Our third issue of Picaroon is a bucketful of doom with a dash of gloom, drinking to excess, love, loss, gardening, and fast food. Modern life is every bit as absurd as you might not think it is.
Featuring work by Siegfried Baber, Carrie Redway, Bethany W Pope, Adam Phillips, Seth Crook, Mackenzie Dwyer, Vincent Frontero, Jane Burn, Richie Brown, Noel King, Pat Edwards, G.B. Ryan, Heath Brougher, Daniel Blokh, Susan Castillo Street, Glen Armstrong, Brett Evans, Steve Lambert, Hugo Esteban Rodriguez, Lindsey Lucas, Chris Hemingway, James Croal Jackson, Grace Kearney, Bernadette Gallagher, and Ben Banyard.
Issue #3
July 2016
Edited by Kate Garrett
All poems copyright © 2016 individual authors
Selection/issue copyright © 2016 Kate Garrett
This Month’s Rogue Poems ● July 2016
Eggs (And a Side of Toast)
Siegfried Baber
Fourth of July
Carrie Redway
Girls
Bethany W Pope
I Love You Ezra and Harlan
Adam Phillips
You Are
Seth Crook
She Hates When I Tell Her Stuff Like This
Mackenzie Dwyer
Perceptions
Vincent Frontero
What Became of Bogies?
Jane Burn
Soul Music
Richie Brown
Chaser
Noel King
application
Pat Edwards
Shop Talk
G.B. Ryan
Summer’s Mechanical Thunderstorm
Heath Brougher
Light-Years
Daniel Blokh
The Gun-Runner’s Daughter
Susan Castillo Street
Wild Streaks
Glen Armstrong
Positively Shit Street – Rhyl to Venus
Brett Evans
Shrooming with Germ
Steve Lambert
Afterthought
Hugo Esteban Rodriguez
Kansas City Nights
Lindsey Lucas
Indelible
Chris Hemingway
Clutching My Stomach in the Bathroom
James Croal Jackson
Intrauterine
Grace Kearney
Young Urchins
Bernadette Gallagher
The Age of the Train
Ben Banyard
Eggs (And a Side of Toast)
Siegfried Baber
In a dirty corner of The Cup and Saucer on Canal Street,
the bride and the absentee share their booth
with a man named Frank, the spitting image of Krushchev,
who spills the grease from a grilled cheese sandwich
down his tie between mouthfuls of bitter black coffee.
She plucks the rice from her hair – Uncle Vernon was blind
and played organ for the local Pentecostal church.
He orders eggs and a side of toast, hash browns
over easy, and two strawberry shakes – My best friend Kipper
had two crooked legs, grew up in braces, and lived
with his grandmother in a trailer near the Mexican border.
She captures small rainbows in a bottle of Coke.
Both faces are pale as firelighters – Tell me, do you think
our waitress knows the world’s coming to an end?
Fourth of July
Carrie Redway
I watched the news again
waiting for that one video clip of the wreckage:
Metal shards in the field,
the shot of the tree,
the blood on the windshield your blood on the windshield.
The soundbite of the farmer
who saw your helicopter come lurching down,
just a squeal in the sky.
Your reconstructed face looked like Bob Hope in the casket.
My last memory. It makes me wonder how the medics
found you.
I heard you whisper now: “You should have screeched through the
sky too.
We could have been like meteors showering the cosmos.”
I nod. Yes, I should have.
But tonight, only fireworks explode in the night sky
as a gunshot would the chest.
Girls
Bethany W Pope
Sometimes, to get out of work, we’d fist-fight.
We were as close as it was possible
to be in such a place. She had a crush
on a boy with bad skin and a huge nose,
bad enough that she went red every time
he stood within ten feet of her, and she
trusted me enough to tell me what she’d
like to do with him if they were ever
alone. In return, I let her know where
I hid my stash of stolen books. Sometimes
we’d sneak into the high school to rob the
vending machines. I had a long, skinny
arm and she was good at peering around
corners. I’d aim to grab a few packets
of chocolate candies, shaped like peanuts, with
creamy peanut butter inside. We’d suck
their guts out, one at a time, sitting under
the dusty bleachers where normal kids sat
to watch graduations and plays. When we
fought, we held nothing back. We were really
fighting. I cracked her teeth; she blacked my eyes,
we tore each other bloody. This was love,
of a kind. This was deep intimacy.
