Migratory

by Jenny Pagdin

What could you know of those readjustments,

The preening a hard surface out of the air

That we could spread our hollow wingbones on

For one smooth, hard glide across the Faroes?

 

Four dark dawns and days of hunger sickness

We dragged our shit-clogged feathers, though the spits              

Of broken rain pulled on us, and we had to fight

To keep still, not be driven by the headwind.

 

Fearing the winter we brought, you tried to trick us,

Enflaming the stars and moving them under our bellies

In stiff amber lines that set us off our course

So we had to trust the older sense of magnets.    

 

We had to find landings in the dimming grey,

We were flailing, our fathers had not gone there,        

Skimming the surface and the gloomy shadows.

We, who had been as the clouds and the wind moving in them.

 

Sometimes we came down on estuaries,

On mudflats and marshes rich with teeming worms,

Or on the stubble fields of your coastal farms                                               

And fed on your winter grain and the late sugar beets.

 

All wakeful as we crossed the leathering currents,

We brought the new winter in our pointed wake.                                         

We will not feed here now. We are going West.

And trundle your empty land below our skein.

 

The Boy Who Read Homer to His Cat
by Sarah Hesketh

Hengist the family cat is dying.
His blue-stone paws pulled tight
beneath his chin, he has taken notes

on the benefits of mewling,
decided quietly, now, he shall abstain.
Over his head you breathe

hot deities; the warm
narrative assurances of Sleep
and Dream. But in his language light

does not seep beneath doorways.
It heaves from shouldered torches
across the broken fields at dawn.

He thinks about the hardening of earth
about a barrow. The point
at which his eyes will narrow

to the split-width of a star
and he shall raise his rift of fur
against the northern winds,

his soul flying out over the whale-road,
unfettered by these wordy consolations
of wandering and return.

Sarah Hesketh gained a BA in English Literature in 2004 from Merton College Oxford, She completed the MA in Creative Writing (Poetry) at UEA in 2007. 
She was guest reader at Cafe Writers on September 8th 2008.

 

 

Choir enquiry
by Claire Hamburger

What is the essence of singing voices?
Why does their timbre sound so pure,
each phrase, each note, so full of choices,
A falter, a space or a harmony so sure?
The babble of discord in a school assembly,
A baby’s murmur at break of dawn,
Funeral choir cutting air so terribly.
Without a song we are lost and torn.
Who could survive without a living song?
An unconscious pattern of utterance,
The vocal, the heard, all unity keeps us strong.
Affirmation, celebration of a human dance.
Sing me, hold me, within music’s spell.
All shall be well, all manner of things be well.

Editor's Note: Cafe Writers ran a "just for fun" sonnet competition during it's Christmas party on December 10th, on the theme of song and music. Choir Enquiry was runner-up in the competition to a shameful piece of crowd-pleasing, judge-panel-flattering doggerel from yours truly, which raised a laugh on the night but which has no place on a website with literary aspirations! I hope you enjoy Choir Enquiry. which is a poem more in keeping with this section of the website. 

 

In place of a Poem of the Month, I have chosen the winning entry in our Christmas-themed 50-word short story competition. The runaway winner was:

Fairy by John Vaughan:

The Christmas Fairy whispered, ‘Thank you’ as she was yanked from the box by Jasmine.
It was the first light she had seen for eleven months. 
However, her early optimism soon disappeared 
– she saw the Christmas Tree in the corner, tall, proud and erect 
– she knew what was coming.

Many thanks to everyone who came along to the party and read their story. There were many excellent and amusing entries, a few of which I have tracked down and copied below:

Christmas Story III by Mike O'Driscoll

The angels was singing in Devon and there was an ox and a bottom, cos the other word’s rude. And Baby Cheeses is lying in the mangle. Here are three wide men with gifts of goals, frankfurters and marge. Poor Baby Cheeses is crying-- I fink he wants a play station. 

