Picaroon Poetry is a new web journal for rogue poems.
Issue #1 includes work by Orooj-e-Zafar, iDrew, Shane Vaughan, David Spicer, Susan Castillo Street, Neil Fulwood, Brett Evans, Amy Kinsman, Dean Rhetoric, Johanna Boal, Carole Bromley, Alyson Miller, Robert Crisp, Chris Hemingway, Rachel Nix, Jennifer A. McGowan, Bethany W Pope, Grant Tarbard, Hannah Pyne, Marilyn Hammick, and Mary Stone.
Issue #1
March 2016
Edited by Kate Garrett
All poems copyright © 2016 individual authors
Selection/issue copyright © 2016 Kate Garrett
This Month’s Rogue Poems ● March 2016
Re: “Find what you love and let it kill you.”
Orooj-e-Zafar
iBaroque
iDrew
Marrow Mouth
Shane Vaughan
Leona and Keats
David Spicer
Ambrosia
Susan Castillo Street
Mambo
Neil Fulwood
My Mother the Barmaid Never Said There’d Be Nights
Like This
Brett Evans
What’s Thirty-Two and Eight?
Amy Kinsman
Baby We’re So Cliché It’s Cliché
Dean Rhetoric
Imagining Mona Lisa in the 21 st Century using a
SmartPhone
Johanna Boal
Fund-raiser
Carole Bromley
The Worn-Out Dancing Shoes
Alyson Miller
Church of Puppetry
Robert Crisp
Forecourt Carnations
Chris Hemingway
Exit Strategy
Rachel Nix
Scarring
Jennifer A. McGowan
Fallon
Bethany W Pope
A November Book Burning
Grant Tarbard
Keeping Mum
Hannah Pyne
Desert Island Things
Marilyn Hammick
[Jennifer Walks the River]
Mary Stone
Re: “Find what you love and let it kill
you.”
Orooj-e-Zafar
I will find what I love
and let it play hopscotch on the midline cliffs
of my vertebrae; I will let it turn around
to my front and slide down my tailbone
so it has lived like a child
before it sheds memories in the shape
of victories feeling like anything but.
I will find what I love and let it decide
how long her braids must fall and where
his ankles need to be fastened to his sneakers;
I can wait till both their rabbit ears
find their looping better halves.
I will find what I love and let it breathe
before I can admit the full deficit of my proprioception
and the terms I made with it. I will let it live,
expel,
return
and then surrender
just until its admission leaks onto its lying lips,
“I have wanted to end you,” as if the shock
will shift my tectonic paradigm.
I will roll pebbles onto my back for it and whisper,
before the waves wax and wane to their end:
“Loving is consuming in the way fire makes
bodies fly. Watch how you made me soar,
watch how we have lived,
watch how we have grown,
and let go.”
iBaroque
iDrew
my dearest elizabeth returned
home from manchester disappointed that
the hacienda had closed
something to do with new factory acts
she had only gone for
a few new tracks and
some of doctor johnson’s vocabulary pills
but alas it was not to be
so she was back home with me in
the candle gloom doing girly things
playing with our hair needlepoint and
giggling without a care
we had drunk three bottles of tesco’s cider
fantasising that if lord nelson was still alive
he would capture for us a small island
conceivably he could invade ibzia in a
day or even in his lunch hour then sit back
with a brandy soaked laugh and a big fat cigar
studying nouveaux riche investment portfolios
with which we could build space and passion
in the creamfields
for fun in the sun away from our routines
of tedious teas and charity deeds
to a place where we could step out
and be truly carefree
not stuck in smokey london playing charades
in rhythm with grime
Marrow Mouth
Shane Vaughan
As if you are a three course meal
bottle of the black grape to boot
and hadn't I my fill years ago
As if I can't taste the sour
on the edge of your tongue
when I order you rare
As if waiting makes a difference
was it six months since last
we took each other out
As if you haven't cooked
in all this time and
we're still dining each other.
As if there's more meal
in the dry-bone sucking
mouth to the marrow.
Marrow into lung
that's us, babe.
Perhaps tonight I'll
order something exotic.
Leona and Keats
David Spicer
My girlfriend Leona was so obsessed
with Keats she wrote her thesis
on the probability of his tasting
watermelon and wearing suede jackets.
Memorized all of his poems and composed
the answers for the Keats category
on Jeopardy. She never received
a doctorate because she ignored
her questioners, failed to referee herself.
