Hello rogues and rapscallions, readers and writers. We hope you're enjoying your summer (or winter if you're in the southern hemisphere). Issue #9 brings poems with odd animal and offbeat fairytale influences, poems that feel like summer, poems to remind you of America, poems to remind you of the rest of the world, poems befitting Pride season, and anything else you're not expecting (or maybe you are by now).
Issue #9 features work by Louisa Campbell, Matt Nicholson, Carol Eades, Paul Vaughan, Karen Little, Tobi Alfier, Robert Okaji, Wayne Russell, Kenneth Pobo, James H Duncan, Cheryl Pearson, Marija Smits, Rosie Garland, Leslie Thomas, Katerina Neocleous, Louise Warren, Mark Totterdell, Susan Taylor, Ali Jones, Amber Decker, Daniel Edward Moore, JC Reilly, Angi Holden, Jacob Butlett, Howie Good, Jonathan Butcher, Jean Atkin, Bridget Clawson, Gareth Culshaw, and Darren C. Demaree.
Issue #9
July 2017
Edited by Kate Garrett
All poems copyright © 2017 individual authors
Selection/issue copyright © 2017 Kate Garrett / Picaroon Poetry
This Month’s Rogue Poems ● July 2017
Doubloons
Louisa Campbell
The opposite of entropy
Matt Nicholson
A multiple choice apology letter
Carol Eades
How to write an american poem
Paul Vaughan
Bindweed
Karen Little
Good Girl’s Escape
Tobi Alfier
Memorial Day, 2015
Robert Okaji
A Day in the Life
Wayne Russell
Our Smell Must Have Been Named Suspicion
Kenneth Pobo
Feral Kingdom
James H Duncan
There Was An Old Woman Who Lived In A Shoe
Cheryl Pearson
Her Ladyship Makes a Request
Marija Smits
Watching the first five minutes of Jaws with a feminist psychogeographer
Rosie Garland
Reclaiming switchgrass
Leslie Thomas
Bloods
Katerina Neocleous
Who will adopt this specimen?
Louise Warren
Hirudo
Mark Totterdell
if i could turn into a cat or a hare
Susan Taylor
Signature
Ali Jones
This Is the Story
Amber Decker
Campfire Chat
Daniel Edward Moore
Canali
JC Reilly
That Summer
Angi Holden
Ode to Gay Men
Jacob Butlett
Explosion in the Puzzle Factory
Howie Good
Garden
Jonathan Butcher
Making Small Adjustments
Jean Atkin
Junk Mail
Bridget Clawson
Tenant Before Us
Gareth Culshaw
Trump as a Fire Without Light #259
Darren C. Demaree
Doubloons
Louisa Campbell
For Ira
no more sagging soft in socks
get out yer booheapy baby
éclatter in yo clogs
jangling jelly beans
choose all yuh fave rit colours
swing wide woomphilly
hold all big SPACE you want
of course they do
of course they love you
u uneek u arr
go piraton the swishum see
your air is full of treasure you treasure
you treasure you treasure you treasure
The opposite of entropy
Matt Nicholson
Half-cut moon,
hung bent,
in mud-black sky.
Goose-winged clouds
scrummage
in shit-edged puddles.
Wind, like knives,
throws rain
down stone-dead streets.
And then I
hear you
laughing out loud
and dive
into
the silence that follows.
A multiple choice apology letter
Carol Eades
a) To Whom it may concern,
b) Oi,
c) Hi,
d) Dear______
i)___________ (insert name here)
ii) Bitch
iii) Companion on the way,
I am a) very a) upset
b) quite b) regretful
c) somewhat c) annoyed
d) not at all d) contrite
e) embarrassed
f) sanguine
About the a) regretful
b) unfortunate
c) ridiculous
d) totally reasonable
events of
___________________________
(insert time of incident)
I’m
a) sad
b) happy
c) embarrassed
d) angry
e) indifferent
f) mortified about what happened.
I wish we could be
a) friends again
b) alone with an array of weapons.
c) civil in future
d) in the 1950’s with traditional values and respect.
If I could do it again I would
a) take it all back.
b) have said it much sooner
c) have done things differently
d) have given you something to cry about.
We both
a) said things that we regret
b) have things in common
c) are capable of murder
d) were under stress that day
I hope you a) can forgive me
b) die slowly and alone
c) have a good life and a successful future
.
Yours a) truly
b) sincerely
c) hopefully
d) venomously __________________________ (Sign here)
How to write an american poem
Paul Vaughan
the kid was eighteen, nineteen
tryin’ to grow some hipster beard but failing.
