Category: articles

Poetry. Please.

My wife died last month

and she loved this poem;

my son is getting married
and I want this poem
to cheer
for him and his bride;

I am sad
and nothing makes sense,
but these verses still manage
to lift me up;

I half recall these words
but can you finish the couplet for me
and help me to get it
out of my head;

I am ill and old
but give me some John Donne
to remind me that I was once
young and in love;

I am young and in love
and please don’t use my name
but play this poem
for my heart’s desire.

From Poetry Please: the poetic pulse of a nation, The Guardian, 26 September 2013. Submitted by Ailsa Holland.

American Portraits

1
Arrested by the Seattle police
for shooting a car’s tires.
Enlisted in the Navy Reserve.
Spent two days in jail
after a bar fight in Georgia.
Investigated for shooting a gun through his ceiling.
Honorably discharged,
despite “pattern of misbehavior.”
Contractor security clearance re-approved.
Told the Rhode Island police
he was hearing voices.
Twice went to Veterans Affairs hospitals
seeking treatment for insomnia.
Killed 12 people at Washington Navy Yard.

2
One morning she flew
to an early analyst meeting
and realized too late
that she had left
her dress shoes on the plane.
So she eyed women
in the baggage claim area,
spotted a suitable pair
worn by one of them —
and approached
with a $120 cash offer
for the emergency footwear.
The stranger said no
but offered a second pair
from her suitcase. Done.

3
The tail fin of a sockeye salmon
caught in a net in Bristol Bay, Alaska.

Matthew Sullivan releasing a gull
that crash-landed on the deck of the Rollo.

New buoys sit aboard a crab vessel.

Billie Delaney, a fisherwoman, holds
a dead seabird at Graveyard Point.

Stanza 1 is taken from the New York Times article, “A Troubled Past”, 19th September 2013. Stanza 2 is taken from a Forbes article, “A Real Amazon“, about a woman who died on 19th September 2013. Stanza 3 is taken from“Eat, Fish, Sleep, Click”, 21st January 2013. Submitted by Howie Good.

Let’s do it

Brian Roberson

Since I have already said
all I need to say
to all my loved ones,
I’m not going to say anything to y’all at this time …
So this is my statement.

To all of the racist white folks in America
that hate black folks
and to all of the black folks in America
that hate themselves:
the infamous words
of my famous legendary brother, Matt Turner:
“Y’all kiss my black ass.”

Let’s do it.

David Long

Ah, just ah sorry ya’ll.
I think I’ve tried everything I could
to get in touch with ya’ll
to express how sorry I am.
I never was right after that incident happened …

I was raised by the California Youth Authority,
I can’t really pinpoint where it started,
what happened,
but really believe that’s just the bottom line,
what happened to me was in California.
I was in their reformatory schools and penitentiary,
but ah they create monsters in there.
That’s it, I have nothing else to say.

Thanks for coming, Jack.

Dennis Dowthitt

I am so sorry
for what y’all had to go through …
if I was y’all, I would have killed me.
You know?
I am really so sorry about it,
I really am.
I got to go sister, I love you.
Y’all take care and God bless you.

Gracie was beautiful
and Tiffany was beautiful.
You had some lovely girls and I am sorry.
I don’t know what to say.

All right, Warden, let’s do it.

Charlie Livingston

You all brought me here to be executed,
not to make a speech.

That’s it.

From Last words of prisoners on death row, The Guardian, 2 July 2013. Submitted by Ailsa Holland.

Perfect Parents

You know the sort.

He’s baking organic vegetable snacks
while she’s teaching the two-year-old
how to count in Catalan.
They organised the right school
moments after conception.
They know everything,
you know nothing.

Their baby has never cried,
never thrown up on the hire car,
it never even really seemed to be a baby at all,
more like a middle-aged Archers’ fan
hidden in a macrame shawl.

