Tag: free verse

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. . .

Taken from an interview with the artist Ian Ingram on the blog Venetian Red, 23 May 2011. Several punctuation marks have been removed, along with one ‘and’ at the end of line 1. Submitted 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 notes a friend took when he went flat hunting. I found them in an A-Z he gave me. Submitted 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’. Comment posted 5 December 2012. ‘And’ deleted (line 2), lines 5 and 6 truncated. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

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.

Taken from a review of an ipad app called ‘Dental Surgery’, 4th December 2012. Submitted 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). Submitted 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

Taken from an interview with Kate Moss in The Times, 26th January 2012. The interviewer’s questions and some punctuation removed. Submitted by Thom.

A relationship with the vernacular

Let us also recognize
our own native
detachable snake-hips,
our rangy legs,

our educated feet.
Our arms and fingers
wave and snap
in a special way.
Our shoulders hang
as no other people’s
shoulders hang.

Taken from ‘Musical Myths of the American West’, by Stephen Brown, a review of two books in the Times Literary Supplement, 9 November 2012. The poem is a quotation from the writings of Lincoln Kirstein. Submitted by Rishi Dastidar.