Picaroon Poetry - Issue #2 - May 2016

Issue #2
May 2016
Edited by Kate Garrett
All poems copyright © 2016 individual authors
Selection/issue copyright © 2016 Kate Garrett

This Month’s Rogue Poems ● May 2016
Campground
Mark J. Mitchell
The Shooting Season
Angela Croft
Walter Potter
Stephen Bone
In Pursuance of the Shiny Things
Kiley Creekmore
The Woman they called Stramash
Beth McDonough
Baltic Salt & Pepper
Demi Cybulski
To Me They Are a Homonym
Kymm Coveney
Mussel Memory
Kate Hodges
Party Animals
Hilary Hares
Rollercoaster
Finola Scott
115 Candles
Carol Gloor
Your Name in the Lake
Charles W. Brice

Strange Baby Days
AE Stueve
He just stopped (blinking)
Stephen Daniels
Remnants of a Quasi-sleepless Night
Jovan Jakic
What’s Not to Like
Pru Kitching
Lover
Mab Jones
My Coat with Rainbow Sleeves
Mary Imo-Stike
‘Do you think David Bowie would like my trousers?’
Holly Magill
Boudicca in Bedford Square
Marilyn Francis
The Rat Angels
Joanne Key
Charles Byrne, The Irish Giant 1761-1783
Faye Boland
Teaching in the 21 st Century
Laurie Kolp
The Bargain
Bethany Rivers
Pearl Blue Car
Broc Riblet

Campground
Mark J. Mitchell
A trick shooting priest
palms a canary. Swallows it.
Tents brood gaily on the brown lot.
The sword swallower and
dancing bear swap jokes and recipes.
The circus can’t wait
to leave town.

The Shooting Season
Angela Croft
In this, the last of my How To series, we
will consider ways to prepare a pheasant,
satiate the gourmand. It is not a topic
for the faint-hearted so, Violet, you may wish
to leave the hall before I put it to the assembly.
The fowl must first hang by the neck
to tenderize. The process takes longer in winter.
In summer, no trouble, a couple of days will do.
To pluck and gut, wear rubber gloves.
No, it doesn’t matter if they’re not actually
Marigolds, Fay. Start at the rump and grab
the feathers in tufts; a short sharp yank
against the grain, ok? Use a whetted knife
to take his head off clean. That’s right Judith.
Slit the skin up to its ribs. Open up
and hook out his innards. Split its gizzard
like a bag of corn down to the crop. Your overalls
will wash. Now, chop off his scaly feet. Blast
with a blow-torch to remove any stubble
or run him over a gas flame – and you’re done.

Walter Potter
Stephen Bone
An owl professor,
pince-nez on his beak.
A kitten bride, tearful
beneath her veil.
Two duelling squirrels,
cavalier plumed.
How endlessly busy
this after life he made for you.
Walter Potter (1835-1918) was a celebrated taxidermist.

In Pursuance of the Shiny Things
Kiley Creekmore
With pursed lips.
Purse lips?
No, that’s not what I said,
although my purse has swallowed a cat before, and some
shiny lighters from the Pub at the End of the Universe, (no, I
don’t smoke, but you never know when you might need to
start a fire) and ketchup packets (I hate ketchup) for people
that don’t have homes, and plastic silverware wrapped in
plastic (why is everything plastic these days?), although, once
my purse ate actual silverware, and the clanking reduced me
to really quiet walking (because this was before everything
was plastic and I ate at cafes that had real forks that wouldn’t
break if you accidentally stabbed your finger while eating real
biscotti because you forgot to dunk it in your coffee cup that
was not styrofoam), and so many napkins (because I had a
home, but could barely afford rent), but after my purse ate that
cat I was reduced to feeding the purse with tin cans (ah, but it
was nice to hear that clanking again) to feed the cat.
So the cat would purr.
And I guess nobody says pursed lips anymore.

The Woman they called Stramash
Beth McDonough
I suspect Kate’s undiluted words hung in air,
loose-skinned as saithe, lined out to dry
in sunned salt wind, close to Kilearnadil.
Perhaps they caught odd innocents, who silvered in
to sentenced creels she’d bent
from hazel wands. She turned her glare
from other hags, still pinnacled nearby.

Baltic Salt & Pepper
Demi Cybulski
She’s collectivised [to cope] now.
Rampant Individualism via spin cycle,
communally wowing [trying],
Fabric conditioned and state sponsored
with her own pots, pans, boxes marked Me;
Packed up for the good of a concrete colony.
A ride along - adjacently - soon to be,
Staking her claim [content] on Maestro’s
rungless ladder to domestic bliss.
Runoff wetlogged kitty litter, [she’s untrained]
and among his severely baltic smoke and spices,
Maestro opens windows, sings from tobacco pipes,
Shows off other souvenirs of human folly.

