London Grip New Poetry – Winter 2012
This issue of London Grip features new poems by:
*Norbert Hirschhorn *Rosemary Norman *Janet Simon *Nancy Mattson *Sultana Raza *Leah Fritz *Murray Bodo *Haris Adhikari *Kerrin P Sharpe *Bruce Christianson
*Paul Richards *Fiona Sinclair *Ken Champion *Mal Grosch *Merryn Williams
*Robert Nisbet *Frankie McMillan *David R Morgan
*Kamran *Adriana Caudrey *Edward Mycue
A printer-friendly version of London Grip New Poetry can be obtained at LG new poetry Winter 2012
Editor’s Introduction
Many of the poems in this issue have gathered themselves round themes of searching and loss. Between Norbert Hirschhorn’s SF-like quest for Jesus across the universe and Edward Mycue trying to find his way through multiple poetic forms, we meet people hunting for physical sustenance or pursuing lost memories and even lost language.
Apart from the Hirschhorn poem and Janet Simon’s oblique reference to the Song of Simeon, however, readers will not easily find the Christmassy feel one might expect from a magazine launched in December. Instead of the Christmas Star guiding the Wise Men we have a group of moon poems, reinforced by Bianca Hendicot’s delightful cover image. So your editor, taking his cue from a handful of street-scene poems, extends Christmas greetings in the voice of an innkeeper with premises on a street in Bethlehem…
Accommodation
Crowds are good for business. Better
working hard than standing idle
with time to think too much.
Crowds are good for business. Spending
is contagious – bring more wine
and roll the dice again.
Not much mirth in these two. What with
her in her condition and him
with eyes for no-one else.
I should send them packing. Ah! but
someone’s bound to see me do it
and then there’ll be a fuss.
Best to give a little. I’ve found
as life goes on there comes a time
for necessary gestures of goodwill.
Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
http://mikeb-b.blogspot.com/
Please send submissions for future issues to poetry@londongrip.co.uk, enclosing no more than three poems and including a brief, 2-3 line, biography. Copyright of all poems remains with the contributors
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Norbert Hirschhorn : Chasing after Jesus, AD 3000
A rumour from a far planet,
parsecs and parsecs away –
Jesus, he heard, had been: born,
crucified, resurrected, returned.
Had the Christ abandoned Earth,
where we insist the mystery first arose?
Or, to return only once all other corners
of the cosmos were harrowed?
So he set out for that remote place.
Why yes, Jesus was here, aeons ago.
We too await His return.
If you find Him, tell how we wait.
On: Yes, a few years ago…
and on – Yes! A few months ago…
Yes! Yesterday…
Ah, you just missed Him.
Without regret: in his pilgrimage for grace
he’d had nothing to lose; now at the close,
nothing more to gain. And so, humbled, bereft,
and bare, he landed at last at the remotest place
any could reach, to find rainbows –
doubles, trebles, circles, crowns –
and fragrance and flames.
Norbert Hirschhorn is a physician commended by President Bill Clinton as an ‘American Health Hero.’ He lives in London and Beirut. His poems appear in three full collections. See www.bertzpoet.com
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Rosemary Norman : Sign
When you cannot see this sign the river is underwater – From “The world’s stupidest signs”
…so he rides a year and a day
until it’s April
and he can hope once again
for a sign, not the jutting
board or alphabet
that leapfrogs when he looks
but sky illegibly at work
on flat water
overcome by what it announces.
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Rosemary Norman : For
For the night window to slant
above my bed.
For my dimensions to be what they are
with the cleanliness of a fossil
in rock, that is distinct
but is nevertheless and also rock.
For a foothold in air, the far
side of the glass, to admire how I lie.
Rosemary Norman’s second collection, Italics was published by Shoestring Press in autumn 2010. Her work with video artist Stuart Pound is at www.stuartpound.info
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Janet Simon : Nunc Dimittis
Lord, now lettest thy servant depart in peace,
According to thy word:
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;
A light to lighten the Gentiles,
And the glory of thy people Israel.
Song of Simeon Luke 2, 29-32
Grey again. Thin lipped light
whispers into the morning.
Rain slats and it's no warmer.
Bloodless, in back kitchens
immigrant women sit at windows.
Those who have lived here too long
know it's not even a third
of the way past winter to spring
in spite of the date.