I couldn’t stomach them so I scrambled
out of there, she told me. Later a model
for shampoo and crocodile bags,
she wrote guidebooks to the prettiest
palm trees in California. She encouraged
me to construct parables, purge demons,
and worship forefathers. Listen, history
is a convoy of dump trucks driving over
a succession of manholes, she told me
one day with a bounce in her glazed voice.
She laughed at my droopy eyes. By the way,
I’m leaving. That woke me up. I suddenly
realized nobody can replace Keats, so I’m
going to visit his grave and sleep on it.
Ambrosia
Susan Castillo Street
Take two pounds of Florida oranges.
Peel, then segment carefully. Add a tale
from Aunt Cecile about her bastard husband Jack
who ran off with that floozy from the Coast.
Then take one coconut. Hurl its hairy head
against the floor. It will burst open, just like
the head of Janie’s husband Number One
who put a pistol to his mouth.
Grate white snowflakes into a crystal bowl.
Presentation will be enhanced with a few drops
of knuckle gore. They will accent the flavor,
add a touch of pinkish elegance.
Mambo
Neil Fulwood
Strike up the band – play something finger-snapping jazzy,
something swinging, snazzy, something sharp-suit
and swirled-skirt sassy, shot through with Bernstein cool.
Give me great blurts of brass bathed in the bronze burnish
of 1950s Technicolor, and brother play that slide trombone
like “slide” is a double entrendre that brings out blushes.
Set loose the shimmerings of a string section strung out
on extra-curricular considerations of seductive scenarios
inspired by certain brunettes on Herb Alpert album covers.
Rescue some pill-pepped percussionist from a bum job
firing rim shots that underline the vaguely lewd punchlines
of a corpulent comedian with a mother-in-law fixation.
Slap the lot of them in tuxes; configure their starched collars
with dickie-bows or string ties; bring them under the baton
of a band leader with a gimlet eye and a taste for the limelight;
arrange them on the raised section of horseshoe-shaped stage
groaning under their collective weight, then snap on
the Kleig lights, beams fogged by Saturday night tendrils
of a thousand slow-burning cigarettes. Add to the fuggy haze
the out-of-place chalk dust of the pool hall as well as
the familiar tang of martinis and Singapore slings. Ask for a tab
at the bar. They can only say no and probably won’t. Drop
the name of someone disreputable and see how far it gets you.
Say the right word to the hat-check girl and the wrong one
to the guy in the homburg. Or vice versa. You’re in for
an open palm or a smack in the kisser and you’ll either
be barred or a hero to the regulars. The French have a word
and it roughly translates as something unprintable. Roll
with it. Shoot your cuffs, straighten your collar. Flick open
a matchbook, strike a light with a nail. The night is yours
or tonight you’re alone. Doesn’t matter. The band’s killing it
and the music was written to pin down every solitary drink
or lucky manoeuvre that’s defined your life from the cradle
to wherever. These guys are your biographers, buddies,
confessors;
they pardon your hangovers, bar bills, black eyes; permit
your Runyonesque dialogue on the theme of this man’s town.
My Mother the Barmaid Never Said
There’d be Nights Like This
Brett Evans
It’s nights like this you expect that heart attack,
as pipes announce the lungs of the house collapsed.
The body shakes and sweats and sweats and shits,
trumping Christ – your skidded Turin sheets.
Busy as the arse has been, the brain reflects
on friends, drink, individual lovers, then sex;
the need for skin on skin, a tattooed shoulder.
Your own breast tightens, heartbeats may go no further.
Your ‘fuck-it list’ completed, but now you’re dead
eternity won’t bring one hour of Bessie Smith,
Sweet Emma Barrett, or Tampa Red.
What’s Thirty-Two and Eight?
Amy Kinsman
I am Girl #32.
He is Boy #8.
The count, for him, is summoned instantly to mind
the numerals climbing like an ever growing mountain
its features changing each occasion you should look back
at the landmarks made insignificant,
just specks in the distance marking where you were.
I will get there too, in time,
and to say it started tonight would be a lie
just as I will be the lie of omission he does not tell
to the elephant in the room just outside of London.
What number does he give her?
Is it honest, as it may as well be,
for we are fixed points to one another’s movement?
Once you begin to add cinnamon and oranges
and the bite of tequila,
presumption is just simple mathematics.
What’s thirty-two and eight?
A question free of nuance that opens up its arms
to an easy answer
on a sheet of primary school homework:
fill in what’s missing.
He does not tell me I have beautiful thighs
or not to reference my own poems in my poetry.
He does not prise my fingers from my face
and wraps his arms about me like this
is where his body always fits.