We trusted each other to not go too
far. When the monotony of farm work,
those familiar dangers, grew too boring
to block out the things we were afraid of,
we’d glance at each other over a bale
of hay or a row of cabbages and nod,
once. Then we’d begin.When we fought, she wore
the face of my rapist. I don't know who
I was, for her. Someone who’d hurt her bad.
Eventually, the Foreman would bust through
the circle of kids who gathered around,
placing their bets (a coke, on the skinny
one) and pry us apart. He’d shout for a
while, then send us away to cool off in
the shit-scented milking hall. This was what
we wanted. Cool air. A little quiet.
A place to settle down and have a talk.
I Love You Ezra and Harlan
Adam Phillips
without you I
was going to die – now I never get
to leave, I’m lidless
eyes in the sky –
I’m a nail
through a two
by four –
I say this all the time – I’m
an unrequited kiss, the business
end of a thirty ought six – this
is all I ever get
to say – I can’t
die – once
the cells swarmed like bees, fleas, I took the needle, my gums
receded, my teeth fell out, I pushed
them back, I bit the tube, I spit
the blood, fuck you, I said, this dark
reptilian love – the drip that brought
me back –
I think of
all the things
I’d kill
with my bare hands – between you and me
nothing passes
I might have liked
to. Die I mean. I won’t. Not in a room
with wine, or a girl, not
in a wreck, not
in the apocalypse – You
wander here and there, you’ve eaten
off the ground – I slap your hand I watch
the sea – they’re up to something
out there – I'm ready
in the park, I’m
ready for the dark beyond
the stars, I watch
the clock – I’ve got an eye that never sleeps-
I crack my neck and grit my teeth
and breathe
the gas and dig
the shattered concrete – I’ll hold
your hand in the medevac you
stubborn little fucker, I may have had
other plans – it’s exactly what I said – your brother
never leaves – never hides
in trees, never needs
transfusions, stitches – I watch you sleep –
I watch
you eat – I taught
you how to walk, you hit your head –
I taught you how to fight – I’d like
to crush you down
into a block,
and put it in my pocket.
the point is
not to die – there is a line
a time my withered
wings no longer bear
your body home – I’m tethered
to your baby teeth, a wreath
upon my grave I'll eat
the leaves- you thought I left – I’m back – I thought
I was asleep – we start again – I can never die –
I say it all the time.
You Are
Seth Crook
your shadow’s shadow.
A double act,
although the partnership
is not as close as it appears to be.
Your shadow doesn’t like you
because you block the light.
You don’t like your shadow
because it doesn’t pull much weight.
But, on matters of divorce,
the old rules apply:
you must always be together,
except in the dark.
She Hates When I Tell Her Stuff Like
This
Mackenzie Dwyer
Mom! Did you know that NASA
found space marijuana? No, because
I’d get stoned (by you) if you thought
I knew more about drugs than you do.
Even though I just said that, there’s no
cause even to think less of me.
Some people out there are calling
their pets
their significant others & they mean it.
Imagine that, but with eyelash mites.
I could tell people that, or I could ask
did you know: one’s skin takes up
seventeen percent of one’s body weight?
Yours weighs as much as my brother did
when he was four years old. He was
underweight for a while though.
& this he saw, but I’d stayed home
well — I read that a sizable minority
of the elderly
have sex in nursing homes.
when you ran over that cat, remember?
The way you told it, it just streaked out
from the yard, fluffy & gray till you
crushed its guts. You picked it up,
placed it on the doorstep
from whence it came.
Didn’t even leave a note. Oh, sorry
about that Mom — I sense
you want to talk about something
more redeeming, more comforting —
Perceptions
Vincent Frontero
Ricky sits up and watches tv
mindlessly taking in
Ricky drives to work each morning
carelessly running over
Ricky listens to his co workers all day
pouring from the water jug cups of
Ricky gets anxious in front of
the girl he can’t stop thinking is just like
Ricky stops at the gas station
and buys a pack of
Ricky stops at the grocery store
and fills his cart with
Ricky stops at a red light and
thinks about
Ricky walks to the bridge and thinks
about that red light and then thinks about
Ricky thinks about jumping but stops himself
because he knows he’s too selfish to think only about
Ricky goes home and sits
in front of the tv until
Ricky Falls asleep and dreams
about
Ricky
What Became of Bogies?