In front rooms their old men argue.
The rain will not let up.
Stiff, repetitive, grumbling
over the same blind quarrels
in the same grim, gloom,
they cannot get themselves out.
There's nowhere else to go.
Perhaps they are waiting for something,
for a child, or at least some sun,
so that they can have done with
this endless misremembering
of who said what to whom,
and why it mattered once.
It's not that they're tired of living,
at least it's not that alone.
One more failure of sunrise
makes little difference at this stage,
and a sort of spring will come one day.
It always does sooner or later,
however briefly.
But before the drizzle resettles
and with it the old disputations,
they linger, still longing in darkness
for some total change of weather,
a new star, a new sky, a new something,
to give them permission at last
to depart this place in peace.
Feb 2/ Candlemass/Groundhog Day
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Janet Simon : The Pearl
Matthew xiii
Inside the space which was my mind
each writhing cell disintegrates.
What was a busy gloss
becomes a flat matt vacuum.
You ask me questions
I don't know the answers to.
I knew them once, but pain
or pleasure carried them away.
Knock on this hollow bowl
and you will hear a fruitless thud.
Not even echoes of some wisdom
that I thought I knew
will ring out after me.
With this stupidity
I make a new beginning.
I have had precious thoughts.
I called them truth.
Some were like yours
and some were different.
They grew like bubbles,
multiplied, became strung out,
coloured and crystallised.
They made such jewellery
I wore them on my tongue.
They almost dazzled me.
I thought they cut like diamonds,
lasted like solid stone,
but they were only fake glass beads.
Cracked by my straining heart
they shattered ... easily .
You say that truth is something
far too precious to tell every fool
who asks for it. I say it all depends
on what you mean by fool.
There is an irritation underneath
this emptiness, cloudy and creamy grey.
Although it promises a gentle sheen,
as yet, it is not bright.
It does not tell me things.
All I remember is that someone, somewhere
said that where your treasure is
there will your heart be also.
I don't recall how heads came into it.
Janet Simon is a native Londoner. A previous runner up in the National Poetry Competition, she has two published collections: Victoria Park and Asylum.
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Leah Fritz : Get Well Ghazal
My mind is not itself, my heart is dead.
I don't know how to live these hours without you.
The days are long just sitting by your bed
but longer still the nights alone without you.
I talk to people far away where time
is earlier, forgetting night without you,
pretending I see daylight, too, and that I'm
by your side; not in this bed without you.
Please come home; I don't know what to do;
It's selfish but I cannot dream without you.
Since her arrival England in 1985, New York born writer, Leah Fritz, has had four collections of her poems published in Britain. Her latest volume, Whatever Sends the Music into Time: New and Selected Poems, was published by Salmon in 2012.
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Murray Bodo : Joy
Ever since I was a boy
And first heard the sweet sough of
Pine trees at McGaffey Park
Ever since I was a teen
And first saw “Colored Only”
Drinking spouts in St. Louis
Ever since I was a man
And first tasted the new words
Of one who said she loved me
Ever since my middle years
And first felt the soft flesh of
God in a poor wrinkled hand
Ever since age took hold and
I first smelled the taste of death
I’d seen and heard as a boy –
The feel of pines stirs me
Flesh smells sweet as roses
“White Only” tastes of gall
Love in pain sings no guile
And Holy Fools are waving
Guffawing from their coffins
Murray Bodo is a Franciscan Priest who resides in Cincinnati, Ohio. The author of 27 books, including the best selling, Francis: The Journey and the Dream, his poems, stories and articles have appeared in magazines and literary journals. His latest book of poems, Something Like Jasmine, with accompanying CD, was released by Tau Publishing in 2012
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Sultana Raza : The Serpentine
I absorb the beauty
but dare not look too closely
for fear this pretty picture
might disappear
if looked at too minutely.
Were I to sit and stare,
like these stone goddesses
who take turns to rule
over the cycles
of their flowering boudoir,
would I still hear
the meandering of the stream,
birds commenting
on this cornucopia of green?
Of Indian origin, Sultana Raza has been living in Europe for many years. Her short stories and poems have been published in Ancient Heart Magazine, India Currents, Szirine, Kindred Spirit, Cygnus Review, Arabesque Review and the Literary Gazette.