So I tell him about six,
how the number brands me and still aches
because the mark goes deep
and we exchange these numbers in the gap
between mouth and ear:
her body bent first in supplication, then in prayer;
the closing of thumb and forefinger
around my throat,
holding all the words in me.
We are not who we were four years ago,
of course we were less then,
and he would not have dreamt of the graphs
his fingers are tracing over the skin of my back
nor I the equal of the scar
on the right hand side of his abdomen.
I hope he will remember my name
if only for the algebra of it
that differentiates down to a three and a two
the way he becomes an infinity
nailed sideways to a half-closed door.
He says he will be back
but I’m not sure he means it.
Fermat’s Last Theorem
for men and women:
the calculation works
but for what reason?
Later,
counting on my fingers
like I’m a child again,
I realise my maths is wrong
and, as always, I have lost one.
He is Boy #9.
Baby We’re So Cliché it’s Cliché
Dean Rhetoric
Me and the Cliché, Leaving love codes on bank vaults,
fresh bread breath kisses, lick picking through padlocks,
Disguising ourselves as clouds on Halloween and
hocking spitsies at the meanie kids
Cliché and I. Liberating all the unloved animals,
killing hitchhikers, pickpocketing pulses and waving dead skin
at passing cars.
Homemade clothes, turtle shell ties and wet paper towel tights
singing hillbilly poetry on the porch
Lazy Sunday activities with cliché, throwing fake limbs
into privately owned parks,
hysterical laughter and violence, arguing over the difference
between
roses and skulls, falling over for attention,
holding hands between mouthfuls of innocent bystanders.
Coffee tastes better with cliché,
inventing a secret language and
proving its diameter.
Mixing breakfast cereals,
getting sued. Cold calling the Illuminati at sleepovers
to ask if their eye is running, kicking the living
sugarpop out of me, inspecting the fluoride for government
secrets
Sweet Cliché, cheering on the fat man
running for the last midnight train,
surrounding him when he doesn’t
screaming hillbilly poetry on the porch
sucking all the light from stars
and proudly watching her
flower children
dance.
Imagining Mona Lisa in the 21 st Century
using a SmartPhone
Johanna Boal
Texting Leonardo, Mona added me in.
She wanted to know why he painted her in colours
and on paper made from a poplar tree.
But not always coping with the predictive text
this is what it said
lok ike in a smoky rume, grim depre-seive colors
a slummy backdrop. leo you maek lok I’m
reeking of alcohol with rats & in the gutter
My hair loks lank with that blak veil
why r mye eyes swollen & cheeeks p..ale?
LEooo, you’ve mee in Squarwlor.
I text her back- You are priceless Mona
Mona tells me I’m saved to her favourites.
Her screen saver has a picture of Florence.
Fund-raiser
Carole Bromley
He went out for the morning
so she could have the playgroup mums round
for an Ann Summers event.
He thought of himself as broad-minded,
secretly hoped she'd splash out
on something crotchless
but was taken aback on glancing
through the lounge window to see
six vibrators racing across the hearth rug.
The Worn-Out Dancing Shoes
Alyson Miller
Their parents blamed a toxic conspiracy, something about
chemicals creeping through the bedrock like a stain. Claimed
it must be under the football field, poisons triggered by
cheerleaders and runners punctuating the earth with the
regularity of typewriters and bird song. Experts held the
mystery as far away as continents, spitting out scripts for
antibiotics and hysteria like seeds and broken teeth. On the
television, the girls jerked as though possessed, necks and
faces pulled hard into alien angles, voices annexed by unreal
things. And the symptoms spread like a haunting, an enigma
of muscle and some cerebral ghost that eluded X-rays and
journalists and psychiatry. The small town, nervous of the
water table and porous quarry rocks, shuttered down as tight
as an eyelid. And the girls, locked in their rooms and skins,
searched night skies and the patterns of leaf falls for some
hint of return.
Church of Puppetry
Robert Crisp
It’s a sin to disrespect Ernie, you know,
he said to me in cloistered, choir tones.
The Muppet on Sesame Street? I balked,
ready to be rid of this charlatan parading
about in sequins and sashes, his mouth
a jagged cut, the Joker on angel dust.
The very one, he intoned and knocked
over the censer, reeking up the joint.
Muppets aren’t above reproach, I say,
and that includes Bert, Oscar, all of them.
He looked at me with what he hoped
were eternal eyes but were just half-infinity
contacts on sale in Heaven’s gift shop.
Deep below, he could have saved a buck
and taken the Devil’s horn-rim glasses
but he was too focused on felt to care.