Just a low bush crawling over his cheeks
and he hated me for making him work.
No-one was selling cigarettes on the kiosk
and he was just standing staring into space
by the self-service machines doing nothing
Hey will you come and sell me some smokes,
twenty Windsor Blue Superkings.
Never seen a boy move so slow.
He’s glowering at me with his chin on his chest
and he’s never smoked one damn cigarette
so he’s staring at the packets
no idea what twenty Windsor Blue Superkings looks like
and hands me some king size bullshit.
No I want Superkings
We ain’t got no Windsor Blue Superkings just these
and he’s waving them at me and doesn’t care
like I should be grateful he’s even breathing.
Hell, just give me a packet of Superkings
I don’t care which brand
so I point at the fourth packet from the left
three shelves down.
He scans them so I pay and shove the cigarettes
into my pocket and they don’t even have contactless
so I have to type type type my P.I.N.
and goddamn no I don’t want a receipt.
He turns his back on me and walks away
to talk to some girl stacking up the magazines
and I don’t know but she could do better
than an insolent grunt like him.
Outside I peel off the cellophane and pull
out the foil and pinch the filter on the cigarette
with my thumb and index finger drag it out
put it between my lips and rustle for the lighter
somewhere in my pocket
all I can feel is keys
so I pull it all out hold all the things in my hand
and it’s there so I spark it up.
Lift it, watch the flame lick the end of the cigarette
going crossed-eyed
drag hard.
And it’s a fucking menthol.
The guy sold me fucking menthol cigarettes.
Bindweed
Karen Little
Traveling at the speed of internet, contemporary legend insists
fictional stories be witnessed by close friends. Walking fish invite
themselves in to twirl pizzas or replace chocolate with mud. She
refuses colour Tv; blood is grey, occasionally black, so could be
mistaken for coffee or soup stains. Defending her territory
by threatening rivals, her delicate beauty makes her hard to kill;
when death threatens she creeps underground before trumpeting
her regeneration in Spring. Cautionary tales are no less macabre
than blank-eyed monsters; Brothers Grimm tales reveal disagreeable
children asking for water or biscuits who always wind up dead.
Scared of the black holes inside her slippers when she parks them
under the bathroom sink we know they could swallow us
and no one would haul us out. When she dies, her upside down
eyes terrify us, we push back the fringe of hair to be sure the birthmark
remains. She regenerates pale but strong, clambers out, heart on sleeve,
her face unlined, her fertility undiminished despite the passage of time.
Good Girl’s Escape
Tobi Alfier
Let me tell you something:
I got a mason jar of Everclear
propped between my knees,
Annie Lennox blasting on the radio,
and I’m parked up on a hill, scenic
viewpoint of nothin’ but a ferris wheel
in the valley below, clouds teasing
across the moon above, a blanket
wrapped around my shoulders
and all the strength of no one
I ever loved in my heart.
Sweet dreams are made of this.
I smoke my last cigarette, flick
it miles out into the dirt, rummage
around to find the memoir of who
I should have been, read a few pages
by the light of the cell phone…
I got nothing owed to no one,
nobody waitin’ home for dinner
crying over the spilled milk
of me bein’ gone. For an hour,
for a day, for nineteen sunrises
and sunsets, it just don’t matter.
Mail piled up inside the door,
not leavin’ a clue for anyone that I’m
on a mission to find out what that label
of Johnny Walker ain’t tellin’. I’m
warm-souled but no fool.
I watch the ferris wheel seats rock
up top, some empty as my bed,
and others—who know whose paths
are crossing tonight and who cares.
I am the butterfly crossing paths
with this nighttime desert breeze,
and that’s all you need to know.
Memorial Day, 2015
Robert Okaji
I turn away from the sun, and drink.
Every window is dark.
No one hears my song, not even the guitar.
When the rain pauses the grackle rests on the cedar picket.
Etymology: from Latin memorialis, of or belonging to memory,
leading to home and family, their connotations.
Remembering is simple, she says. But forgetting...
The coral snake slips by, unseen.
Nothing lives in my shadow.
A Day in the Life
Wayne Russell
Life is a dance with death on a daily basis
life is a struggle to stay sane enough to keep
our heads above a rabid sea of filth.
