Poems for the Queen

POEMS BY:

Hilda Sheehan
Anna-May Laugher
Heather O'Neill
Susan Utting
Wendy Klein
Michael Scott
Katherine T Owen
Rosie Jackson
Nikki Kenna
Josephine Corcoran
Bethany Pope

'The door was an absurd thing... yet it was passable ... it was this shape'  Mina Loy


THE QUEEN OF EUROPE BECOMES WHOLE

Of plastic she's pleasure:

blond hair, blue eyes,
a squeaky cliché that lies

back and thinks of Europe.

The distance of her faraway 
stare means nothing,

to him, she’s mind-blowingly real,

inflates to double-boob FF

impossible sizes. No deflated look

in full submission, comes without

instructions, ‘no’ never leaks

from any of her holes.

Give her a mouth, she’ll scream,

get dressed, read a book,

walk out, become a woman

of words and mouth

her mighty poems – whispering

from her eye

stood up.


Hilda Sheehan


Dear Inflatable,

Your buyer finds the factory set 'yes' 

in the print of your relentless gaze attractive.

Shy man, he can squeeze your hands

watch your wrists engorge as your fingers yield

and fold to flippers useless for caress.

You'll be the cure and cause of all his loneliness.

No contract will exist between your vinyl and his skin;

except the sweat and stick of desperate co-mingling.

He'll stroke your dimpling breasts,

watch helplessly as they invert,

run out of puff (his staling breath).

Inflatable, I offer you this square of  wordy lace,

a negligee of verbs and such;

so you can wear the words and be made flesh.

Anna-May Laugher

MY SOW'S EAR

I am making the best-looking sow's ear

you've ever seen. It'll have sequins

and sparkles and gold and shit. But no silk.

I'm gonna take it out on trips to see art

and museums and jaaazzzzzzzz.

We'll debate philosphically on

religion and the topics of the day.

People may ask "What. Is that?!" I'll reply

(with pride) "That? It's a SOW'S EAR, my friends."

I'll proclaim but not limit or restrain - 

it can be intangible if it wants.

So fuck you. And I know it's a sow's ear,

but it's mine. And at least I took the time

to acknowledge it.

Heather O'Neill

TWO MOUTHS

  i         Beckett's Not I on a screen:

tongue, spittle, gaps, the lot, in close-up

grainy black and white, remembered red.

 ii         Below her eyes behind their heart-shaped shades

Lolita's on a poster,

sucking an everlasting sweetmeat on a stick.

Susan Utting

HALLUX VALGUS

Not the mark of Cain, nor the print of heredity;

more sculpted by poor fit or fashion: thick socks,

tight shoes and time; so you find a way to live with it.

You remember your grandmother’s -- the excuse

it gave her not to walk -- better to summon him

from behind his paper, lips hypertensive blue.

He’d get out the old Pontiac, pull it in close

as possible to the front step,

sit hunched under his hat, his eyes turned

to watch her mincing up the path.

You don’t think of yourself as a person who has one,

though you know it’s growing in secret:

the cause, iatrogenic – a bad mend from a complicated

fracture. You try to think of it as a badge of honour,

your once pretty feet irretrievably ugly when bare;

your excuse to shun fashion, give in to the comfort

it demands. Nonetheless you examine your daughters’ feet

for telltale bumps, though you always made sure

their shoes fitted – their unblemished feet,

one visible sign of good mothering.

Wendy Klein

ANCESTRAL DESIGN
for my grandfather

His life was mapped on the tip of his nose;

its shape the onion of Russian peasant,

the shade and texture of matzo ball, a globe

veined with history. The blue Dnieper

of his Diaspora crossed it, past Smolensk

on its crenulated path towards Kiev; was cut

in half by the Hudson’s red sweep in its flow

straight and wide from Manhattan towards  

Schenectady. The caverns of his nostrils lurked

below; high-arched, flared. We are Russia and

New York entwined in this one ancestral organ,

evolved through the chance of Cossack raids

on the children of Zion, designed, above all,

to sniff out trouble.

Wendy Klein

Michael Scott

Two Poems by Katherine T Owen

This woman carries her breasts

with such pride:
large and firm,
they announce her arrival.

An impressive weapon –

a susceptible man
does not stand
a chance:

They dance

and here he is – hypnotised
into submission.

BOTTOMS

I watch bottoms

walk down the street:

Big bottoms,

Small bottoms;

Bottoms sticking out like trays,

Bottoms hidden carefully away;

Bottoms squeezed into the tightest jeans,

Bottoms rarely thought about,
Bottoms calling to be seen.

