I’m a Nurse with a Vice

off duty without a friend, a hobby to console me,
or the price of a cinema ticket, what can I do?

I enter a little shop down the road, furtively,
and ask the woman for my favourite brand.

I sneak back to my room and lock the door
against everyone. Then out comes the teaspoon

I filched from the dining room. I indulge in an orgy
of onions, gherkins, piccalilli, mustard and spice.

Yes, I finish the whole jar. Then I wash my hands,
clean my teeth, and can face the world. Maybe

it’s because pickles aren’t provided in our meals.
Or maybe my nature requires still more acid.

Mother says the vinegar will dry up my blood
and I’ll be preserved. But, oh, what a glorious end.

(From a letter to an old edition of Woman magazine. Submitted by Angela Readman)

Woman to woman

I know I am not the only woman in the world
with a sort of hurt feeling about fruit shops.

The windows are always so full of delicious
looking fruit. The rosiest of apples, succulent

black grapes, oranges and grapefruit that make
my mouth water. The greenest of watercress,

and sprightly mustard cress just ask for a plate
of thin bread and butter and a cup of strong tea.

Brussel sprouts are so neat and compact.
And every potato is round, neat and eyeless,

– just right to bake with half a dozen of its brothers.
Why is it then, when I get home with my basket

I find little shapeless many eyed potatoes, sprouts
dirty and loose-leaved, cress yellow and limp?

I know every fruit and vegetable can’t be perfect.
But I think some of the window fruit should get

into the shopping basket more often – in fact I know.

(From a letter to Woman magazine, 1940s. Submitted by Angela Readman)

The Shores of Tripoli

1
Never sell the bones
of your father and mother.
Every damn fool thing you do
in this life you pay for.
The bastards tried to come
over me last night.
I guess they didn’t know
I was a Marine.

2
Is it not meningitis?
All right then, I’ll say it:
Dante makes me sick.
Damn it! How will I ever
get out of this labyrinth?
Useless … useless …
My vocabulary did this to me.

3
Don’t ask me how I am!
I’ve got the bows up … I’m going!
I understand nothing more.
The bastards got me,
but they won’t get everybody.
This is the fish of my dreams.

Last words from Wikiquotes. By Howie Good.

The burn

Boredom makes us do it, that and the chase.
The sun whitens the grass until it’s ripe
to burn and then we light it, watch and wait.

The flames take the land, they come and we run.
Us in our shorts, them in their gear, too
clumsy to run but fast because they’re men.

We’re laughing and falling, stumbling and rolling
safe if not caught, too young to worry
about the dead birds and black landscape.

From Gawain Barnard’s photography exhibition, as previewed on A Fine Beginning: Made in Wales, BBC News In Pictures, 14 March 2014.

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. By Anna Percy.

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 20 March 1962 at Berkeley Language Center. By Howie Good.

THIS IS NOT A LOVE THING – The Harlot’s Progress 2014

1. Arrival in London

Boy have you been a lucky girl
new in town and everybody’s
darling: love, desire and a tender
touch always has the boys high
for candy kisses, little miss.

Beware the late night
luxury love, enjoy the
good times – for a day.

2. Quarrel with her protector

Introducing a girl in a million.
A young mistress, tamed and trained
with a luxury new apartment
and a wardrobe full of fun and games.

She’s fresh and lovely, a cherry ripe
English rose. Fresh and green
she must be seen.

3. Apprehended by a Magistrate

Come on gentlemen
report now!
She’s a genuine siren
talented and in control.

Urgent, be warned – your afternoon
fun just got sensored:
it’s playtime with visiting
magistrates now!!

4. Scene in Bridewell

So, a total transformation for
the country girl – complete captivation
caged and reduced to tears. A taste of
no mercy, a broken sentence.

Bow and show repentance.

5. She expires while doctors quarrel

Great, she’s back!
In town, in pain. Feel
the sensation – it’s agony
she has friends: caring,
friendly and understanding
a lifetime too late. Ouch!

6. The funeral

Demonstrate respect for the
pleasure princess. This is not
a love thing, she’s heaven bound –
it’s judgement day for all.

Relax Venus
and enjoy the rest.

From a series of ‘tart cards’ found in London phone boxes. The titles are from The Harlot’s Progress by William Hogarth. By Victoria Bean.