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Haris Adhikari : Buried
A lamp-post
in the dark
gleaming
for no one—
no one
was there
in the dead silence
of the night—
the cold
was too harsh
and the vision
blurred in the fog—
dogs were barking
far away
some changing
of shapes—
for fear
perhaps
I was so thankful
to the light—
but soon I realized
how dark the way was
stretched
and buried.
Haris Adhikari is from Nepal. He holds an MA in English and American literature from Tribhuvan University. He is a lecturer of English and edits Misty Mountain Review, an online journal of short poetry. His first poetry anthology, Flowing with a River, was published by The Society of Nepali Writers in English (NWEN). Currently, he is working on That Distant Lane, a chapbook of children’s poetry. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Red Fez Journal, Buddhist Poetry Review, Cyclamens and Swords Publishing, The Citron Review, The Rusty Nail Magazine, Mad Swirl, Red Box Kite, Of Nepalese Clay, The Kathmandu Post, The Enchanting Verses Literary Review, Message in a Bottle, Lyrical Passion Poetry, Essence Poetry & Yes, Poetry.
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Kerrin P Sharpe : it takes the revolution of snow to get the tsar talking
I am little father
of the babushka dolls
olga maria tatania
lexei anastasia
at every train station
I am the old order
asleep in the icons
of Russian Orthodox prayer
I remember my palaces
as mirrors of candles
that nourished Russia
long before darkness
now all my years
freeze behind me like knives
they say blood
is the comrade of snow
my bones agree with Windsor
the haemophilia
of loss marches well
beyond the forest
Kerrin P. Sharpe lives in Christchurch, New Zealand where she is a poet and a teacher of creative writing. She has published in NZ, Australia and England. Her first collection Three Days in a Wishing Well, published by Victoria University Press was launched at the Christchurch Writers’ Festival in September 2012.
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Bruce Christianson : Silence Please
death waits his turn
at the self-service issue desk
there is a queue but
it's a marked improvement
over when the books were chained
death returns tuberous begonias
checks out a tourist guide to bruges
his next client
is in the line behind him
death takes his time & doesn't hurry
Bruce Christianson is a mathematician from Whangarei, New Zealand, who moved to Hertfordshire twenty-five years ago. He lives with death in an open relationship
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Paul Richards : Studying in a foreign land
On station concourse
Shoe shine guy between shoe shines
Reads dictionary
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Paul Richards : The Interlopers
Forever
Neither here
Nor there
Blocking utterly the doorway
Of a pokey bookshop
On a summer Saturday morning
Densely packed in winter coat
Pondering the latest PD James
Or just captured in the monochrome shades
Of a family photograph
Leaning off-centre on the edge of a sideboard
All but obscured
By a magisterial uncle
They always need a lift to some station
In the back of beyond
And their plastic bags know no bounds
- It’s a toss-up
Whose car they’ll squeeze in to
And whether their train
Runs on a Sunday or not
Then when they start on the fags again
Having sworn blind
They’d really packed it in this time
And end up calling you
In wheezing despair
From the ashen plastic chair
Of a heaving waiting room
We can but mutter
To our significant other
- Hand muffling receiver -
“He’s his own worst enemy”
Contact denied
Denied contact
In the dead of night
They shuffle down to the garden borders
Barely described by the party lights
Tracing the territory
We forget or fear to explore
- Sniffer dogs
Put out to grass
They ache by the sides of rivers
And zigzag
Down hotel corridors
In search of their rooms
Forever
Filling uneasily,
The holes in our prayers.
Paul Richards, reached his half-century this year, and – apart from writing poetry (and playing the piano) – runs his own computer support business. Although very much a North London homeboy he now finds himself residing in South-West London and is loving it, particularly the green and posh bits. His first “proper” poem, written at the age of 9, was a rendition of the nativity in Tim Rice style pop lyrics.
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Fiona Sinclair : Mother’s girl
Leaving a litter of lies behind him,
my father would siphon petrol from a neighbour’s car
like sucking venom from snake bite,
and disappear in his mini pick -up
into the orchards and fields that were his office.
Mother was determined to expel
the sins of my father from me:
when caught stealing chocolate biscuits
I received slaps like wasps stings;
detected lying about lost PE kit
I was invisible for the rest of the day.
But when cancer caged my father;
she and I kept vigil either side of his cadaverous body,
praying he would give up.
