Tag: free verse

Care and feeding of your reindeer

They are inquisitive
It was a lot of trial and error
I started with two, had eight…
it snowballed from there
It is tough at times
There are days you just don’t love your job
There is good and bad, but a lot more good
She’d walk onto the stage all by herself
then walk back to me
or hang out with the cellists
She loved the violinists
They died on the same day
Just old. Can’t stop that
They went and laid back-to-back
and passed away on the same day
But they lived a good life, that’s for sure

Direct speech in the WNY.FM article Reindeer in Hamburg. By Grace Andreacchi.

The Geometry of Happy Children

One of the lines began standing out
demanding attention
It was the line that ran along the side of the nose
approximately where the bone ends
and the cartilage begins
I actually grew annoyed with this line’s insistence
and erased it
hoping to quiet its demands
but it only added significance
and so I drew it back in

Paper never forgets though
and that line kept its heat and at times
I could see little else
Looking back and forth from mirror to paper
the line started taking
its place on the surface of my skin
When my eyes weren’t on that line
but focused elsewhere
it would begin a trampy little dance for attention
in bright magentas and blues until my eyes
would dart over to see
and back to flesh it would go. . .

From an interview with artist Ian Ingram on the blog Venetian Red. By Grace Andreacchi.

Monica Grove 1B, 1530

Five rooms
All postgrads
But the one guy who was there
wasn’t wearing a shirt
was listening to awful dance music
loudly
and didn’t turn it down.
Not a home.
More like a student flat
per Mackenzie Road, with more
obviously objectionable occupants.

From my flat-hunting friend’s notes, found in an A-Z he gave me. By Nija Dalal.

May your premises flood. Repeatedly.

May your premises flood. Repeatedly.
May your buildings cover be invalidated by poor workmanship.
May your staff be off sick, en masse, long-term.
May your food poisoning leave you with a colostomy bag.
May your dogs bite you and may you be underinsured.
May your homes burn, and your insurance company welsh on the deal.
May you be hit by an uninsured driver, while doing something quite witless to invalidate the claim.
May you be caught speeding, texting and pissed simultaneously.
Pay the man’s widow what you owe her, scumbags,
and Karma might be kind.

A comment on the Change.org petition, ‘Friends Life: Pay out Nic Hughes’ critical illness policy’.

Houndstooth

Things started to go downhill
while I was trying to
administer novocaine to a dog.
I’m still not entirely sure what happened.
I was trying to inject his gums with anesthesia
when a message popped up,
telling me I had failed.

Game over.

From a review of an ipad app called ‘Dental Surgery’. By Mat Riches.

Kugel decided then and there

that he would die a happy man,
that he would consider his meager life
a success, if
in years to come,
somewhere,
someday,
someone
kicked in Jonah’s door
and Jonah was surprised.
Shocked.
Amazed.

Let him be utterly
bewildered, dear God.

Let him wonder,
raised-eyebrowed and slack-jawed,

They kick doors in now?
Since when?
Hang on, hang on—
they’re putting people in ovens?
You can’t be serious.
Since when
do people
put other people
in ovens?

From Hope: A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander (2012). By Ailsa Holland.

Snakes

I don’t mind snakes
but sometimes
they’ve been quite

you know: snakes
going up legs
and snakes everywhere
warm on your skin

lots of snakes
like giant white albino pythons
I don’t mind them
so it’s all right

I don’t mind them
I quite like them
but yeah
if you didn’t I mean

From an interview with Kate Moss in The Times, 26 January 2012. By Thom.