Take the pencil, take the pen, Weigh them both on balance. Which is more sober, which more fun? Which makes the writer joyous? The pencil, earthy, rustic, grey, Allows shades and nuances across the line; The pen, bolder, slicker, heavier too, Leaves permanent streaks, consistently fine. One is erasable, and so forgives, Feathery, sketching, uncertain [...]
Our resident poet is sick. Please be patient while we mend her.
With apologies to Allen Ginsberg. —- I saw the greatest minds of my generation turned too sweet too fluffy, wholemeal bread no more, crusts cut off. Brown rice given up. Tracksuited, Body Shop scented Walked by their spoodles and their TV. through manicured parks where rage is distant and easily forgotten, laughed at; As though [...]
The seismograph shakes as her parents clash, and monitors their screens for aftershocks. Sees the tremors, hears the screams: Observes the coast for waves and tides tectonic — the plates may settle and reform domestic quivers shudders in the night, but tremors ripple long and the seismograph watches closely
I sat on the floor to knit, To my mother’s laughing horror – With decadent armchairs and matching couch, She asked, demanded why I’d bother. Surely there can be no comfort on a tiled floor, Where the cat hair collects and people leave their shoes, Wouldn’t you be better perched on the settee? A far [...]
My crime, bottled greedily by my brothers, for blackmail and bullying, was to have been the party at the party who broke the crystal platter. It wasn’t real crystal, I knew even then, but a cut-glass affair, handed down, but that made its destruction no less complete, nor reduced the severity of the matter. So [...]
When the secrets of the parents Become the secrets of the young, When the rote lies of the parents Flourish on the younger’s tongue; When the upheld virtues of dishonesty Are paraded by practicing youth, Then do the parents begin to understand What a caricature they made of truth.
“It’ll do” she said, and so created a whirring in her mother’s ashes: the tiny urn upon the shelf rattled to the tune of her mother’s teeth’s gnashes. Until she finally sighed and admitted, she could probably do better, so she got the mop and kept scrubbing, and her hands got colder and wetter. Each [...]
Next to the cold-half-coffee, and under the crust-wth-marmalade, were the day’s Stars. My father, snorting with cynicism derision, read them out to me over the table. Every day, the day’s predictive fable. He sniggered and put on a voice, Twist the phrasing, poke holes; Let it be known that such a man no such man, [...]