Tradition by Sarah Passingham

Like cats they come —
heavy lidded from almost-sleep
they clamber into my lap at midnight,
sipping ginger wine and tasting brandy spiced mince pies.
When we hear church bells
burst the frosted country quiet,
they settle with small sighs
and by amber firelight, I begin
to read the Christmas story. 

The Mice in My Mother's House are Holding Me Captive by Padrika Tarrant

The mice in my mother’s house
 have infested the living room
with scattered pins and miniature singing,
and twisted garlands of bacon rind.

The mice in my mother’s house
have torn the angel limb from limb,
and their little tails flick like string
as they skitter up the Christmas tree

 

 

October 2006 This month's poem is TLA (Three-Letter Abbreviation) by Peter Howard, first published in Seam 25, and read to Cafe Writers on September 11th.  Peter's pamphlet Game Theory is published by Top Edge Press

TLA

by Peter Howard

DOB LEA LMS LSE
NME UHT BSC MFI
PHD MBA BAE USA
RAM CPU 4GL DTP
SDI INF C3I MMI
USP OTE PEP MBO
ATM PIN POS EFT
RPM CDI DAT VCR
LSD XTC PCP AOK
GTI PDQ MPH OTT
HGV TIR MOT NBG
ABS GBH SOS EEG
HIV PLA AZT TLC
RIP AOB TBA QED

June 2006. I have chosen Bat Samba by Tamar Yoseloff for this month's poem. Tamar read this to Cafe Writers on May 8th, and it is taken from her collection Barnard's Star, published by Enitharmon Press in 2004. The website for orders is: http://www.enitharmon.co.uk/

Bat Samba

it was their moment—John Ashbery

If they find you at home, they’ll skitter
towards your lights, their tiny squeaks
audible only to the dog, who circles his tail
in torment. Do they want your love
or is it something more tangible? The safety
of your house? The roof over your head?
Once in, they want to thank you, naturally,
so they flap with delight, like the dead
doing the samba as you try to sleep.

You want to kill them––but there are laws,
fines, imprisonment, the universal scorn
of bat fanciers. They know this and flaunt it
every opportunity they get. You are past caring.
You would feel no guilt if there was one less
butt-ugly creature—you, who give to charity,
who love dogs and cats, even mice,
but these monsters have been put on earth
to try you, to see how far your compassion goes.

Your compassion stops here. They have entered
your dreams, with their foul bat breath,
beady blind eyes. You conjure them into vampires
hunkering down in your bed for the night.
Only a matter of time until you wake to find
your teeth have sharpened to fangs, your body
is covered with wiry hair and your back
has sprouted wings––brown, veined, hideous.
It’s just as well you can’t see.

 

Poets’ Retreat
by Martin Figura
From Ahem, Eggbox Publishing 2005

Cottage Yorkshire Dales Sleeps twelve, remote and ideal
for writing retreats. Tel: 01980 666666

Sitting by the fire whittling, I wait for Cerberus
to tell me they’re here. Cerberus can smell poet,
it’s the wet corduroy. He barks three times
before they’ve reached the gate.

I open the door just as they go for the bell.
Tha’ll be the poets then.
Tha’ll be sticking t’ path.
They said they would.
It’ll be a cold day in hell.

It’s a good mile to the cottage.
The path is harsh and they wince
as the weather comes at them.
They are thrilled. Their heads’
are full of the imagery of it.
They can’t wait to get it down on paper.

They’re from Cambridge, pasty-faced academic
types. They should be easy meat. Not as easy
as the metaphysicals though. They hadn’t even
been sure they were here until it was too late.

Then, full of their own cleverness, there was
the Movement Poets. Well, they’re not moving now.
And as for the bloody romantics, they were so fey
and fragile the weather got them first.

The Liverpudlians and African-Caribbeans
may be streetwise, but let me tell you
there are no streets here and they died
crying for their mothers in each-others’ arms.

