Across & Down

Police officer, at times,
bane of the farmer’s wife.
Safest option:
Shirley’s partner.

Outside
snatch Rosemary—
thine
from the Vienna Woods,
winning for the moment
expectant, perhaps
bound together—
perturbed
auriculate
bottomless.

Troublesome,
change the packaging.

Bridge support
where Tanumafili is king.
Type of master
problems for Job.
He didn’t finish his sentence:
the man of a thousand faces.

Utterly beat,
Cosmonaut Gagarin
comes ashore.
Three steps and a shuffle.

Clues from the New York Times crossword, 18 July 1993. By Joan Siegel.

Deserters

We were getting new recruits
sixteen and seventeen years of age
when we had to do this attack

The two youngsters were crying
It was such a shock
We moved up to the attack
They had cleared off
three or four miles from the action

They were brought back and charged
The verdict of the court was read out
The two young men had deserted
They were going to be shot at dawn

The two young men
were brought out
to a yard
blindfolded

Fire at the head
At the heart

The chances were
they would be killed instantly
As of course they were

The four men who had to shoot them
were sick with it all
There was sympathy for the boys
but more for their parents

We lived with it all
for days
weeks

I can see it all now

Private William Holmes in Forgotten Voices of the Great War. By Lisa Oliver.

Crustacean Odyssey

Ever since we were an item,
for years, we had an affinity
for crayfish.

They didn’t stay for long
in the garden.

They didn’t like the pond then
– was it running water?

It was very quick. It didn’t have time
to be un-running.

Did they all go together?
How could they know where to go?

They’ve got eyes and feelers,

Yes, but for underwater, not on land.
And how could they do that, across fields and roads?

I don’t think “road” is in their vocabulary.

I wonder if they went in a line…

What we don’t know is how
they got out of the garden. The fence
it comes right down to the ground.

Maybe a cat killed and ate them –
Oh no, then you’d see the shells.

A cat wouldn’t do that!

Yes it would, if they were moving around.
A cat will eat anything that moves.

Well, they just disappeared.

A conversation between an older man and a younger woman, overhead at breakfast in a Shrewsbury B&B, 2009. By MsJinnifer.

Glance sideways

Glance sideways into the wings,
and you see the tacky preparations
for the triumphant public event.

You see your beautiful suit deconstructed,
the tailor’s chalk lines, the unsecured seams.
You see that your life is a charade,
that the scenery is cardboard,
that the paint is peeling,
the red carpet fraying

and if you linger you will notice the oily devotion
fade from the faces of your subjects,
and you will see their retreating backs
as they turn up their collars
and button their coats

and walk away into real life.

From Royal Bodies by Hilary Mantel. By Angi Holden.

This is our island

We have water all around us, and in these lochs,
and we have the boat –
and there were porpoises – we
have to cross the causeway… These
great big rocks.

This is Raasay, this is Skye; there is nothing
as far as the North Pole.
The sea was like a millpond, the sky was
a great… American blue.

We could never imagine ourselves alone,
with the sheep… and the gulls were laughing
like people.

There are yachts that just arrive
in the North Inlet,
and people arrive in bad weather
and we bring them in.

Here is the croft, with the white walls;
the tide is low here.
This photograph,
this is our island.

My friend’s Mum, in her kitchen, talking about photographs of their holidays on an island off the west coast of Scotland. By Kerry Featherstone.

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.  

From My father’s final moments. By Ailsa Holland.

Dead pianos

The Knabe baby grand
did a cartwheel and landed
on its back,
legs poking into the air.

A Lester upright
thudded onto its side
with a final groan of strings,
a death-rattling chord.

After ten pianos were dumped,
a small yellow loader
with a claw in front scuttled
in like a vicious beetle,

crushing keyboards,
soundboards
and cases

into a pile.

From For More Pianos, Last Note Is Thud in the Dump. Submitted by J.R. Solonche.

Said the Prophet to his Captors

I came to do the will of the Father. I am not Jesus Christ. I am his servant.
I am the Lord’s servant, and he has called me out of the world.
I have no part in these questions or answers that you’re seeking.

Her name is Shear Jashub. Shear Jashub Esther Isaiah.
I am the servant of the Lord, and my name is Immanuel David Isaiah.
It mattereth not how good you think this case is against me.
God hath power to deliver me out of the hands of my enemies.

By the power of God, she was delivered to us.
I received her in the bonds of marriage.
She’s had a glorious experience.
We have had many trials, but we have seen God’s power.
And she knows who I am.

Joseph Smith was arrested almost fifty times.
I’m willing to suffer whatever the Lord God will.
Death, prison or death, it mattereth not.
The whole world is in bonds and chains.

You will reap great shame and sorrow.
I have more compassion for Shear Jashub Esther Isaiah than you do.
I have been obedient unto God Almighty.
Why should I submit to your accusations?

My name is Immanuel David Isaiah.
I say that your question is an accusation.
I never raped anybody. I never raped anybody.
I have only done what the Lord God Almighty commanded me to do.

You’re asking me to talk about things that are sacred and holy.

Selected quotations from an interview with Brian David Mitchell, 12 March 2003. By Laura Elizabeth Woollett.

Fried bread

Taiwan’s hand grasp bread
A legendary experience of dough
It’s just doomed earthshaking. Because the
inoculation of thousands have experienced and
iceberg … Finally one thousand reopen. You see
it … The cold of each lovely white body.
Experienced pressed on warm body … Clean and
attractive turning on the state of the body. Blood
in the body boiling. Inflation. Tempestuous … A
lovely stunner available. Curse. Wrapped in
white silk garments of thin layer. Extremely
upset, body of waving … Use hand grasp, surface
silk involvement.

You move?

From a poster advertisement on a small fried bread stand in China. Transcribed by Sean Wilkerson and Herbert Woodward Martin.

Dancing on the Edge

His characters
Come on
And make small
Anodyne
Statements
Then compose their faces,
Into expressions
Of meaningful
Intent
Have you seen my glove?
Your glove?
Yes…my glove.
This glove?
The other glove.
Another glove?
Yes….have you
Seen it?
No.
Followed,
By an expression
Of Fleeting
Wind.

From a TV review by AA Gill in the Sunday Times, 10 February 2013. By HWB.