A glass of white wine the size of Greenland
has been poured, it’s late in the evening,
they’re coming across the room to share
some of their worldly wisdom,
to pass on the secrets of their special way.
They want to give you the benefit of their expertise.
You don’t want to do it like that…

And they just can’t resist giving you
that little special bit of advice
picked up from an old French villager.

Just learn how to say non.

Taken from a BBC article, 10 types of irritating advice for parents, 28 June 2013. Submitted by Angi Holden.

Mythologise Anything

A recent exhibition of the work
of American artist Jeff Koons was
called Everything’s Here. I subscribe to that
worldview: you can live on “lipgloss and
cigarettes”. There are more references to
TV shows and showbiz entertainers

in my songs than references to the
Greek myths but it’s all valid. You can
mythologise anything if you put
your mind to it. In a way it’s more fun
to look for profundity in something
that’s not designed to have it. Or maybe

that’s just awkwardness on my part – I do
have a tendency towards that. When I
was nine years old, we were learning how to
draw bar charts at school when the teacher
decided to construct one based on the
times we got up in the morning to get

ready for school. For some reason I was
determined to have a bar on the graph
all to myself and so claimed to rise at
6am every morning (which was an
obvious lie as I was usually at
least five minutes late each day). The teacher

was sceptical but let it go and, much
to my satisfaction, I got my own
exclusive bar. I don’t know why I was
so determined to be different from all
the other members of my class, but it
felt important to me. Perhaps it still

is. But I’d like to think that it was more
than mere cussedness on my part, that it
was the start of a sensibility,
a desire to look in the less obvious
places – less obvious because they were
right under your nose. Pulp was the perfect

name for the band because this was an attempt
to find meaning in the mass-produced and
throwaway world that was, after all, what
we were surrounded by on a daily
basis. To sift through and find some beauty
in it all. Take a look – it is there.

Taken from Jarvis Cocker: the secrets of Pulp’s songs, The Guardian, 16th October 2011. Submitted by Marika.

Doubles

I miss you. I hark back to the friendship
we used to have, impromptu adventures,
knowing the everyday details of each
other’s lives, nights in watching trashy TV.

I’ve been there at 3am when you’ve clutched
my hand and explained he’s dependable
and he’ll make a great father. I want to
tell you that it’s the 21st century

but you don’t listen to me any more.
I am impeccably polite. I put on
a rictus grin when you spend an hour
discussing your wedding plans. I am

becoming a souvenir of your past life,
to be gradually discarded for
women you can play doubles tennis with.
I’m happy for you. But I wish you’d call.

From What I’m really thinking: the single friend, The Guardian, 26 January 2013. A few words omitted: ‘that’ (line 6), ‘I know, ‘really’ (9), ‘something’ (14); and sub clauses removed in lines 8 and 12. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

What We Should Be Doing

We ought to be reading
poetry too
of course
and nonfiction

We should read
instruction manuals
legal documents
restaurant reviews and corporate newsletters

We should follow weird people
on Twitter
and go to lots of parties
and have lots of intense
and ridiculous
conversations with drunk people

We should go
home for the holidays
and argue with our families
and we ought to
listen
to lots of music
and we ought to watch
plenty of television

We should eavesdrop
and we should gossip

We should probably be in therapy

We should probably drink
more coffee.

From “Most contemporary literary fiction is terrible”, a discussion about how literary fiction writers should improve their craft. Submitted by Wesley Brown.

Before the end came

Death is so intimate –
more intimate than first love.

I could hold his hand, 

gaze into his eyes, 

stare 

unhindered 

at his tender face, 

stroke 

his frosty hair.

He was very thin,
skin the colour 

of a dried corn husk. 


His mouth 

a dark tunnel. 

The jagged mountain ranges 

of his ruined teeth.


The petrified forests
of his hair.

The failing locomotive of his breath.
The sadness of the black bobbled socks on his calves.

Yet he was
irreducibly
who he had always been. 


Taken from Tim Lott’s Guardian article, My father’s final moments, 23 February 2013. Submitted by Ailsa Holland.