Jane Burn
The ones kids made. The ones we made.
Pram wheels, old pallets, string to steer,
Don’t need brakes – drag it to the top of a hill
and go. Pray for no cars. Kick the can,
Red Rover, Red Rover, we call Robert over.
Dinner money down your sock.
Knock-off Walkman – tape the Top 40
from Radio 1, wind the loose bits on with a pen.
Go in a group to the phone booth
and not phone the person you fancy,
after all that. Doing homework in the library,
jelly shoes. What happened to people?
You have to have this thing in front of your face now –
this slender screen. You look at life through it,
it filters what might make you afraid,
makes it unreal. YouTube has trained us
to see each other as movies, made a million
miles away, who gives a fuck about that?
Like Like Like Like Like. One hundred likes.
One million likes. No likes. Nobody likes U.
The world, fed back to you second-hand,
like you can’t bear the true colours of sky
without the blindfold of a Galaxy that is not planets –
an apple that is not fruit. Can’t take a beach pic
without your hot-dog legs, can’t be somewhere
beautiful without chill-out, hipster, hot coffee shots.
Instasnap, chatgram, facetwit, booktime,
LOL, ROFL, CU2MORO, BRB, CYA.
Retweet, trending. Going phishing, SMiShing
I am trying to serve this lady on the till and she
talks on her phone the whole time yeahrightayeamin
theshopgettingservednowuhhuhahhanolikenoImight
seyoulaters. You don’t need manners. Smile,
the little laminated note instructs us workers. Smile
and greet the customer. Ask them if they need bags.
Help with their packing. They can’t hear you.
They can’t even see you, the YOLO generation.
Shan. Sick. This arsewipe coming up the laundry aisle,
phone clamped to ear, shouting at the top of his lungs.
He’s got swagger, so he thinks, other hand down
low hanging shreddies, rummaging his bollocks
as if they are a lively nest of mice. I want
to grab onto summat – tin of beans, can of pop,
stott it off his head. He is going to finish in there,
at some point and piss off to handle bread, or pears,
the toe-rag. He makes me want to puke, or punch,
or scream. I don’t want to see folk stroke their penis
with such fond admiration. I am surprised
he’s not taking a selfie down there, live-streaming,
#proudcock@pubesdotcom. It’s got us all, mind you.
But I do, I do want to see your hair-cuts and I do
want to see you find a photograph in which you are happy
with yourself, want to see you with your pets, ‘cause
animals are ace, don’t mind seeing a cake you made.
Oh no, it weren’t all perfect back then, with the bogies.
There was fear and loss, loneliness and love just the same.
But there wasn’t this wall – this locking of ourselves behind
such forcefields of ignorance. They can’t hear you.
They can’t see you. Die and your headstone is a hashtag.
Sadface. If you’re famous, die and be a status for a day.
Soul Music
Richie Brown
Remember how they mourned their Queen of Hearts?
The Palace gates laid siege by Safeway blooms
From those she didn’t know. By afternoon,
All tributes paid, she left for Althorp Park.
In later weeks, one woman’s tear-soaked farce:
Her arms and arms and arms full of that tune
She’d hummed since Elton’s hatchet job. Newsrooms
Prepare reports for when it tops the charts.
I choked on breakfast news that Bowie died.
The coffee, cataclysm, lukewarm toast –
Not buttered. Landing still on buttered side.
I sat, thin-lipped through Diamond Dogs and most
Of Lodger, ‘Heroes’, Low. But could have cried
When Major Tom encountered Ziggy’s ghost.
Chaser
Noel King
Here, let me chase this editor’s lineage,
what university she studied at,
the festivals she’s read from her
poetry books at, the journals her
own work has been seen in.
Then, let’s look at who is
in this issue she has edited,
find the patterns that indicate
so and so also studied at such and such
a Uni; the annals that said Wendy Hope
met Robert Sisk at some festival or other.
That all the ‘famous’ poets had
many of their first poems published
in a small range of magazines.
