Poetry
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Not a poem for miles. by Eric Hamilton
there is nothing here,
not a poem for miles.
raking through my hair
run these fingers
in half-clasped claws.
I've swallowed
my hellos
with all intent
to suck life
while life
sucks me in
and from
my cigarette
flows pretty
little streams
of death
that flirt away
into nothing.
teasing at
my lip ring
with tooth
and tongue
between gasps
from smoke-
brushed lungs
there is nothing here,
not a poem for miles.
maybe in the
cocaine stars,
or the brown-tar
mountains,
or the brewing
rivers or the fuck...
there is nothing here,
not a poem for miles.
Hacksaw Jack by Josh Seigal
Hacksaw Jack saw a maniac
The maniac who Hacksaw Jack saw
Was a crack-whore
The crack-whore wore a sack
So Hacksaw Jack saw the sack
The crack-whore wore.
Origins by Mairi Sharratt
Only the topmost is tilled.
The rest compressed to rock
where small disgusting things dwell
slimeing their way to the surface.
(Friable and moist under the fingernails.)
Reminders of our birth.
Cover yourself and cling to your concrete.
Cling,
pretend you’re made of higher things.
Last Rites. by Fiona Sinclair
She went to Boots from habit, selecting Rimmel
because neither woman had ever touched the brand.
A man led her into the grisly Santa’s Grotto,
then reassuringly stood sentinel.
At first sight, shock, her mother appeared to have
been snatched by grave robbers.
She would not have chosen to be seen dead in
the elaborate white funeral gown.
The daughter’s final duty now to protect her from
prying eyes that might pay a peep show visit.
Striking up a one sided conversation,
like a hairdresser with a darkly quiet client,
she dabbed the make up on with recoiling fingers,
never thinking to have brought brushes.
This time the cosmetic alchemy failed to conjure
up her face, casting instead the indelible image
that her mother had sunk into a profound sulk.
Jack and Gladys by Lauren Singer
jack walks with a limp and a pit-sweat t-shirt,
waiting for the speeding cars to hobble through
crosswalks, shouting swear words in front of
children on tricycles, their mothers cupping their ears
and tsking their tongues.
jack spends all his money on women he doesn't know,
and threatens to sue them when they don't love him.
he sweeps the already clean floors of the apartment complex atrium
and spits jagged edges at the teenagers,
mumbling over radio opera about how he'd like to kill them.
and the kids walk right past him, leave fast food wrappers on the ground
give him the finger when he turns around to pick them up.
jack appears to have what once was a hairlip
and frequents the gas station convenience store
where he eats the puffy corn cheese meal snacks and gets
orange all over the counters when he rubs his fingers over them,
reaching for the dirty magazines;
grunts like a horse while he lingers over centerfolds.
jack'll stay in there all night sometimes,
standing next to gladys, who hates working there as much
as he hates being alive. midnight lurkers come in on her late-shift
and buy ice cream bars and salty crunchy devils,
count their pennies with their pocket lint
and don't always have exact change.
she ID's everyone for cigarettes, even if she's seen them a thousand times.
gladys could be fifty five or eighty.
she's always in her uniform, no makeup or jewelry.
her voice a smoker's rasp of a thousand years and her
dyed blonde hair a mess of never trying.
gladys has not been loved enough;
she wants to believe that there is good in people,
but she just can't.
not anymore.
for a long time, rumors circulated that
jack and gladys were lovers.
it woudn't have been pretty:
he mentally stalled and beer-bellied, flopping atop her
bird-body, i could imagine her disaffected grimace
reaching for used butts in the ashtray and
hating herself in her nudity. him for his petulance.
you couldn't think about it without wincing just a little.
then one day, gladys was gone, and i didn't notice for a long time.
i asked garrett, another convenience store employee, where she had gone off to,
hoping that she was alright.
"retired in north carolina."
i pictured her sunning herself in a floppy straw hat,
drinking artificially sweetened tea, plastic lawn chair stripes imprinted on her back.
i hoped that she had a dog, or some such thing to keep her company.
jack has no reason to shuffle through the aisles and not buy anything,
so he doesn't hang out there anymore.
a new girl works there now, with a red stripe in her hair.
and she talks constantly, which is worse than gladys,
who barely spoke at all.
not too long ago, i heard another rumor:
we had got it all wrong, they were never lovers.
jack was really gladys' son,
and he was just in there to protect her.
i thought about these two people,
ugly and ageless and angry and mistreated.
and i wondered what happened to them, how they fused together
to become one terribly unfortunate thing,
bonded by their declarations against humanity
and the blood of what i can only imagine
was a one night stand with a man who never called back.
i could no sooner imagine gladys a mother
than i could jack a child.
and then it stopped being creepy,
became almost tender, how he used to stand outside that store,
scaring away the would-be customers about to
not thank his mother and walk off with their change.
Love Poem by Ross Wilson
She was in her early twenties –
tall, blonde, attractive and
beside me on the way home
from Manchester in a train.
She fell asleep before
I could ask her name.
She was in her late sixties –
adjacent to me with a book.
We exchanged a look, a smile,
and the miles reeled under
as postcards snapped by.
Near Lockerbie – a black sky.
Rain streaked the pane.
And when small talk was born
it grew up fast:
she was all set to move to Spain
with a life-long friend!
Yesterday she heard that friend
died – brain haemorrhage.
Tomorrow – the funeral.
Rails shook our carriage.
‘Is there anyone to meet you
at the end of the line?’
‘No! I don’t know
where I’m going!’
Somehow, I made her laugh,
though not as loud or radiant
as the girl when she woke
and spoke excitedly
into her mobile. Less than a
mile from his arms, she
reached for her luggage and
an old lady hauled her baggage
through Waverly Station,
and like a wave,
lapped into the crowd.