Life is bills and payments to be made, ones
that I cannot pay, due to lack of work, lack
of work leaves you bleeding pulverized in
a Tampa bay shanti town; drunk off money
that you either stole from a clueless passersby
or panhandled from a kind hearted person,
kind enough to know that you would take the
money they gifted you and run straight to the
package store to buy a cheap six pack of beer,
and some smokes if you really panhandled
superbly that day.
Kids running past me on the way home from
school blinded by youth and naivety, poke faces
at the homeless and downtrodden basket people.
They see me as a spat on the ground, through gapped
yellow brown teeth; I do an odd take on an old Irish
jig that I learned in a pub in Scotland back in my 20’s.
The kids are no longer poking fun; they run away like
a frightened pack of youthful coyote pups, they vanish
over the horizon line, down past the Baptist church,
down past the shops and bars and English pub, the
deli; with the best pressed Cuban sandwiches on
earth, they run past the hooker named Lola wearing a
pair of electric blue nylons with runs and moth holes
eaten clear through.
Lola laughs and throws her track lined arms up towards
the cloudless skies; God shakes his head and turns away
in from his creations run amuck, in disgust.
I finish my last beer, and light up a smoke, walking towards
Lola I offer her one and she snatches it; I light it and laugh,
then I walk on down the uneven sidewalks of the city and
look for a place to call home for the night.
Our Smell Must Have Been Named Suspicion
Kenneth Pobo
Away from home,
a Sunday. We decide to go to church,
any church, whatever pops up.
A Bible Church, not promising,
but in we go—about 50 people
and a broken-gate grim minister.
Strangers, our smell must have
been named suspicion.
After a blustery service, some regulars
shake our hand. When you blurt
that we’re married, two men,
faces close like barn doors. We should
have spent Sunday with birches
and pines. They stay open
day and night—trees, hands extended,
every leaf an invitation to listen
to bird or breeze.
Feral Kingdom
James H Duncan
it is a feral kingdom, a life
lived out of boxes, months
and years in spaces borrowed,
couches loaned, small
corners to call your own so long
as grace and luck and favors
hold out
those dinner parties you threw
in your married twenties
are history book memories now,
as is the ability to invite
a woman or old friend over
for drinks, dinner, a quiet evening
of talking and nostalgia;
daydreams of the transient
it’s easy to feel like a failure,
working two jobs and still
not making enough to hold off
the legal bills, medical bills,
and also make rent, utilities,
keep gas in the car—daily
negotiations with intangibles
and inchoate hopes of
tomorrow and tomorrow
but maybe the next rent sign
will be the one that says home
and maybe the next piece
of mail that chases you down will
say Current Balance $00.00
maybe the gods will say, you’ve
seen enough, rest here,
close your eyes and breathe
because even if it’s just
enough room to stretch your
legs as they shovel dirt
on top of you and pray over
books you’ve never read,
that last home sweet home
is better than never unpacking
all those boxes at all
There Was An Old Woman Who Lived In A Shoe
Cheryl Pearson
A different man for each daughter, a different beat
in the dark. The same slow filling, after. Hands flowering
under my heart, footlings kicking my ribs to black.
There is light, you know, at the moment of conception:
the white spark of a star falling into the world.
I know things. I browse the web at night for news
in the glow from the aglets. Laces tight, refusing
the moon, my girls asleep in the steel-capped toe.
By day they swarm like beetles, butter the tongue
smooth with their sliding. I’m not even old,
though it’s true: my milkless dugs are blue
and move like pendulums. But given half a chance, I’d still
know how to buck beneath a man. Bite a bright cry
on a round shoulder (carefully: my teeth are soft,
and sitting loose). But these days, no one asks.
All the couplings, all the christening frocks.
No one asked about those, either. Why all the children?
Why the shoe? In any case, what would I have answered?
I want a love that stays, a love that grows. I want to leave
the world changed. And look, now: my name beloved
in all these mouths. The weight of us redesigning the earth.
Her Ladyship Makes a Request
Marija Smits
Sing to me of the sea Lysander,
sing to me of the sea.
Sing to me of the rushing and the crashing
of the woosh, swoosh, wooshing
of the waves on the shore.
Sing to me of the sea Lysander,
sing to me of the sea.
Sing to me of the darting and the dancing
of the silver-skinned fish
in the shallows and the deeps;
of the selkies and the sirens
conspiring, inspiring
sailors to their doom.
Sing to me of the sea Lysander,
sing the sea to my skin.
Let me swim in your blush
and the salt water crush
a kiss
from your lips
as your song finds its way to the sea.