The Ted Hughes workshop was the best
sport. Eleven poets lured to a slow death
with a single dead rabbit. A taste of their
own medicine; fresh pickings for the crows.
The language poets tried to explain themselves
but I had no idea what they were on about and
to be frank, I didn’t care. But I think they understood
me when I said: sorry I and am me you irri
tate must so I you s l o w l y k i l l

Only Craig Raine got away. He’s quicker
than he looks and I just winged him. He went
scurrying and wailing into the hills. I was
after him, but he blocked the gate with a copy

of his Collected Poems: nineteen-seventy-eight
to nineteen-ninety-eight. Now he roams the moors
worrying sheep. Sightings are part of local legend.
A hairy beast in tattered Y fronts, roaring and stumbling
through the woods looking for his glasses.

The concrete poets, for obvious reasons, were less quick
and paid the price. But they have found a certain peace
with their own kind holding up the flyover at the Junction
with the A66.

The Poet Laureate came to fish in the very river
I disposed of Stevie Smith in. Her arm is still
sticking out, very much drowned, definitely not
waving. I’ve jammed his head in a dry stone wall
as a warning to others, a ball of paper stuffed
in his mouth. His final work – unfinished

I don’t know about you
I can only speak for me
But I really enjoyed
The Queen’s Golden Jubilee

I quite like it when they run for it, Cerberus
and I refer to it as ‘The Emily Dickinson fifty-
metre - dash!’ We are in the chariot – right on
their tails. Back at the cottage the Cambridge lot
are unpacking, laying out their towels, while
somewhere in the distance, something or other
howls.

 (Egg Box Publishing / www.newwriting.net )

 

Atta Boy
by Andre Mangeot

Don’t say you’re surprised –
where else would I feel as at home? –
me with a name for mixing it, always one
for the crowd, the chatter, the glint in her eye
and never averse
to a bite of the juice?

But this hour, the quietest,
is almost the best – clocking on,
checking in, place to myself, flicking the switch
to a still-polished gleam of counter and rail,
glasses and optics, bar mirror 
doubling my little nirvana.

Dan hustles in, off-loading a jacket.
checks his reflection, three buttons open.
tugs at his gel. Some fair stuff outside…
Be wicked tonight. With a minute to go
we high-five it, he heads for the door,
bends to unlock. They’re already

massing – vaporous shadows
behind the smoked glass. Ready to jive?
Patrolling our long narrow trench I salute him, steeled
for the surge to our lines.
Lay hands on the bar. Await
the first shot.

© André Mangeot © 2005

From Mixer (Egg Box Publishing / www.newwriting.net )

 

Meditation Topics for Women
by Sarah Law

1. If a bird wishes to join the sisters for meditation, but can’t follow the office hymns, what is one to do?
2. If there are twelve sisters presently resident, why do there sometimes seem twice this many at 5pm meditation?
3. If a sister should suddenly seem drunk and eager to sit only in sunshine, should this be permitted?
4. If one suspects a sister has red wine in her cell, should one visit her in the hope of being offered a glass?
5. If the slim tabby cat wishes to join the sisters and the bird for meditation, where should she sit?
6. If the mother superior offers each of the sisters a small wildflower from the grounds, is it customary to offer one back?
7. Should the statue of Our Lady cry, which sister should offer an apology?
8. If a sister should levitate, is it prudent to take photographs?
9. Should a priest vanish at the altar, must cleaning be postponed?
10. How many sisters does it take to change an altar cloth?
11. How many suppers does it take to fill a sister’s bones with health?
12. How many palm crosses does it take to build a workable two-sister raft?

View from Castle Rigg

by Ian Marriott

Tilt your head to the cliff face,
the conch shell of stone,
and listen
to the distant tapping of circle makers,
stone nudgers,
trackers of sun and the moon.
The lintelled mind was an ear to the granite sea.

Foot-squelch, thigh-brush,
through the peat hags of their passing.
Branch-snap, nut-crush,
the husk-brush
of an apple in russet palm.
Flea pick crooning,
and a low moaning
cocked at the moon.

Ochre antelope herded by bat-flap,
wing-toothed keeper of dreams.
A line cast.
A grappling hook
hurled and earthed.
A toe in the pool
of the cooling cranium.

