Six poems by J. D. Nelson

the curly mind linguistically innovative poetry - weird & risky

friendship artichoke listener

the can of ham is a new amazing hup
open it up for disgusted guests
there’s nothing to digest

this is my specialty
disappearing from view

I’m buying another planet
& my western lobes are tingling

earth is a many mirrored h.o.b.e.
with linus the real seventh

now we have a brain
and in the brain an egg
and in the egg a beast

the roving hand is a hard rock lucky

wood you start
the famous tree to disguise the art

the fighting tree
the words were like diamonds in the poem

and that something is the morning of the rain
the key to the brain being online and wet-wired

that rainbow is the ticking hand
what is white rice

half of them are in the belly by now

that head was a light burg so they say
this was the best earth could do at…

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2019, by Harry Gallagher

I am not a silent poet

(With apologies to Orwell)

..

On a warmer than normal

Autumnal morning,

the clocks all struck thirteen.

No one heard as England dreamed

of Spitfires and bunting,

streetparties, fox-hunting.

..

Somewhere in the distance,

three doors down your street,

bobbies on the beat

whistled a merrie tune,

while loosening bricks,

smithereening the front door

of planet-hugging peaceniks.

..

No warrant needed,

no cause for alarm,

a warning well-heeded

will keep you from harm.

..

When the siren calls, muster

in the Churchill Pavillion,

repeat after the speaker

from one to a million:

..

There was only ever one Winston

There was only ever one Winston

There was only ever one Winston….

..

..

“Extinction Rebellion eco-warriors arrested as police batter down doors in raids….”

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Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Razielle Aigen

The Wombwell Rainbow

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.

The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these fiction writers you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

Razielle Aigen

is a Montreal-born writer and artist. Her chapbook, “Light Waves The Leaves” is forthcoming from above/ground press (2020). Her poems appear in Entropy, Deluge, Contemporary Verse 2, Bad Dog Review, Dovecote Magazine, Half a Grapefruit, Sewer Lid, Five:2:One, California Quarterly, and elsewhere. Razielle holds a B.A. in History and Contemporary Studies from Dalhousie/King’s University, and is an alumna of The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University…

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Ladylike, by Myriam San Marco

I am not a silent poet

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Three poems by Rodney Wood

I am not a silent poet

DEATH BY THE EXPRESS NEWSPAPER

(i.m. Bill, my neighbour)

SURRENDER, PLOTS, DIVISION, SCREW YOU,
SHOCK, WARNING, CIVIL WAR, END OF EU,
GREEDY BANKS, RECESSION BOMBSHELL,
REAL CATASTROPHE, COLLAPSE, BETRAYAL

I take Bill to A&E to see a Consultant who says
Stop reading the EXPRESS. It causes heart disease,
hypertension, kidney failure, blurred and distorted vision,
obesity, excessive drinking and erectile dysfunction.

DEMANDS, PANIC, APPALLING, LIAR, CHAOS,
DOOMSDAY REPORTS, TORN APART, LASHES,
MASSIVE CURB ON MIGRANTS, CRISIS, SMASHED,
REVOLT, SHAMEFUL, VILE, DESTROYED, GUTTED

but it’s hard for Bill to stop reading because
it’s part of his daily routine, the EXPRESS
says what he and everyone thinks, he adores
the letters, comments and will devour until he dies

the hard truth – ATTACKS, WORLD WAR 3 FEARS,
ROWS, DEFEAT, SOCIETY IS BOILING, TEARS,
HYPOCRITE, NO REMORSE, TIMEBOMB, CLASH,
SCRAMBLE, SCANDAL, ALERT, SAVAGE BACKLASH

pickers carry him from his home, with the EXPRESS
spread over him like…

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Two poems by Mike Ferguson

I am not a silent poet

Lazarus

What is it with Luke and John and their competing optimisms? That multi-media pervasiveness. Furniture restoration lays down a marker in its lifting to a terrestrial pristine. There is Powerheart G3 Pro, Lifeline, Defibtech, HeartSine samaritan 360p, but a missed trick in the absence of Lazarus Original. When the pampas stems returned after all those years. Imagine the multitude of lazaruses from plague and war that aren’t zombiefied. This ‘straightening from under again’ transcends as a more telluric phrase. How we salve disappointment in mocking the grandiloquence of redemption. In searching for a pun, there is ‘raising hell’ and then the corrective of ‘raisin bread’.

..

..

Job

Not that, but the one about a slave to suffering and fantasy. Transcends one religion to the next conscription. It is a story I disdain with all my will and yet live every day. Them and Uz. Even the…

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Last Chance, by Tim Evans

I am not a silent poet

The sea rises.
A woman sits by the shore,
Singing the lost songs of love and exile.
And there shall be fires too,
Floods and hurricanoes,
As the sea rises
And the ocean swells
And the salt waves slap
Against the wet caves
Of our imagination.
Condemned to one last chance.

Why are you deaf and dumb?
Are we the last people?
Did these lakes and hills belong to us
Or we to them?
Is this our honour?
To be the last defenders
Of a wounded planet?

Remember, though…
It was not ‘we’ who sucked up oil from the veins of the earth,
It was not ‘we’ who created moving cities of automobiles
Headlights blazing through the motorways of night.
It was you – B.P, Shell, Total, Exxon Mobil,
Lukoil & Chevron,
GM, Ford, Honda, Chrysler
Peugeot, Suzuki
Rolls-Royce and Mercedes,
It is from your black fangs
That the oil…

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Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Peter Riley

An excellent interview with Peter Riley on The Wombwell Rainbow

The Wombwell Rainbow

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.

The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

Peter Riley

was born in Stockport in 1940 and recently retired to West Yorkshire after living for 28 years in Cambridge. In 1966 he was an editor of The English Intelligencer, the worksheet which first proposed a neo-Modernist position in British poetry. Since then he has authored a heap of books and pamphlets, which have now been gathered into a two-volume Collected Poems published by Shearsman (2018). His…

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The phone box, by Tom Bland

the curly mind linguistically innovative poetry - weird & risky

was perfect on the outside,
not one of those red ornate ones, the black and silver metal, more of a frame than a
box, I was already inside puking up my guts after taking two long lines of ketamine.Ç
“I was trying to find an insight to justify the grotesqueness
of the experience.”
“Sometimes acknowledging the grossness is the insight,” my therapist said.

During my clown training, we named
every facial expression we made first in the mirror then to each other;
the teacher noting them all down to the point
where in a performance, he shouted a name,
and we made
that face
towards the audience so
they too learnt the power to
control our features, the exaggerated heightened
emotion
pushing our skin into its shape.
I found myself
a demon in front of an audience: “I only had a
standard joke to play with.” I wanted them
to…

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Two poems by Fran Lock

the curly mind linguistically innovative poetry - weird & risky

poem for an ideal reader

“how to create through writing an enduring extinction”- Miyó Vestrini

reader, accomplice in a thought crime,  sway,
witless, to my severest music. i will go away.
i will go where the air is clean. for a long time:
a crisis that renders all our disappointments
fatal. the lipstick, fatally smudged, the dress shirt,
fatally creased, the electric fan, fatally misdirected.
reader, i desire you how the poem desires you:
erratically, and forever. with teeth. you, fleshscape,
me, david croneberg. to incite your extinction,
over and over, that mixtape mumble. confusion
reigns. this, capital’s ideal carnality, love in
the precinct of monster gods, of men with gills,
of women with webbed earlobes. whatever.
there are pigeons befouling the lcd signs.
to be written into oblivion against necessity
in an angry font, all caps. and all the lemon-
coloured birds our sky is starved of. country,
wild and…

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