After his death, a nightly tap on my bedroom door,
“Can I sleep in here tonight?”
And when she brushed my childhood aside
to explain the facts of our life –
the ramshackle house un-saleable
after father’s cut-and-shut renovations,
savings that rattled like a near-empty piggy bank –
I inwardly strutted with pride.
Fiona Sinclair’s work has appeared in numerous magazines. Her second pamphlet A Game of Hide and Seek was published by Indigo Dreams in 2012. She is the editor of the on line poetry magazine Message in a Bottle
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Nancy Mattson : An Old
Once upon
he was my
charming, his black
kind. When I opened
I couldn’t speak, my
heavy. When he drew
came pouring in, every
covered in thick
I blinked
forced out weak
moved my
slow and stiff. His careful
under my
across the wide
I think, recognised
one by one
but what to call
how to ask
gone, a hundred
I needed
my dry
my empty
Still, I draw with
I want
I paint every
as always
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Nancy Mattson : Ode To A 1953 Buick Skylark
sleeker than apples
your chrome
brighter than brilliantine
your paint
rounder than vowels
your wheels
quicker than Grace’s
cricket ball
yet your motor purrs
more sweetly
than honeybees heading home
from lavender
Nancy Mattson moved from the Canadian prairies to London, England, in 1990. She has three full-length poetry collections: Finns and Amazons (Arrowhead Press, 2012), Writing with Mercury (Flambard Press, 2006) and Maria Breaks Her Silence (Coteau Books, 1989).
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Ken Champion : Street Games
Flinging the ball at the pennies – tanners if you’re flush –
on the paving slab against the end house wall, and mum
shouting down the street for your tea, and you run past
the parlour to the kitchen, stir the washing in the boiler
with the bleached broom handle while she salts greens,
squeal of fork inside a saucepan, hand wiping a brow;
and you want to run to the park through the sandpit,
round the bandstand, on to the Flats, jump the stream
between houses, lean on a fluted lamppost and sate
yourself on mind flicks of skinny Iris at number two
or the misty silken space inside the thighs of principal
boys your dad takes you to see at Lyceum pantos,
but knowing you’re only going to the coins again
that no-one ever seems to hit.
Ken Champion is an Internationally published poet and writer whose work has appeared in many magazines. He has two pamphlets and a collection, But Black And White Is Better (Tall Lighthouse, 2008, reprinted 2010); and his fiction has been published in literary journals in the UK and USA.
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Mal Grosch : Villiers Street
Villiers Street’s seen better days –
Beneath the footbridge, grubby, lays
Twin claims: as part of Tourist Land
And a dustbin for the Strand.
A pub too proud to just sell ale
Must boast it’s on the ‘Dickens trail’
A plaque says Kipling once lived here;
Subtract the dates: yes, for three years.
I take myself around the corner
With cash from my guitar – I pawned her.
I meander on and by some ploy
Reach the Coal Hole by Savoy
Then my poor soul, still bruised by failure
Receives the balm of Timothy Taylors
A genuine pub with genuine beer:
Mal Grosch, they’ll say, he once drank here!
Mal Grosch (malgrosch@london.com) is a poet based in East London at Victoria Park. He has just completed an anthology called The Surrey Hills. All his poems are available as ebooks. He is also a musician and folk dance caller.
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Merryn Williams : Gissing’s Streets
I lost my chance that day in the students’ cloakroom,
a grey morning, thick dust on the radiator.
So many times they’ve asked me, why did you do it?
I am good with words, but can’t explain.
I remember how I slid my hand
into the pockets of my fellow students,
I thought I could hide behind those heavy coats,
shield myself from the January weather.
I lost so many things that day: the isles of Greece,
Oxford, the Senior Common Room,
civilised discussions of the Latin poets
of the Silver Age, over sherry.
Do I spend my last few coins on that second-hand book
which I covet, or buy a sandwich?
There’s grit on this wind. Here’s your erstwhile star pupil,
draped round his neck, his curriculum vitae.
George Gissing was expelled from Owens College, Manchester for stealing money from other students, in order to keep a girl he had fallen in love with, off the streets.
Merryn Williams’ latest book is Effie: A Victorian Scandal: From Ruskin’s Wife to Millais’ Muse .