Then, we will see that yes, she is
only interested in publishing pals.
application
Pat Edwards
I don’t remember applying
it certainly wasn’t online back then
obviously I don’t fit the person spec
not at all sure what the selection process was
did you invite me to an interview
how the hell was I short-listed
there don’t seem to be any clear criteria
I fit
Shop Talk
G.B. Ryan
When I heard that many there would be
professional gardeners
I expected talk to be about
flora with Latin names.
If there was any dominant theme
it was their painful knees
and what it was best to kneel upon:
knee pads or folded sacks.
Summer’s Mechanical Thunderstorm
Heath Brougher
Fading in, fading out, lawnmower raging in July past my window
around the neighborhood, chopping blades with blades,
grassblades with metalblades, early morning thunder on the ground
wisps through my window.
I notice the scent of a broken fragrance, of bleeding grass,
the headless grassblades, shorn green tendrils
mixed with the dew wake me from my early morning slumber
to hear the mechanical storm below in the yards,
the butchers and their machines pacing, fading in
and fading out, down the yards and around the houses,
binging on oil and gas to guillotine the dewy tendrils of summer.
Light-Years
Daniel Blokh
I think I’ve lost those days of moss.
The king’s chains loosen and I swing,
flesh spinning into oceans, rain.
I am motion, my center gone.
I am the spectre in the brook.
Dimming lights skim my surface, and
I cease to be the sum, become
the difference, and run past myself.
Crows landing darkly at my door
leave an outfit for my hanging.
The Gun-Runner’s Daughter
Susan Castillo Street
It was a strange old year.
We moved to Oklahoma one day
without warning, and I started a new school.
The teacher taught me to do sums,
I’ll give her that. Still, she rabbited on
about my lack of tidiness
until one morning I arrived
and every object in my desk
was strewn across the floor.
It’s to teach you a lesson, she said,
Nice girls should be tidy!
I picked it all up, lips pressed tight.
I hope she found my silence scary.
Shortly thereafter, we left town when Dad made headlines:
LOCAL MAN RUNS GUNS TO CUBAN REBELS.
Perhaps I taught my teacher
sometimes it’s a waste of effort
to try to place things in neat boxes.
Wild Streaks
Glen Armstrong
That boy has a wild streak
like white on lightning.
He hammers nails into plaster.
He beds space junk.
That girl has a wild streak
like luck on a seven.
She ignites M-80s.
She says, Hey, man,
where’d you get that tentacle?
And the sky never flinches.
It’s a given that the sun
and the electric chair,
the peroxide
and the blunderbuss
all try too hard,
but what about the rest of us?
Consider the knife’s humble utility,
so much like our own.
Wait for the quietest
of the sisters to finish.
She was thinking aloud
when her thought scampered off
as lithe and as wild as any
startled bunny.
Positively Shit Street – Rhyl to Venus
Brett Evans
for Mark ‘Sparx’ Hughes
Trousers off and wrapped round our heads,
worthless diamonds pitting pavement
and bare legs on a five mile homeward stagger,
pissed and potless, Mark slurs Should shee Venush
ish mornin’.
Daybreak caravanned to the moon,
our off beat feet were light years from home.
Beneath trousered heads, coats flapped like bats
and laughs howled the Tom Waits wannabes back
into doorways, their proud fag ends dying.
When the sky took to grey, we halted in Pensarn’s salt air;
legs in revolt, stumbling shoulder to shoulder.
I stood with this man I love, trousers on head,
glaring through cigarette smoke at the vast cosmos above -
goggling Venusians, wondering what fucking planet we were on.
Shrooming with Germ
Steve Lambert
In the early morning, the good ones off at school,
my cousin and I head for the cow pasture behind his trailer park.
They’re all over, and we know how to find them:
pick the thick grey ones and pop the stems,
wait for purple to appear along the stringy break.
We know the way we know Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
But we’ve forsaken that kind of learning for field work.
In the undulant green, at seven in the morning, we dodge
doe-eyed calves, steer clear of their vigilant mothers,
Kick dry patties at each other, like feckless fieldhands.
While our friends pledge allegiance to the flag, we load
our sacks with psilocybin and head back to his place,
parents gone, and eat a couple caps each, make tea,
our own ignorant alchemy, the only high we can afford.
Afterthought
Hugo Esteban Rodriguez
It was six in the morning, and Hope left her earring on the bedside
table – an afterthought.
A recollection of last night, where
poison led to late night philosophy and Google-less pondering
searching
for the answers to the questions of
two drunks, contemplating lyrics
we should have sung at karaoke
A duet.