To Me They Are a Homonym
Kymm Coveney
Caña,coño. Coño,caña.
The funny en, the elusive
gender. Who knew beer,
not cunts, was feminine?
What you want is a pint:
‘Quiero una caña’
what you ask for is a cunt:
‘Quiero un coño’
Grab the language by the horns,
Own its vowels.
Conquer its cues.
Make those enyes cry uncle.
Stop asking, start demanding.
Go on. Tell that barman:
(A pint, dammit!)
¡Coño! ¡Una caña!

Mussel Memory
Kate Hodges
“Making a romantic dinner for two? What should I serve with it?
Tips?”
Epicurifoodnetwhiteorred.org message board
21 replies. Contrary food wars come to a Boil
“I brought a bottle of red and a bottle of white…”
We rustle up a cork screw from the junk jar-so glad I cleaned it
right before you came.
Raise the cork and throw away
mussels that refuse to open.
Stubborn shut. Can you help?
“Can’t wait to try them.”
We swap plates and laughter
as they slip out of your hands.
Anticipation.
“Is it sauce or gravy” you ask
and gently pry the shells apart.
“Tell me the best part of your day...”
But you say nothing and stare off.
“It’s good luck to find a few closed
off.” You have to work a little harder
to get the pearl inside.”
“No, that’s oysters.”
“No, that’s you.”
“Anyway, when you finally separate the shells
you’re supposed to make a wish
and have a taste.”
He holds one up for me to try.
“Close your eyes. Make a wish.
And put the mussel where your mouth is.”

Party Animals
Hilary Hares
I live in a house
that shares a wall.
The sounds are doors and feet
on stairs, a sneeze, a cough, the turn
of a key in a patio door.
I know his name. Five months ago
he moved her in.
As they leave for work I can see
two heads at the edge of the path,
their tyres leave mud on the road.
If the football’s on their mates
come round. If the rugby’s on they sing.
Through the layers of night her voice
has an edge, his a soft restraint.
One summer weekend
when she was away
the lads brought a crate of Becks
and barbequed a six foot plank.
Sometimes the doors are slams,
the feet on the stairs are a train.

The remains of the plank
lie propped against the fence.
At the quick of dawn the walls are thin.
She says: No. Don’t.

Rollercoaster
Finola Scott
When folk moan about growing old
metal hips and peeing pants
I think of my new settee.
The style boutique called it
a ‘love seat’.
I didn’t think so
imagined scoffing scones
curled up happy
in soft slippers.
But you thought differently
that rainy Saturday.
Home from the washed up Mela
we sprawled and rocked
smoothing old wrinkles, making new
fumbling folds in familiar corners.
The roomy seat cradled our cavorting.
Who would have thought –
sticky and sweaty at sixty?

115 Candles
Carol Gloor
They give a party for the alligator,
the oldest one known, complete
with a lemon sheet cake bristling
with candles. They sing Happy Birthday.
He never moves, shows no interest in the cake.
He wants to eat the leg of the singing woman.
She wants to pet his gnarls
and whisper him good words about
the world he lived through and animal rights,
just like when we hug sequoias,
rub against their rough backs,
knowing they lived at the fall of Rome.
He knows nothing: only dark, then light,
then dark, the taste of their fed meat
turning bland on his tongue.
It’s something to be the oldest of your kind,
even if you don’t know.
He stares at them with the blank
eyes of all reptiles.
He would run away if he could.

Your Name in the Lake
Charles W. Brice
I wrote your name in the lake
then my name,
our son’s name,
our daughter’s name,
then the universe’s name,
then god’s name
in the lake. I swam
in our names, dove
below and felt how cool
our names were, how fresh
when our surface cracked.
I wrote your name on the brow
of your budded green profusion,
the leaf you became
stout, proud, frim—
how you trembled.
The season you had was grand
then gilded, crinkled, beldame,
you dropped
weary winds
blown undisclosed
unknown.
I breathed your name
over snail, slug, toad and turtle
their days spent
from spore to tadpole to crick scum
the abundance of life
in your name
in every writhing arroyo
of your body.

Strange Baby Days
AE Stueve
A chubby pink baby sits, giggling
as a stream of green
feathers babbles
around
his feet.
He looks up at an ant
standing over him, saying,
“See the blue moon,”
and he does.
And the light is on, then off, then on.
And the rocks are like pillows that smell of pestilence.
And the end is always near, wearing a sign around his
neck that shouts,
“Beginning!”
And the sky dances; it’s in a club, shaking the ground
and changing,
morphing like a ranger.
A box of gray crayons falls,
and the baby laughs as he scribbles on the walls.