Watching the first five minutes of Jaws with a
feminist psychogeographer
Rosie Garland
I
Build a house on tar and volatiles,
on sand that blooms with bitumen,
a garden that buds trees slick with gasoline apples.
Climb down to the cellar. Dig,
through sediments and shales. Dig.
Till you find the place to plant it:
this hunger that fills you fat to bursting,
that tears down the sun for shining,
the moon for its mockery of healing,
every month from whole to broken, half to whole;
this thirst that sucks stars across its event horizon
and stamps them into cinders.
Shovel dirt into the pit and beat it down.
There are eyes beneath us, and more than eyes.
Rising more slowly.
It is patient. It measures time in millions.
Ignores our eyeblink lives.
Bends light, twists it into a companion
with a mouth that quenches meteors.
There are eyes beneath us, and more than eyes.
There are things that do not sleep.
Things beyond persistence, beyond extinction.
That outlast the gallop of tectonic plates,
watch Pangea unknit, wander in jigsaw pieces, knit again.
There are things that wait for the right moment.
Rising more slowly.
II
High above the faultlines, a tightrope girl is dancing.
Dusted with first love, she glitters, spilling
constellations. Her legs melt the water into ribbons.
She is made of moons: breasts, belly, buttocks, backbone.
Pillowed on night fish and ringed with brittle galaxies,
she listens to the circle dance of plankton,
the growth of coral, the foghorn hum of humpbacks.
Her shadow kisses its reflection.
There are eyes beneath her, and more than eyes.
She’s a long way from shore. She pounds her heels,
kicks off the lace line of the tide
and heads for the lights that string the horizon,
elbows sharp as fins. We scream warnings,
how she’s swimming in the wrong direction,
out of her depth, away from home. She can hear us,
but strikes out, strongly, for the stars.
Reclaiming switchgrass
Leslie Thomas
She said listen to yourself
when I doubted
after he locked the doors
when I was late.
When he shouted because
I let his stew get cold.
When he claimed the grass
wasn't greener anywhere else,
I believed him
despite a hushed inside voice.
Again she said
listen -- and I heard the truth
about that grass.
Its roots are shallow
with dainty blades,
easily subdued by a rake.
Bloods
Katerina Neocleous
Behind the greenhouse glass
of your one way mirror
you observed
and medicated us.
Noted our pale skin
but not the marks
you left in the name
of good order.
In your gaze
we were monsters
but you stole our hearts
from their scarlet bed
plucked them
like wild poppies,
breaking their petals
with your rough hand
naked stalks in
a wrinkled heap
all that was left,
when we got away.
We will adapt -
grow new hearts
in the dark, resistant
to your care
bloom with a stench
which affronts you deeply
– we’ll laugh at this –
but brings us sustenance.
Who will adopt this specimen?
Louise Warren
No one will take the Dodo bones
the tongue worm, the slipper lobster.
They are too old, too odd to sit alongside this family
on their sprightly sofa.
To appear in photographs and Facebook,
to be a meaningful addition, to fit in, almost like flesh and blood.
On the other hand
blowflies settled.
A pickled wallaby found its place.
Even that medicinal leech slipped into the gap
that before was so unfilled, so vacant.
In the sad orphanage the moon jellyfish floats in its own tears.
Bloated and pallid it is an unwanted dead thing.
Stuck inside the bottle it has a sour adolescent unhappy smell,
a hundred years away from the tidal wash of the ocean,
even its sting is shriven,
Like the swan stomach it has not been claimed.
Unlike the flamingo skull, the glass snail it has not found a home.
Is not now tucked up, although, perhaps not quite tucked in.
For many of these specimens are proving to be disappointing
when the novelty has worn off. Like that jar of lizards
they have not quite settled in as they adoptive family had wished.
Hirudo
Mark Totterdell
We fished it from the canal and fetched it home.
Delighted, we gave it a childish, chiming name.
We feared no harm from it, meant it no harm.
We installed it in my room, in a goldfish bowl.
It seemed to settle, as far as we could tell.
It sat like a still black tongue in its clear glass bell,
then shifted from pulsing blob to waving dark
trunk, then kept on performing its nifty trick
of morphing from dash to fat dot, from ball to dick.
I was so happy to keep it by my bed
and watch it, with not a thought in my soft young head
that my pet might pierce my skin and slurp my blood.
