Fleeting

The ocean is empty
again. Here and there

a small galaxy of scales
marks where a bluefin

swallowed a herring.
The victim’s scales

swirl in the turbulence
of the departed

tuna now bearing off at
high speed. Then each vortex

slows and stops. The sinking
scales gleam like diamonds

from a spilled necklace
then they dim. Finally

they wink out at depth.

From Quicksilver, Kenneth Brower, March 2014, National Geographic. Submitted by James Brush.

The Dilemma

Picture this.
A man spends a
long bus journey
groaning over a very full bladder.
The bus finally pulls into a station
for a brief stop
and the guy rushes out,
leaving his bag on board.

But there’s a problem:
all the toilets are closed.
He runs around,
one muscle-twitch
away from humiliation,
looking for someone to open them.

Then, out of the corner of his eye,
he sees the bus pulling away,
with his possessions.

It’s a dilemma worthy
(well, almost)
of Hamlet:
to pee or not to pee?

Taken from ‘Stage Struck: Frankly, my dear, you gotta make ’em give a damn‘ in The Irish Times, 3 April 2014. Submitted by Taidgh Lynch.

Do You Have?

week one:
pattern for knitted
swimming trunks
will pay postage

week two:
Record by The Turtles
She’s Rather Be With Me
willing to pay all costs

week three:
Eye needed for an emu
(Rod Hull’s 70cm/27 1/2 in puppet).
Will pay costs

week four:
knitting pattern for a
lady’s jumper with a
blue and white Chinese
willow pattern on the front

week five:
Aretha Franklin CD
or cassette, The First Time
Ever I Saw Your Face.
will pay all costs.

week six:
Microwave Cookery Books
Will pay postage.

week seven:
Manual or photocopy
for a Sharp QL310
portable memory display
typewriter. Will pay costs.

week eight:
Instructions for a sony
ericksson K7001 mobile
phone. will pay costs

week nine:
Copy of the late Steve Conway’s song,
My Thanks To You.
Will reply to all letters.
Will pay postage and expenses.

week ten:
Hayne’s Ford Focus
LX 2011 car manual.
Will pay costs.

week eleven:
Knitting pattern for
anything using two odd
pins, one small and one
large. Will pay any costs.

week twelve:
DVD of the film, The
Merry Widow.

Adverts from the ‘Do You Have?’ page of Yours magazine, various issues spring 2012. Submitted by Anna Percy.

Window in the House of Mirrors, Market Street, 1889

At the top
is a clear-eyed maiden
whose lips smile joy.
Below,
and to the left, framed
in long hair
is a horribly sensuous face,
one
eye closed in a leer
above
thick slobbering lips.

Next, is the stupid fat face
of a glutton. Then comes
the hard cold face
of a woman not much
older than the young girl above,
the fifth
face. In the narrow
ell of the house,
behind her is that embittered
old man with cruel eyes,
his hairy moustache
cushioning bulbous jaws.

A description from a file in Denver Public Library of stone carvings on an old Colorado brothel. Via Soiled Doves: Prostitution in the Early West by Anne Seagraves (1994, Wesanne Publications). ‘Cushioned’ changed to ‘cushioning’. Submitted by Angela Readman.

Wardrobe Mistress

My mother is ninety and likes
To wear a nice dress.
But she is tiny.

Size ten, and only five feet tall, she likes
Colour, nothing too clingy.
And needs a collar.

She would also like some nonslip
Ankle boots that are
Size four and a half.

Please help.

Nobody seems to cater for
Small, slim people of a certain age
Who are not terrifically flexible.

Do not want low necklines.
Do not like black and beige.

Taken from the “Wardrobe Mistress” column in the Sunday Times’ Style Magazine, 29 September 2013. Submitted by Kirsten Luckens.

Wood Green chopping city

I’ve shown you how to chip,
I’ve shown you how to chop,
I’ve shown you how to dice and slice.

These sad people who spend
all their time chopping stuff up
in the kitchen – all you need’s just
three cuts across like this.
You won’t find an onion chopper any quicker!

They’re not cheap.
If you’re looking for cheap stuff getahtofere.
I’ve been using this same machine
on my demonstrations for fifteen years.

And you get a free spirally cutter, look –
you can use the peel for earrings.
There’s a booklet with both words and pictures
so if you can’t read the words, just look at the pictures.

They’re £24.95 on TV,
so you’re saving almost a fiver.
If you can’t afford it today,
stick to the knife,
don’t bother me,
Not bein’ rude,
but I don’t have to live in your house.

The patter of a cockney guy demonstrating an elaborate kitchen vegetable cutting machine in Wood Green Shopping City, London, 2004. Submitted by Richard Tyrone Jones.

Scientific American

You sink into their brains
a little socket with a screw on it
and the electrode can then
be screwed deeper and deeper
into the brainstem,

and you can test at any moment
according to the depth,
which goes at fractions of the mm,
what you’re stimulating,

and these creatures are not
merely stimulated by wire,
they’re fitted with a miniature
radio receiver so that they can be
communicated with at a distance.

The technique is very ingenious.
I mean you could press a button
and a sleeping chicken would jump up
and run about, or an active chicken

would suddenly sit down and go to sleep,
or a hen would sit down and act
like she’s hatching out an egg,
or a fighting rooster would go into depression.

Taken from Aldous Huxley’s speech “The Ultimate Revolution“, given on 20th March 1962 at Berkeley Language Center. Submitted by Howie Good.

Place & Time

The atoms in a fluid can roll and tumble
and cascade around each other.
It’s that flowing freedom that gives
fluid motion its hypnotic quality.

Allow yourself to become mesmerized
by the flow of a fast-moving river
around a bridge trestle and you’ll know what I mean.

And there is dance in the roiling turbulence.
But, most importantly, the choreography
you’re watching doesn’t care about place and time.
What you see before your eyes today
is being repeated all across the cosmos.

If you don’t believe me, go flush your toilet.

Taken from the NPR article, “How To See A Galaxy In Your Toilet Bowl“, 18th February 2014. Submitted by Howie Good.