Above bird-call and tree-creak
the dimpling of bronze
rose through the wood.
Almost a bell-note.
The matt-forged anvil of mind
rang like iron of the mountain.

 

Intercepted light

She watches shadows dip beneath the door,

swirling to the rhythm of the blades,

the push and pull of brown Bakelite whir.

Her fingers trace the swell of thigh to hip,

belly bump to ribs. Out in the dusty street

conversation splashes on to brick.

Next door the shower gurgles, as, within,

her heart maintains its sturdy, even thud,

reminding her that under her cloak of skin

she, too, pulses like intercepted light.

She too is rock and rolling out of sight.

Caroline Gilfillan

Read at Cafe Writers meeting, April 11th 2005

 

Speak to me

Speak to me
stranger,
for I have noticed your eyes
travel slowly 
across my sea of grey,
clarion blue 
and clear their sound
as they rest upon
the black shawl I wear
in a room of bright lights.

Speak to me
stranger,
for I am lost and buried deep
beneath a brickwork of habit,
locked,
in a labyrinth of stoneclad waves
with metal crests
and iron claws.

Speak to me.

 

Fairytale

If I was my boyfriend
I would not forget my birthday
or how to use a knife and fork.

If I was my boyfriend
I would not get drunk
and eat all of the cheese.

Or pretend to be asleep
while mice marched through kitchen,
looking for bits of cheese
that just happen to be lying around.

If I was my boyfriend,
I would definitely treat me like a princess,
unless of course, I needed to feel independent
like a modern girl should.


If I was my boyfriend,
I would eat fire, move mountains, write operas,
swim the channel, change the world
and serenade me from under my window
while I plaited my hair in a strong,
thick rope for me to climb.

Helen Ivory

Reality

I am Helen Ivory’s boyfriend.
Forget her birthday -
chance would be a fine thing.

I am Helen Ivory’s boyfriend.
Yes I eat all the cheese,
she is going through a non-dairy fad,
so who else is going to eat it.
I pointed this out to her
and apparently it’s a metaphor
and if I need to ask what for
then there is no point in telling me.

I am Helen Ivory’s boyfriend.
I would eat fire, but I’m busy with the cheese.
I could swim the channel, but the weight of expectation
might well drown me.

I am Helen Ivory’s boyfriend
and I’ll serenade her from under her window
just as soon as I’ve finished all the other jobs.

I am Helen Ivory’s boyfriend
I would rescue her if she plaited her hair
in a strong thick rope, but her hair is a law
unto itself. This is both true
and a bloody metaphor

Martin Figura

Poems Commended in Annual Poetry Competition 2004

The Oxford Road Cinema

by Anne Osbourne

Winnie escaped
With her younger daughter
And her mother
Who came on the bus from North Shore -
Every Friday,
To the Oxford Road cinema.

First house.
Front row.
Chocolate misshapes
And the prospect of fish and chips,
Funds permitting.
Utopia.

They liked romantic films best of all.
Three generations
Waiting for their princes.

They would swim
In Cary Grant's eyes
And swoon in the arms of
Laurence Olivier.

They were Merle Oberon,
Katharine Hepburn,
Ingrid Bergman.
They struggled through the dustbowls of the Midwest
And ran to Heathcliffe across the purple moors.
They saw the Straits of Gibralter
And the electric blue of the Pacific

And they plunged in.

 

Homecoming

by Jenna Butler

These are the rivers
of my childhood,
where we lay
hidden in rushes
on August afternoons,
cupping plums
like fragrant blue gems;
the roiling eddie
of the Bow,
seamed with minnows
and twists of hay
from the homeward pass
of the threshers
at dusk;
the Saskatchewan,
swollen with pack ice,
ragged jigsaw in spring
gnawing bridge anchors,
sluicing away over
the occasional corpse,
blank and blue-eyed,
embracing the sky.

These are the torrents
that thrill in our veins;
that drive us forth,
that carry us home.

