don't generally imagine a process
that carries the pair of us along. More usually, it's an accusation
that I 've levelled at myself in response to an avoidable stupidity.
You don't think me old. You give me messages of youthfulness
that I need to examine carefully to understand the business
about it being a state of mind. Sometimes I think I age you,
adding years through my hesitations and the determination
not to make mistakes. It doesn't stop me but it slows me, us, down.
Even when I look around to note that time is quickly passing by
I don't move faster, I creep around, trying not to make a noise
that might cause a fright or a change in the structure of routine
and normality. I worry about the bills that keep on coming
in and wonder how we will survive and god only knows
I can't try any harder, but I think I mostly miss the point. I don't
tell you often enough, not as often as you need, that I love you.
I had a vision today, a fleeting glance, where I saw us both
and knew that we were older, that the worry about school fees
and power bills and mortgages had finally passed us by.
Hand in hand, we looked happy, relaxed. Made me wonder
about us growing old together. Do you ever think about it?

© Frank Faust


a clerihew

When Aphrodite
wore a sexy nightie,
green-eyed Hera
went one sheerer.

© M.A. Griffiths


LEAF

Sometimes he would take the time
take a leaf and look
become the leaf
and see it was impervious to rain
open and inviting to the sun
not entirely unique
as one of a branch and
that branch
part of an entire bush
rooted and in wait
its ribs held taut
as it sucked up water
and minerals
from its roots
by osmosis

and grew greener
in its reaction
to light

He drew the parallels
though balked at photosynthesis

© James Bell

LEAF (Sally Evans' Editors Choice)
A concentrated, closely observed poem of somebody needing much reassurance from nature. You can see the bush although you are not told what kind it is, and feel the desperate need to make sense of it by the poet/protagonist. It's about survival and acceptance of the sun and the light, and
understanding of the inescapable processes that keep us alive. It has a light touch yet it is serious, and I cannot see a single wasted word. Although very simple these physical reactions are felt to be very important to the life of plant and person, and the ending with a touch of humour reminds us that there is in fact a difference between the observing person and the thriving plant.


The Worm-Woman Drew a Muscle Out of Her Thigh

nerve-ends buzzing, fibres twitching,
wrapped it in filo,
cooked in her assisted fan,
tested with a sugar thermometer.

'Sweet,' she said, 'forty-five degrees:
he'll walk, not stumble, arms hung loose,
his neck suspended from an invisible arc
in the sky, his voice emerging deep
from my own God-spot,
up the long alimentary corridor,
resonating through the ohhhhh of the uvula,
encompassing histories before and after'.

She took out the little parcel,
stroked it,
left it to rise,
still carries the wound with pride.

© Christine Boursfield

The Worm-Woman Drew a Muscle Out of Her Thigh (Christina Fletcher's Editor's Choice)
What a woman. What a mother. I loved her immediately for her strength and tenderness.


Elegy for a lost poem
'I learned so much ... from his ruthless way of making words
justify their place in a poem.' Ruth Padel, The Rialto 40

I have excised a squirrel from this poem
as it did not justify its right to stay in;
neither did the burnt matches, the garden gnome,
the empty salt (I kept cellar), the (cheap) stain,
the scratches etched in (fading) time.
All that’s left is fading in the cheap cellar then.

© Helena Nelson

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Acknowledgement: 'Tired' was awarded first prize for poetry in The London
Writers Competition, 2001 and was published by Wandsworth Borough Council in association with Waterstones.

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Compiling Editor: Christina Fletcher
Associate Editors: Sally Evans & John Carley

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