I slept, and in the morning it had gone,
as if some tiny miracle had been done,
or sleight of hand. We never saw it again,
but kept for many weeks to come a dread
of treading on its body, shrivelled, dried,
or, far worse, grossly swollen and undead.
if i could turn into a cat or a hare
Susan Taylor
the best of me would perch
among plants in the window box
and survey the Friday evening heat
of dogs yipping in the street
among a din of cars and diners
Cat-Hare-Me would be nonplussed
by the drone of male voices below
I’d be protected by felicity of otherness
from politics with its fake news
jawing enthusiastic aggression
if I could turn into a cat or a hare
Signature
Ali Jones
One summer we danced in our mothers’ wedding dresses,
fabric spilling around our feet, it was July,
our hands were full of rose petals, strewing red,
a measure of water and flower heads stashed under the bed,
with a bleed of felt tip transfusion, our secret.
We were all daisy chains and hedgerow hair,
the neighbour’s bonfire blackening white to faded sepia.
Did our bodies know we were dryads, building castles
of spindle and apple, besom in the corner a cauldron
in the fireplace. There was always another hour
to shape stories, to beg the cat to stay balanced in fantasy.
Years are our distances travelled in circles, looking back,
we can’t quite see how we danced, or what our loves were,
find what was waiting beneath our tongues.
This Is the Story
Amber Decker
in which i never wed
in which i spend my life in a tower
smoothing my hair into braids
in which i am really a boy
who has a sister
who doesn't speak
in which my sister curls herself
against me at night in bed like a cursive 'C'
in which my sister covers
her pretty face with her hands
in which i am really a killer
in a gingerbread house
in which even my death
at the hands of the hero
is delicious
in which i am really a sorceress
able to disarm whatever lock
skin can fashion itself into
in which i am fallow
and beautiful
and wasp-waisted
and sweet
and starving
in which I prick my finger
just so I can finally get some sleep
in which i am wine
in a silver goblet,
the poisoned apple
in the witch's basket
in which i am the secret princess
whose throat shivers
under the blade of the huntsman's knife
as she begs for her life
in which i am the queen
devouring the throat of the man
who offered me a pig's heart
in place of what i asked for
in which i am the pig
in which i am the heart
plunged into the iron pot
Campfire Chat
Daniel Edward Moore
You said knowledge is a raincoat
on a burning beach.
I held our umbrella in flames.
Everywhere hands were swaying
like Palm trees, against the sky’s
cancerous clouds threatening
to kill feelings like fish,
we’d much rather save
than less beautiful things.
Like men chained to letters
at the end of their names,
ignorant of the master’s
shack out back, where
a mattress of straw, a jaundiced heart,
had nothing to warm its veins.
I said wisdom is a black arm band
for the pale asystole tribe.
Kindness offered to meet us half way.
What better place to watch
judgement die than the streets
of a ghost town mind.
What better way to try
to escape than with roses
of teeth filled with fur.
Canali
JC Reilly
In Venice, the canals skulk through the city like green-cloaked men. Oh, not
the Grand Canal, which imposes and processes like a king in robes of deepest
hunter, studded with jewel-like boats. But the smaller ones, the rios. They are
furtive, like pickpockets and grifters, and scuttle along alleys and through
clandestine neighborhoods, hugging walls, keeping to the shadows. For all
their crooked green ubiquity bordering the campi and piazze, you try not to
notice them, lest they think you troppo curiosa, or an easy mark. Still, each
time you encounter them, you assess their shifty surfaces, the way they
consider you through uneven glances. You worry that your gaze will somehow
offend, that they’ll catch you catching them at their most shady—easy enough
to do when la luce is low, late in the day. But canals are quick to hurry on their
way, focused as they are on their next assignation with taxi or gondola. And
after all, perhaps you are the one who skulks, today meeting the Rio de San
Anzolo at different points, always by accident. The third time, on the Ponte dei
Frati, which doubles as the steps to the entrance of the Agenzia delle Entrate
over the Rio, you want to sneer at the discovery of a revenue office on the
“friars’” bridge (Church and taxes as Renaissance as anything in this place),
but something about the canal stops you. Maybe it’s the austere, unmoving
figure in her own green cloak who stares back at you in rebuke. She looks as if
she knows you are up to no good and scheming.
That Summer
Angi Holden
Exams over, papers closed, we sauntered
through lemonade afternoons, read
dog-eared copies of The Mersey Beats,
fingers sticky with fresh-squeezed oranges.
We listened to Ummagumma and Dark Side
on his father’s Bang & Olufsen, abandoned
our virginity between polycotton sheets,
mouths stained with raspberries.
Waited for results.