He just stopped (blinking)
Stephen Daniels
He was a genius,
that’s how they always described him,
able to order an Indian
takeaway with the smallest of thought,
he turned to answer
the quickest of questions with the sharpest
of movements,
his legs tripped over the air, his arms saved his genius
but not his knees,
I knew him before and he was regular, a packet
of crisps, he was crunchier
than the average bhaji, which is why he avoided the markets,
he sold his right arm
to a cheese-maker, who refused to smell it first, he started
every sentence
with an exclamation mark and finished each with a slur,
his father was known
for his train-like movement, he left yesterday two hours early,
he started writing this poem
in his sleep, when he lived – he wanted to grow trees,
when he got young
he wanted to eat greens, sometimes when no one was watching
he stopped.

Remnants of a quasi-sleepless night
Jovan Jakic
10 of August – 11 of August (11:56pm – 3:00am)
I lost a watch upon my desk
In puddle of the midnight wine
I fuelled myself with when I thought
How these words could be mine.
There is a screw upon the edge
That's sliding through the drooping sea
Of spleen I spilt last night I heard
A song on MTV.
And there's a paper wet with grease
Of lunch I shared with summer flies
I care not, for there I just wrote
Two bleaching lies.
Beside that mess, my moonlit hand
In break of day melts down to steel;
Before I wake I'll have no touch
With which to feel.
When I awake my heart will leap,
The screw will fall, the words will fade,
And my molten hand shall rise again
From a sunbaked shade.
This morning I will find my watch
And make it sing a lullaby,
So that I'll sleep before the time
For me begins to die.

What’s Not to Like
Pru Kitching
This morning I
could have a lie in,
didn’t need to go out in the snow
or share my toast and marmalade.
I could turn around without tripping,
push back my chair without checking.
This afternoon I
don’t need to go out in the wind,
can eat the whole bag of sugar snaps
must not play tug
or Febreze the sofa
the bed, the car, the rugs.
This evening I’ll
sit and watch telly
without an eye on the time,
not do a late night trudge
and come back soaking wet
having missed the last of the programme.
Tonight I
will eat more cheese than usual
need not tuck you in and kiss you
remove your collar
will deep-sleep myself back
into yesterday or the day before.

Lover
Mab Jones
Written after a visit to Llandough Psychiatric Unit
Your mind, like blown glass,
has cracked.
They have taped up
what they can. Only a few
fragments are missing.
In the tea room,
an older woman in tight jeans brags about how
you give her bear hugs.
In the hallway, a girl
is pulling herself toward the door,
on the floor. Ragdoll thin,
her hair streams behind her
like a wedding veil.
You are bearded. A young prince.
Dandruff confettis your shoulders
as you hold court.
You are popular here.
It is Sunday, and I am your fifth visitor.
You tell me you love me.
You want to show me your poems but
they are in the older woman’s room.
I see two people I know:
a sex offender I taught to write haiku;
a well-to-do woman
I need to invoice for work.

You put sugar in my coffee,
forgetting that I do not
take it.
You kiss me. I kiss back.
I am let out and walk past traffic,
keep walking until
I don’t know where I am.
You drink tea. Set up pieces
on a board game
you do not know how to play.

My Coat with Rainbow Sleeves
Mary Imo-Stike
I pick up the many partial skeins of yarn around my house
to knit a coat that is the story of my life
the best way I can tell it.
I make no attempt to bind dropped stitches from unravelling,
they are my ragged reflection, my stubborn stand-in
for beauty.
The big hole in my center is where my unnamed baby,
given up, fell through, roughly pulling pieces
of my body’s stuffing out with him.
The sleeves are rainbows
miles long, and wide as sunrise.
Their colors paint my portrait,
my flushed rose cheeks and blue bruised lips
memories of black cherry blood;
the ochre and cream of innocence,
like the shades of a daisy chain that was my childhood,
green ache of first love
and the depths of purple pain.
Some mornings I pull the ample collar
over my head and walk faceless
into town.

‘Do you think David Bowie would like
my trousers?’
Holly Magill
This was two summers back, when he might’ve
smiled at her (somewhat bland) beige slacks,
invited her to join him at his table,
listened to her go on about the Spiderman film
she’s seen half a dozen times without paying
– she knows a door at the back of the Odeon –
had he happened to be in Costa,
the one by the taxi rank in Worcester.
Or he might’ve been non-plussed
to be nobbled by this crazy-lady, minus cats
or a flat she’d tell him – the Housing people
won’t talk to her after that last trouble,
but she can get in
the Odeon any time she wants;
Spiderman 2 is great, he should see it.
That Thursday afternoon, he was otherwise engaged;
I said I thought he would like her trousers very much.

