Loralee Clark, Solemnity Rites

This is not a Pot

Ordinary blue enameled steel,

rings of minerals encrusted white

from hours of water boiling,

preserving jars of tomatoes

(with and without summer basil),

applesauce, pickles, cherries and

canned cider vinegar blueberries.

Make allowances for our grandmothers’

superior jam skills,

the ways we let little hands hold the tongs,

arms shaking as hot glass drips scalding water.

Make allowances for the resourcefulness

of chicken feet, head and bones for stock,

meat for meals, neck, heart and gizzard

for mincing and flavoring stuffing

because if you kill it, you should uphold

the holiness of its life, the same way

you wash the pot, inside and out,

rub it dry with a cloth because

it is not

just a pot.

Further details

Matthew Paul, The Last Corinthians

Double Chemistry
     
The hardest lads of 5N3 hold a smoke-ring competition
      at the back of the lab, toking away on Benson
           and Hedges sparked off the Bunsen

burners; while the rest, as always, toast squidgy pink
      marshmallows. In the moment Mrs Schwenk
            combines Sarson’s vinegar with zinc,

Martin Lunt sits his grey-trousered arse on a white-hot
      marble nugget and howls like a werewolf shot
           through the heart with a silver bullet.

No one comes clean; neither then, nor later, in the after-
      school detention. Not the next morning either,
           when Mr Claggett, the Head of Year,

his face already ketchup-red, labels us ‘chinless louts’
      and, as soon as he’s realised we’re all in fits,
           ‘a rabble of unemployable shits’.

Further details

Smitha Segal, Brown God’s Child

Becoming a Blood Hibiscus

In the inevitability of dusk,

memory of abandoned mother tongue

returns to the fluency of secrets.

Flustered, eyes shut tight to death,

is love any different from war,

silence concealing frost flames.

Look how the sea floods familiar streets,

tattered neon moons washing over

infinite dark shores of fever.

Languor of night around my leaves

the torrent of madness measuring the ruin

wind knocking on the door.

I want to say, come, be the liquid light

inside my poems, instead,

I slip the twinkle of a lone star on your sleeve.

You pare the layers of blackness,

clods of earth in your palm,

now I become a deep blood hibiscus.

Further details

Julia Thacker, To Wildness

God Denies Any Knowledge of Dead Angel in His Bed

He searches Heaven's cabinets for a hangover cure.

Combs knotted stars from his beard.

Sets the morning agenda. To the blind shepherd

he dictates a note: The wind is blue.

And what of tsunamis, wars?

Macedonian wells infested with bees?

God has a headache. His hands tremble.

He cannot look at the heap of sheets,

her celestial body, marcelled bob, cold

in his chamber. No one understands

that he is full of duende. Not the swarm of angels,

their platinum regiment rapping

at his windows, rattling doors, voices sharp

and clear, Why? God covers his ears. 

Further details