Why not duet?
We indulged in each other, lust and gluttony as our eyes met and we
forgot the grease
in our stomach acid, breaking down our inhibition.
I kissed her ketchup lips, the why not consuming the why as bloated
lust clogged arteries
ignoring self-control and the hazards
to my heart
broke with the dawn and a side order of mascara tears, our bodies
surrounded by wrappers
used up
discarded – an afterthought at four in the morning
Kansas City Nights
Lindsey Lucas
Home is when we order lo mein in greasy styrofoam,
and you ask for extra fortune cookies.
We face each other cross-legged on the carpet
to read that Good food is love and we agree.
Home is when we watch old cartoons
and I know the exact moment you will laugh
as the screen flickers over our faces
and we slowly sink into your cracked-spine sofa.
Home is when you run out for chocolate and chardonnay,
and the way I smooth your hair when I’m tipsy.
It’s the steaming mint tea you make when I’m tired
and the lines in your forehead when I drive home late.
Sometimes I live in the gap
between contentment and wanderlust.
I lay awake and stare at maps in my head.
Never on these nights.
Indelible
Chris Hemingway
Come with me to the tattoo parlour.
Wednesday, 5pm, when it’s quieter.
We can take a decision,
indelible as a teenage tweet.
Your selections will be fantastic.
You’ll conjure up imaginary animals,
mottos in invented languages.
And me?
I’ll change my last tattoo;
“Je ne regrette Lianne.”
I’ll get the ‘ne’ removed.
For you.
Clutching My Stomach in the Bathroom
James Croal Jackson
in front of the mirror wondering
how you made it through those nine months
to get nothing but condensation from a cloud
yes the smiles returned in the desert
when the scythe allowed we spoke truths
and asked everyone to provide thirst
because we were the cacti with reservoirs
of lust and destruction
laid out in desiccate flowerbeds
our wallets filled with zinnias
while we were filled
from the green of living
sometimes we are horses
galloping along dirt paths
and westbound highways
hoping they lead to ocean
but it leads always to night
to hunger
we barely know how to be raw anymore
how to sink dead teeth into apples
and want the core
our thin gums only cling to our mouths
because there’s nowhere else to call home
no more words that can make you
believe in a future
Intrauterine
Grace Kearney
that spring, I force my body into labor
twin mattresses pushed together
squeezed into a single fitted sheet
raised onto a platform of milk crates and called a queen size
bed
on which I lie alone,
eyes on the ceiling,
no queen.
next door the room is silent as it never is
except early, early in the morning,
when my roommate finally wanders into dreams with techno
beats
through the wall I imagine her temples pulsing
but now my own eyes close and
my fingers find space between my ribs and
I feel the walls of my uterus contract to expel—
nothing. nothing is inside of me and nothing comes out.
the labor is only a simulation
a means of opening the womb
not to deliver but to implant,
not a child but a deliberate
lack-of-child,
fancy modern medicine in the service of motherhood
deferred.
mother, mater, matter—
beneath layers of signification,
the feminine is rooted in the organic body
she who contributes the flesh of the child
she who makes monthly peace
while he professes a fear of fluids
fluids, uncontrollable, beyond reason, beyond boundary
excess always the crime
why Mother is nature and Father is time
why, if she is quiet and keeps very very still,
she is taken for an animal
Young Urchins
Bernadette Gallagher
In memoriam: Aylan (Alan) Kurdi
We walked on the beach, heads down,
to find the white heart shapes of the
Sea Potato, light as a feather, delicate,
empty of life, small holes in a precise
pattern visible now that the soft
spines to fend off predators
are no longer needed.
These young urchins washed
up from their sand homes
and thrown onto the beach
already dead.
The Age of the Train
Ben Banyard
On behalf of First Great Western
I’d like to apologise unreservedly
for the nose-whistling man next to you
and the flakes of his pastry
which dapple your knee.
But while we’re on the subject
We’d also like to say sorry
about Swindon, graffiti, smelly loos,
posh idiots, Metro, mobile smarm,
tippy-tappy laptops, fat thighs
and elbows that invade.
Oh, and we’re late.
Deal with it.
For writer biographies / web links, please see
the ‘Contributors’ page on our website.
Thank you for reading!
Change language