Forecourt Carnations
Chris Hemingway
I'm a 'just-in-time',
an impulse buy.
Tesco half a mile away.
Stashed in a black plastic bucket,
just beside the solar gnomes.
I fear the worst if he takes me home,
trampled underfoot,
or thrashed across his stubborn jaw.
But if she lets me stay,
then there'll come a morning
when the light won't catch the crystal hare
(a troubled gift from Dave at work)
and I'll bloom,
and she'll forgive him,
and that'll make me smile.
Exit Strategy
Rachel Nix
Three months is my average; rarely
do I last any longer playing the role
of lover. I’ve dared myself to resist
the urge to leave, but it goes against
my truths. When lust-minded hands
turn to watchful eyes, I try to decide
if it’s worth it to be wanted for more
than late hours. Men begin to see me
as someone to bring home, to occupy
their houses. I find the exits too easily.
Scarring
Jennifer A. McGowan
The slice through clean skin:
rivulets of red, your favourite colour,
branch over my chest in
echoes of your fingertips. Severed
nerves go into shock; pain and
tears will come later, and will
pass. It’s absence I can’t bear,
the whiteness of lack. You will
make your mark. I reach into
the urn, pull out a handful of
grey, rub it into the cut.
Fallon
Bethany W Pope
You were wounded, demented, a bad little girl,
Grinning as you slid your fingers into me.
I never thought I'd catch myself praying for your soul
After you told me that, now, I could never be loved. My small
Body was a canvass for your vengeance;
You were wounded, demented, a bad little girl
Still angry at your mommy for selling you to tall,
Grown men whose cocks (you said) tasted like pee.
I never thought I'd catch myself praying for your soul
When, years later, you let your filthy orange urine fall
Into my mouth as you used your woven belt to choke me.
You were wounded, demented, a bad little girl,
And I was unsurprised when I learned you'd landed in jail,
Though the crime they nailed you for was unrelated to rape.
I never thought I'd catch myself praying for your soul,
When I spent the night vomiting after giving my all
Attempting to pleasure the man that I love, but this is true:
You were wounded, demented, a sad little girl
And I just caught myself praying for your soul.
A November Book Burning
Grant Tarbard
We have bare hands and
don't bear arms against
the burning of books,
libraries of ash,
ignoring rubble.
You can hear the ghosts
whispering in the
overhanging trees,
a lighthouse of blood
and a songbird's sigh.
Charcoal breath kernel,
all the red roses
are crisp, and all the
pages are bred for
the hand of soil that
accompanies death,
an embryo of
dark blue light, midnight's
child is made from dusk
black spiders and hair
clogged down the drain. The
porcelain morning
is a stag rutting
for the attention
of the bullet Moon.
The wild flowers are
slain with the soot of
pages, shelves in flame.
The burning of books,
omit the powder.
Keeping Mum
Hannah Pyne
She whistled and they came;
Rita Hayworth in a home-made bikini.
Now she wears clothes she’d hate,
fed food she’s never liked,
spoken to in a way that makes me
want to thrust The Times crossword
at them and say See! She can do it.
She sits in a knitted hell, smiling
at old photos, touching the moment
before it disappears beneath the blanket.
Desert Island Things
Marilyn Hammick
to view, not to use
A felt coaster for the taste of sunrise Guatemala,
afternoon Earl Grey, sunset Château Ausone.
That length of dowel left lying around for years
to conduct Bach, Beethoven and Basie.
One seam ripper, blunt enough to undo most
relationships and leave the fabric intact.
My Dad’s bradawl, from his Dad, to recall
the holes in the spaces between the lines.
A chipped soap dish for moments that slid
through my fingers, through lack of attention.
Red Cross Charity bookmarks to indicate
where words leaked into the page margin.
A slide rule with all its dust so once again
I can forget why logarithms are important.
One candle holder splattered with wax
to understand the ragged scar.
[Jennifer Walks the River]
Mary Stone
The meth reminds her to hem her skirt,
that her skin is like the moon
in November when all the men go outside
and wait on their porches for a leisurely frost.
The men with belts and buckles and tattoos,
who fight wasps deep into the winter
to show her what they are willing to lose
for her pain. She heads to 8 th Street
where brick rots, where the river
reclaims its ruin. Sometimes her body
remembers the sky at dawn, but mostly
remembers men reaching for her
from the fires, the swirl of dead fish
rotting in her hands, her numb lips.
The mist of the river tastes of blood and semen.
At the dock the men appear,
waving and holding onto their hats.
She can see the wind, palms its song
when she finds a lone penny
and pretends she is home.
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