 

 

Why I cannot write a poem like Frank O'Hara

by Emily Dening

                              For instance, I am not living
downtown New York, dropping in to see painters
pleased to be interrupted, who feed me cigarettes and wine.
Nor type my poems on a bashed up manual in between smoking and stroking
the cat with my beautiful hands.
                               There are no clubs like the Cedar Tree where I can
meet other famous poets and Jackson Pollock and Billie Holliday,
where I can schmooze and snooze and light up the room and
my next cigarette. Where I might press my head against the cold door of the john,
listen to the band, watch my life spin around me
                                 I do not possess black and white photos of myself,
elegant and rakish. I am not a homosexual. I do not have friends who wear electric green
waistcoats and orange velvet trousers. I do not like hamburgers and malted milks
though I open the bottle of wine earlier each day. The cigarettes
- ah the cigarettes - seduce me but I cannot rid myself of the thought that I shall die
a painful death and my daughter will never forgive me.
                                  I hold my sharpened pencil between second and third finger,
languorously, smell the bittersweet wood shavings which litter the surface of my desk. I
get up, make coffee, look out the window to where the tall chestnuts are arranging
themselves without a thought.

 

Becici

by Kirstie Bennett

Now there is choice.
You stay in the Hotel Splendid
but it still has that communist feel.

On the beach you wear a costume
that looks like it belonged to your mother
before Dolce and Gabbana, Miss Sixty invaded.

The roots are growing back in your hair
there are bags under your eyes
your skin is a sallow colour.

Only the orthodox cross
on a chain round your neck
reflects the sun, in splinters.

Travelling

by Yvonne Blomer

What I know -
the senses, the call to witness -
sweet fragrance of rain, heat,
panted breath, crack
of ice under the sun's weight,
salt on the lips, licked,
the darkness that eyes open to in the night
Eyes, a child's, that linger while I coast the long road
of her country - mute
age, her eyes let nothing out
while my smile, wave
gives me away.

                That fall we rode through endless towns,
Phully, Pho Len, Ninh Binh, Hue, fell
into plastic chairs, ate, tumbled
onto beds. The struggle
of endless kilometers while around us the world pitched,
filled, carried, endlessly planted, stopped
to watch us. We rode the Ngang Pass,
to Dong Hoi and Dong Ha and on. The load
we bore so arrogant between us
it left our hearts too full.

                                I believed
my fight with the landscape, hills,
made me, somehow, like them;
the girl. I so wanted to bend down,
a smile in my hand, tangible, something
I could reach out with,
leave, as if my place
on the landscape was more, anything
more than something to envy.

 

A TEMPORARY BLINDNESS

by Christine Lacey

On the day I went blind for six hours
I thought about the dress you wore.
I pictured your neck, the way it leans
And the soft nape of it.
I imagined a life not seeing you
Or the dress clinging to your hips.

I thought of how I would cope with this,
How I would move about, stumbling.
The bus would stop just for me
But I would not get on.
My car would not be my god
And my neighbours would wave awkwardly.

On the day my eyes closed down
I remembered the cinema tickets.
I felt them, lonely, in my pocket
And I caressed them.
I considered a life without sunshine
Or fiddling about with umbrellas.

I craved for the sight of chocolate
And the pleasure of jiggling teabags.
I touched the spine of my book
But it had no meaning.
My radio had impossible dials
To match my technical kitchen.

I perfected a way to treat doors
And considered a day of starvation.
 I discovered that I could be dirty,
How difficult to find soap.
I spent the day listening to the ticking
Of a record number of clocks.

 

 

Spinning

by Anne Osbourne

When I was little
I would sit
In the middle
Of the gravel drive
And concentrate myself cataleptic.

Pale orange dress,
Pattern: white blossom, green leaves.

I am not real.
I am not here.

A sense of dizziness.
The world is spinning out.
The universe is yawning,
And I am at the eye,
The perfect centre.

The garage,
The coal bunker,
Mr Kershaw's fence.
The moor, asleep in its purple mantle.
Not there.
Don't exist.

