plague victims catapulted over walls into besieged city
Early germ
warfare. The dead
hurled this way turn like wheels
in the sky. Look: there goes
Larry the Shoemaker, barefoot, over the wall,
and Mary Sausage Stuffer, see how she flies,
and the Hatter twins, both at once, soar
over the parapet, little Tommy’s elbow bent
as if in a salute
and his sister, Mathilde, she follows him,
arms outstretched, through the air
just as she did on earth
Thomas Lux
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my mother says no on bloomsday
It is not easy, it is not easy
to wheel an old woman to the shower
on Bloomsday, when the world
and Molly cry yes, yes, yes,
and she is saying no, no, no,
because what’s left of her life
depends on the freedom of No.
How Joycean of her
to resist the cleaned-up conscience
of filial attention, your need
to fix her taints and odours,
wash hair and teeth,
attend to toes when all she wants
is to float on the lily-leaf of her own
green bedspread, drowsing Molly
in a tangle of snow-white hair.
Now, dreams enclose her
more than talk of showers or meals,
the flowing waters of memory
rise and touch her skin
just where the mattress eases
spine and bones
in that yellow-walled room.
Hello, my darling, she greets
his photograph, flinging kisses
towards mottled frame.
To her then,
the logic of love,
to her, the logic of No,
her tongue untameable.
Mary O'Donnell
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this be the verse
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
Philip Larkin
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two cures for love
1. Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter.
2. The easy way: get to know him better.
Wendy Cope
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sideman
I’ll be the Road Runner
To your Wile E Coyote
I’ll take you in my stride
I’ll be a Sancho Panza
To your Don Quixote
Your ever faithful guide
I’ll stand by you in the lists
With our market strategists
I’ll be your sideman, baby,
I’ll be by your side
I’ll be a Keith Richards
To your Mick Jagger
Before he let things slide
I’ll be Sears to your Roebuck
Before he took the headstaggers
And opened nationwide
I'll support you at Wembley
I may require some assembly
But I'll be your sideman, baby,
I'll be by your side
I’ll be McCartney to your Lennon
Lenin to your Marx
Jerry to your Ben &
Lewis to your Clark
Burke to your Hare
James Bond to your Q
Booboo to your Yogi Bear
Tigger to your Pooh
Trigger to your Roy Rogers
Roy to your Siegfried
Fagin to your Artful Dodger
I guess I’ll let you take the lead
(guitar solo)
I’ll be a Chingachgook
To your Leatherstocking
A blaze of fur and hide
Our shares consolidated
Our directorates interlocking
I’ll be along for the ride
I’ll be at Ticonderoga
I’ll be there for you at yoga
I’ll be your sideman, baby,
I’ll be by your side
Paul Muldoon
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tv
You tell me to leave it on,
in case a culprit cuts a portal
in the window, grows a shadow
on our landing. So I blast it
to ten, & the six o’clock cracks
the walls with a quake
in China, a ring of dealers
sewing cocaine into hems,
a passenger plane leaving
black crumbs over the Andaman.
These scenes render themselves
to the rooms, ghost the locks
with disembodied words
from blue-faced static,
and when we return
even out in the dark
we see the eyes of the house
bright with conversation,
hear our telly talking to itself,
making us think we might catch
strangers in the act, huddled around
its mouth, staring down its throat.
Simon Costello
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oxytocin
It’s like nobody has ever
done the dishes together
before – on a Wednesday,
with all the kitchen lights on
and the moon huge, lemon-yellow.
The quiet clatter of china
meeting in the sink.
The low hum of the fridge
as its motor clicks in.
I love these sounds,
their taking place
in the arrangement of our life,
the simple way
they present themselves
and become beautiful.
Look at the pale pink roses
sweetening a pint glass
on the window sill.
The Jeff Buckley record
playing in the corner.
All the silver forks.
Our hands, sharing
the warm water.
Betty Doyle
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the outing
Onlookers witnessed your wrath that night
how your fist rose to the heavens,
striking down as if Ṣango lived within you.
Thirty going on thirty-one. I wasn’t sure what to say.
I’ve never been here.
The papers described him as tall.
They said his neck broke before he landed
as if his body was a slinky, waiting
for the rest of him to hit the ground.
Witnesses recall you bloodied and exhausted,
looking at your swollen knuckles saying
what did I do? repetitively
as if you were a toy wound for entertaining.
Uncle Elijah believes mental health is a western thing
He says back home, elders would out those who were cursed
and banish them from the village. I sit with you, old friend.
We break silence with passive laughs as if we were sat
with our fathers. Then silence again.
Yomi Sode
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