I cannot hold men to blame

for watching women’s bottoms;

I now do the same.

TONGUE

I have no bones.

I’m the softest invertebrate,

lying wet on the floor of the cave.

Mostly it’s dark in here, warm and moist,

but light can suddenly implode,

flood over me.

I work hard.

I wriggle and push and curl

against these stalactites in front of me.

I make sounds, love, music.

I am muscle attached at the base.

I move like a sheet shaken by the wind.

Too much heat, I erupt into blisters,

too much biting, into lumps and scars.

I’m a creature of the night,

badger or bat,

I understand things that beat in the dark.

Silent I am and yet a thing of speech:

without me words would never reach you.

 Rosie Jackson

A GIRL BODYBOARDS ON PORTHMEOR

Pink into the ocean, you push
flawless as pebble
your hair banded against the wind.

Nothing so new as you
on this beach
except perhaps the mussel-shell

blue-broken by the tide or
the puff of gull down,
white on the sand.

Nikki Kenna


STATIONERY MONITOR

The slap of wet fish
as the books hit the desks
of your tight ship. Each word
battened down. You hate
wasted space. You forget
I wear the key to the treasure chest.
Tonight I will swim free of lines.
Every sentence up late
in its own double cabin.

Josephine Corcoran

THE LITTLE MERMAID

The cleaned up stories

you humans get

are always bastardized

long before Disney

applies its Clorox,

wiping out the stench

every fleck of skin,

or blood,

the fabric has

been washed

a thousand times.

Take, for instance

this story, favourite

of six-year-old

females, splashing

in the bath with

red-haired, plastic

-finned dolls.

Mermaids are not

clean things

though they exist

in water. There

are reasons that

they drowned

their lovers

before bringing

them home.

Your prince, that

tall, dark-haired

prepubescent’s

first crush, fell

overboard, one night

wind-tossed by a billowing

storm. He died

with his eyes open,

observing his loves

bared teeth

and empty eye

sockets, her talons

hooked into

his algae-specked

shirt, the scales

of her tail

peeling off,

revealing a flank

like an ancient

salmon fillet,

thrashing muscular

through the jism

waves. And yes,

there was singing,

enchantment,

a wedding

in a castle

full fathom five

beneath the weight

and press of ocean.

There was a magic

transformation,

something human

into a different,

if not arguably

better form;

but still,

I can remember

those pearls

that were

his eyes

and I think;

who needs

your cleaned-up

stories?

Real life is filthy,

awful, but the

love is more lasting,

undying, rotten

but solid,

inarguably real.

Bethany Pope

SELKIE: THE RIVER'S DAUGHTER

When I was a child, the hair cut

straight across my forehead,

we lived by a river that fed mangroves,

where the herons speared black snakes

and infant alligators, and the city municipalities,

in the cheapest of wisdom, allowed sewer water

to flood into streams feeding the sheepshead

which grew giant and toxic, scales as big

as the nails on your hand.

I was a creature of that river, plunging down

in my cheap dresses, peeling them off

when the water soaked them too heavy to stand.

I swam through the currents, a knife in my teeth,

bonehandled, it came from great-grandfather,

brought home from the wars. I slaughtered

nothing on those swims, save for 

the dragons which rose in my mind. I never took

a lover there on the stream bank, on bed

of palmetto leaves or saw blade, but I found

many real romances on the estuary called

Jacobs island. Where the drunks slept off

their amethyst wine and the wharf rats formed kings,

tied into knots by their fractured tails,

hung from slick branches.

See what I saw. Look though those eyes,

filth blinded slit, the color of sewage,

observe the moment I first loved light.

The sunshine gold in early morning, pouring

through those knife shaped leaves, the glory

of Zeus poured out on Danaë, made pregnant

by light. That numinous glow which rose

from the water, made lovely for once, the colour

of silver, new forged, left to cool on the brace.

I was planted there, drunk on heron wing,

enchanted by fish scale, something took root.

This is the flower.

The roots which grow from watching,

taste of soil fed by rich water, laden with spoil,

and though it was waste, I was not wasted.

Coming home again, here, my feet in the spoilage,

the only locality, unmapped, where all that is beautiful

can possibly grow. What looks foul feels fair

In this light. And those bones you despise

feed the soil where the flowers of the true reality

take root and grow.

Bethany Pope

Jill Carter in her garden with the Queen