Two universes,
One spinning out
And the other spinning in.

But I would only be cataleptic
Until tea time.

PHRYGIA HAS AN UGLY HUSBAND

by

John Holliday

(though she is a beauty).
The substrate to that unlikely mixture
is an amalgam of riches and patronage.
To own paradise one merely has
to be able to buy paradise,
or pay someone to buy it for you.
Some of us can do that.

Marseaeus is a rich man
(for the moment)
and an ugly one
yet he is married to a shrew
and an ugly one.
That's his punishment for being who he is.
The gods have a sense of humour
and he is their big fat butt.

My wife is a shrew, too,
from some buggered-up hole
in a disagreeable continent.
That is where I bought her.
She is greedy and vulgar.
She hates my guts.
Surprisingly, I love her.
The gods have a different way
of joking with me.
They do it with the respect
of which I am worthy.
These things even out:
though she is a beauty
Phrygia has an ugly husband

 

In reply to Po Chu-I (AD 840)

by Kirstie Bennett

'Since I lay ill, how long has passed?'
Over 3,000 'heavy-hanging days.'
So many strangers have come into my home.

How can I bear to read of Po Chu-I
his 'one hundred heavy-hanging days?'

How can I bear, for the eleventh year
'To watch from a pillow the beauty of spring unfold?'

Each year, page after page,
reading, writing,
relying on words.



AUTUMN REVELATIONS

by Rachel Hobbs

Birds humming on the silent telegraph wires.
Row upon row, an audience is gathering,
in a flash they're gone.
Crispy russets, hazels, oJives, gold,
all packed in against the blue blue sky,
Falling like petals in a gust of wind.
Black skeletons left behind,
to battle against the winter snow.

Now rain streams down the window

pain,

as people deluded by summer sun,
wake up from their distant slumber.

 

HIS LAST LETTER

by Maureen Wallis

SEPTEMBER 13TH 1966

HI SWEETHEART,
PLEASE, PLEASE FORGIVE ME
NO CHANCE TO CALL AND TALK.
THEY PUT ME ON AN AIRCRAFT,
THEY SENT ME OFF TO WAR.
THEY FOUND ME IN NEW YORK
I DIDN'T GET TO MAINE
SO I DIDN'T SEE MY MOTHER
PLEASE APOLOGISE TO YOURS.
OH BABY! AN EIGHT MONTH TOUR
IN THIS GODAMMED PLACE.
HELL! WHERE NO ONE LIKES US,
THEY DON'T LOOK US IN THE FACE.
WE'RE ALL RESTRICTED TO THIS MISERABLE BASE.
NO CHANCE TO VISIT SAIGON,
NO CHANCE TO PLAY AWAY
WE WORK AT NIGHT
AND WE WORK ALL DAY
WITH BARELY TIME TO EAT
OR EVEN HIT THE HAY.
WE KNOW THE V.C.ARE COMING
IT'S A DEAD CERT THAT THEY'LL SHELL US
WHEN THEY TUNNEL THROUGH THE FENCE.
NEXT YEAR I RETURN TO ENGLAND
AND I'LL TELL YOU SO MUCH MORE
ABOUT THIS MOTHER OF A WAR.
TAKE CARE I LOVE YOU SO, KISS THE KIDS.
I KNOW THE MONTHS WILL QUICKLY GO.
IT'S LIGHTS OUT NOW,
DARKNESS, CURFEW TIME.
I'LL PRAY FOR OUR TOMORROWS,
FOR WHEN YOU'RE FINALLY MINE.
MY! AREN'T I THE LOVE STRUCK FOOL?
BUT I PROMISE YOU I'LL KEEP MY COOL.
TONIGHT I HOPE, BETH, I'LL DREAM OF YOU
I KNOW THAT ALL OUR DREAMS WILL COME TRUE.
FOREVER YOURS, DAVID

VIETNAM WAR MEMORIAL WASHINGTON D.C. S/SGT DAVID LEWIS
KILLED IN ACTION SEPTEMBER 24TH 1966