Ode to Gay Men
Jacob Butlett
after Valzhyna Mort
They show up like a hookup scribbled on a schedule
they keep stopping by every other week
they who’ve fallen to the nadir
of the tallest wine bottles
emperors of the office and playhouses
and like glitter from a confetti cannon
shivering I spread apart at their caress
their laughter breaks down walls
battleships comply to their orders
and bonfires paw near their feet like faithful bears
and sprints after taxicabs and wanders
they strip me as if disrobing themselves
and strum me between their legs like an acoustic guitar
and yes this song these eternal crescendos
like sweat from their foreheads
those guitar cords too loud for my mortal mind
those guitar cords too soft for God
they who tell schoolchildren to exist with tolerance
they who tell rainclouds to piss off
they who kiss other men on river walks
they who’ve danced with the virus of death itself
they who’ve always listened to my concerns, sensual encounters
which restrain me to my bed
Reader their lips find me
like insatiable missiles
they’re hard restless
and when this nightclub collapses
they stop to rip out one of my chest hairs
Reader it’s not just me
it’s anyone’s Reader
don’t go
save me leave me
in this temple of fabulous missiles
Explosion in the Puzzle Factory
Howie Good
What I’d like to do if I could is grab a policeman and walk him on a leash down
the avenue. Instead, a guy leaps out at me. “What’d you say?” he demands.
The more I stare at his face, the more it resembles a carnival mask, green,
violet, and pink. Clocks can be heard to howl. I guess we have to learn to love
the dark. We’re all up to our necks in it. E. Dickinson, in a ultra-black pinafore,
approaches on a sleepwalk with the alphabet prowling around her. It just
happens. No one planned it. And then? And then the deer are fat and ready for
eating.
Garden
Jonathan Butcher
The entrance remained blocked to those who
refused to untie their hands, whose pockets
reach down mile long legs. No entrance granted
to those faces that express everything other
than the words they omit and that bounce off
each crumbling, towering wall.
Each path of this garden leads inwards, lined
with Mandrakes and blackened berries,
the pollen from Angels Trumpets’ dust over
any throats that dares to bare protest, silencing
them into sickness like a disobedient, airborne
infection.
No doubts from anyone entering that those
the cobble stone paths are uneven by design,
a faulty ruse to twist both ankles and tongues.
They are then drenched by the water fountains
laced with soil, that quenches only the shallowest
thirst.
And on their retreat, they wipe their eyes clean
of this filth, their veins now transfused and again
flowing steadily. Their presence increases once
outside of those walls, their voices now clearer,
and they now repeat on command every word
those flowers and walls recited.
Making Small Adjustments
Jean Atkin
Under a strip light in a garden shed
her bicycle is upended. She turns a pedal
with her left hand, ear bent to catch
the click of the gear change.
In her right she holds a small screwdriver
and the skill to make the quarter turn
that lays the calibration like a feather on a wire.
Out in the half-dark, in the whirr of the freewheel
the neighbour’s cat plays with a boy, exchanging
the wait and rush of crouch and pounce.
The boy mistimes his touch and a claw
knifes a red trail across his skin.
And every day the woman takes to the roads again
spinning through the suburbs in a white trail of spray
anticipating the dash of cats, the surprise of boys.
Junk Mail
Bridget Clawson
My existential update came today
notifying me that my truths and beliefs thus far
are false, including you.
I don’t trust this truth completely either –
essentially I am unchanged.
The remains of my day have unfolded as usual:
emptying the wire-on-wood birdfeeder;
Mr. Cleaning it to remove earwigs and sprouts;
filling it with black oil sunflower seeds.
I ran an experiment recently and discovered that
I attract more White-breasted Nuthatches
with black oil sunflower seeds
than I do with suet.
The proof is in the bird count.
The Tenant Before Us
Gareth Culshaw
The woman before us
fattened up turkeys to sell.
Then cut the top off a traffic cone
and dropped the turkey inside
before slicing off their heads.
The woman before us
didn’t use the black bin.
Instead made rings of fire
sending up her shit to the sky
leaving behind burnt glass, ceramics.
The woman before us
kitted out the house with second
hand furniture, carpets
so we smelt death all around us
when we walked, slept.
Trump as a Fire Without Light #259
Darren C. Demaree
How much rum and history will it take to forget this man? Good lord, nobody
kill him, we need him to be consumed by time and his own hatred for the
human race. Let him be a whiff of the cautionary tale, and then let the
atmosphere have him as an emission, an error, someone we used to regrease
the wheels of our progression.
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