Definitions

Extremely elderly Benedictine monk
Irrational predilection for performing surgery
Of, like or pertaining to lava
One who habitually enters many competitions

Local judge among miners
Provisional name for a plant whose flowers are unknown
Expression of joy among Arab women
Muscle by which the testicles are suspended

Government by superior firepower or by cannons
Part of a bullfighting arena where the bull makes his stand
Ancient syrupy medicine that is licked off a spoon
Doctrine that the wicked are utterly destroyed after death

Some definitions from The Phrontistery, a free online dictionary of obscure words. By Howie Good.

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 from A Troubled Past, New York Times, 19 September 2013. Stanza 2 is from A Real Amazon, Forbes, about a woman who died on 19 September 2013. Stanza 3 is from Eat, Fish, Sleep, Click, 21 January 2013. By Howie Good.

I, Emily Dickinson

1
I am afraid to own a body
I am alive I guess
I am ashamed, I hide
I asked no other thing

I bet with every wind that blew
I breathed enough to take the trick
I bring an unaccustomed wine
I came to buy a smile today

I can wade grief
I cannot be ashamed
I cannot buy it, ‘tis not sold
I cannot dance upon my toes

I cannot live with you
I cannot meet the spring unmoved
I cannot see my soul but know ‘tis there
I cannot want it more

2
I can’t tell you but you feel it
I cautious scanned my little life
I could bring you jewels had I a mind to
I could die to know

I could not drink it, sweet
I could not prove the years had feet
I could suffice for him, I knew
I counted till they danced so

I cried at pity, not at pain
I cross till I am weary
I did not reach thee
I died for beauty, but was scarce

I dreaded that first robin so
I dwell in possibility
I envy seas whereon he rides
I fear a man of frugal speech

3
I felt a cleaving in my mind
I felt a funeral in my brain
I felt my life with both my hands
I fit for them

I found the words to every thought
I gained it so
I gave myself to him
I got so I could take his name

I groped for him before I knew
I had a daily bliss
I had a guinea gold
I had been hungry all the years

I had no cause to be awake
I had no time to hate
I had not minded walls
I had some things that I called mine

4
I had the glory – that will do
I have a bird in spring
I have a king who does not speak
I have never seen “Volcanoes”

I have no like but this
I haven’t told my garden yet
I heard a fly buzz when I died
I heard as if I had no ear

I held a jewel in my fingers
I hide myself within my flower
I keep my pledge
I knew that I had gained

I know a place where summer strives
I know lives, I could miss
I know of people in the grave
I know some lonely houses off the road

5
I know suspense – it steps so terse
I know that he exists
I know where wells grow, droughtless wells
I learned at least what home could be

I like a look of agony
I like to see it lap the miles
I live with him, I see his face
I lived on dread

I lost the world the other day
I made slow riches but my gain
I make his crescent fill or lack
I many times thought peace had come

I meant to find her when I came
I meant to have but modest needs
I measure every grief I meet
I met a king this afternoon

6
I never felt at home below
I never hear that one is dead
I never hear the word “escape”
I never lost as much but twice

I never saw a moor
I never told the buried gold
I noticed people disappeared
I often passed the village

I pay in satin cash
I play at riches to appease
I prayed at first a little girl
I read my sentence steadily

I reason earth is short
I reckon when I count at all
I robbed the woods
I rose because he sank

7
I saw no way – the heavens were stitched
I saw that the flake was on it
I saw the wind within her
I see thee better in the dark

I see thee clearer for the grave
I send two sunsets
I send you a decrepit flower
I shall keep singing

I shall know why, when time is over
I shall not murmur if at last
I should have been too glad, I see
I should not dare to be so sad

I should not dare to leave my friend
I showed her heights she never saw
I sing to use the waiting
I sometimes drop it, for a quick

8
I started early, took my dog
I stepped from plank to plank
I stole them from a bee
I sued the news, yet feared the news

I suppose the time will come
I taste a liquor never brewed
I tend my flowers for thee
I think I was enchanted

I think just how my shape will rise
I think that the root of the wind is water
I think the hemlock likes to stand
I think the longest hour of all

I think to live may be a bliss
I thought that nature was enough
I thought the train would never come
I tie my hat, I crease my shawl

9
I took my power in my hand
I took one draught of life
I tried to think a lonelier thing
“I want” – it pleaded all its life

I was a phoebe, nothing more
I was the slightest in the house
I watched her face to see which way
I watched the moon around the house

I went to heaven
I went to thank her
I worked for chaff and earning wheat
I would distil a cup

I would not paint a picture
I years had been from home

All the lines beginning with the first person pronoun ‘I’ from the Index of First Lines, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, Edited by Thomas H. Johnson (Little, Brown and Company, 1960). By J.R. Solonche.