Boudicca in Bedford Square
Marilyn Francis
There was this girl
she was always going ‘down the Roman’
Saturdays.
Other times she worked up West
messengering papers between the houses
and cobbled-together offices of Bedford Square.
I knew her for a while
when Bow and Roman Road
seemed so authentic, so romantic
the market stink, Kelly’s pie and mash
the horror of green liquor. A real
kitchen sink drama in production.
This girl, she never felt cold.
Even when it was taters, brass monkeys
she’d saunter about in her cotton frock
as if it was springtime. That girl, she had red hair
and a fuck-you look in her eyes. I bet she went
‘down the Roman’ in a chariot.

The Rat Angels
Joanne Key
grant sanctuary to shadows.
They welcome outcasts –
those threadbare ghosts
and fleabags that roam
in your head, nosing the decay.
You curse their dirt, their runs
and footprints. Shiver
at the thought of them.
But on the way home
from a never-ending bad day,
they’re the ones that throw
a dead mouse into your path:
body splayed, spatchcocked,
flattened in a boot print, opening
at the seams. And as you side step
the unholy mess, walk on
to the verge of forgetting,
the Rat Angels cast a thread,
stitch an odd thought to the back
of your head of a scruffy old
woman slipping her coat off,
to reveal another woman, shiny
and pink underneath,
laughing until her sides split.

Charles Byrne, The Irish Giant 1761-
1783
Faye Boland
For two shillings, six pence
I sell myself, The Irish Giant.
Frockcoated gentleman
in knee breeches, silk, frills,
three cornered hat. The price
will get cheaper yet.
On swollen feet I entertain crowds
in the stench of haymarket.
Through a smog of whiskey, gin
I watch their eyes reach my navel,
heads loll back, mouths gape.
I am courted by king and queen,
nobility. While I sup in a tavern
afflicted with consumption,
pickpockets rob my fortune.
Preying doctors, wait to pounce
on my cadaver when I expire.
In school I drooled, shunned
by peasant pupils who called me freak.
In death I still am this. My corpse purloined,
flesh is boiled, my plea to be buried at sea
ignored. A glass case exhibits gargantuan
bones but my soul sails.

Teaching in the 21 st Century
Laurie Kolp
everywhere there are teachers
who hide and cry in bathrooms
while defiant six-year-old kids
draw stick figures with dicks in vaginas
there are teachers everywhere
who map out escape plans
should a shooter appear
from the womb
and after the tears become salt on lips

The Bargain
Bethany Rivers
The cellar is well lit and extends
the length and width of the house.
How much for this one? – he asks me.
I raise an eyebrow at him. I raise my clipboard,
hold the nib of my fountain pen to my lips.
I’ll add it to the inventory – is all I say.
Each cell once stored 425 bottles
of dearest wine. But not anymore.
What do you call this one? I ask.
Without looking at me, he says – Drowned Syrian Refugee.
Bronze statue of a man with most of his
torso missing, a broken suitcase, water lapping
above his head. Why Syrian?
He nods at the plaque showing the date.
Ah. 2016. Indeed. It was a fine year.
I tap the five inches of glass with the end of my pen.
The water ripples into the eye sockets.
What about this one then? This must be worth something.
I follow his perspiring trail to the end cell. I can’t quite
make out what it is at first. Sculpted ice capped mountain?
I peer closer, steaming up the glass. Three naked women
their hands reaching, pyramid-like. I raise
my eyebrow: What does this represent? He looks down
at his polished shoes – The Three Muses. A baby is falling
from the ripped womb of each woman. One baby is stuck
in a mini wheelchair created from paint brushes;
one is deformed, stunted arms of carved crotchets,

legs broken into quavers; the largest baby
has an oversized head and a hole
in his chest with his heart hanging out.
Will this cover the whole thing? You can
save me, right? Undo everything?
His tone of voice needles my nerves.
I slide the fountain into my top pocket
and place the clipboard under my arm.
When will I know? When will I find out?
I can hear the panic in his voice. I try not to smile.

Pearl Blue Car
Broc Riblet
As I drove to work an older man
in a BMW Z4 kept unintentionally
cutting me off.
I made a point to pull up beside
him and linger for a second
with the purpose of catching eye
contact.
Well he never looked over but from
his pleasant face, his bushes of white
hair around his ears, and his
straw hat panning the sun –
I am compelled to think that he
earned that car and he earned his
smooth ride.
I also thought of yelling
“Hey man if I crash my
Kia Optima, I'm going from
28 years old to infinity on
the pavement.”
And to prove our equality
“Hey man if you crash
your BMW Z4 you're going
from 65 years old to infinity
on the pavement.”
And we would nod at each
other and keep driving
forward.

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