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Robert Nisbet : A Study in Scarlet Women
That’s all they’ll do, they’ll flirt, wink, tart themselves up
it’ll be boys, boys, boys
Nowadays it’s little groups on mobile phones
one time it was phone boxes
another time Conti’s juke box
and they’d flirt, wink, tart
The same in the assembly rooms, say 1815-ish
they’d arrive in carriages, with Mama
flirt, wink, tart themselves up (much easier with fans)
Likewise, temperance halls, the picture palaces
Sunday schools, band of hope
dame schools, grammar schools
it was all boys, boys, boys
Must have been bloody wearing
for the senior mistresses, prefects, counsellors
the Mamas in the assembly rooms
the Sunday school teachers
It was all boys, boys, boys
and all for Elvis lookalikes
Fitzwilliam Haughty
Roy of the Rovers, the curate
Jason
So after all that counselling
(bad buggers, those boys, boys, boys)
it would be back to the staff room
stiffish whiskies, loosen tights
report back to the Head, the Beak
the counsellor-in-chief, the chief exec
and
oh surely not
flirt, wink, tart?
Robert Nisbet published 100 short stories between 1973 and 2006, and his work will feature in the forthcoming Library of Wales anthology of the Welsh short story, 1900-2010 (Parthian, 2013). Poems he’s written more recently have appeared in Smiths Knoll, Orbis, Other Poetry, The Interpreter’s House and other magazines
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Frankie McMillan : Meeting the train with a wheelbarrow
I soon learn to speak like my sister
a foreign accent (a touch of Russian)
and much hand waving
she shows me the shop in the courtyard
where the boys buy their smokes, shows me
a ball room for Friday night dances
they wouldn’t mind, she says, if I stayed
I could do the twist with her
she shows me a room of sewing machines
half made baskets of cane
there are lots of men who love her, she says
the doctor and her plan to run away
they’re thinking of Hawaii
once she stops smoking
I soon learn to speak like my sister
foreign accent, much hand waving
she meets me in the courtyard
the boys jostle under the hanging tree
their dark eyes never leave her
they wouldn’t mind if I stayed
I could do the twist, some of the boys
were actually quite handsome
Frankie McMillan is a short story writer and poet from New Zealand. She is the author of The Bag Lady’s Picnic and other stories and a poetry collection, Dressing for the Cannibals. Recent poetry has appeared in Turbine, Sport, JAAM, Snorkel, Trout, The Cincinnati Review and Shenandoah.
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David R Morgan : Le Dejeuner Sur l’ herbe
The teacher wants to join the ghosts of his parents,
fluid colours on grass, picnicking in his mind –
but the door of the past is too brittle to open,
conflicting with the Monet print here, when the lights
in the classroom dim and he
sits on a corner stool and reads
in the paper about that girl gone missing, lost ten long days.
There’s a door locked that won’t let her through.
Murdered? Fled? The teacher thinks
of his own daughter grown so
away from him now, lost in another reality
where her husband, the salesman,
shifts laptops and Kindles in Luton’s Mall;
and of her daughter, too awkward
to eat her lunch properly, too autistic to account
for herself beyond the prison of personal space.
His smile half regret, half reproach,
he puts down the paper, strolls his classroom
over to where, in the shadowy light,
the Monet releases its subtleties, seeming
to mirror back the eye’s own searching
Into what? Not re-assessment,
but something better, softer, some set
matrix of located colour, which opening all doors
invites the lost ones back, to luncheon on the lawn.
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David R Morgan : The Moon was huge
The Moon
was huge, as he had said
it would be. It sat
cleanly on his wheelbarrow,
and filled the wild fields
with reflected light.
Because he had said it would be
beautiful, it was.
Or because it was beautiful,
he said it would be.
I was aware of him
behind me, in the twilight,
and in the night in front;
and above me in the sky, filling
all things.
I froze
when his shadow fell across the page,
I was writing this on.
David R Morgan has been an arts worker, literature officer, festival organiser and writer-in-residence for education authorities, Littlehay Prison and Fairfield Psychiatric Hospital. He has had two plays screened on ITV and his poems have been widely published. His latest collections are Beneath The Dreaming Tree (Poetry Space Ltd 2011) and Lightbulbs In The Sea (Knives, Forks & Spoons Press 2011). He has also written many books for children.
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Kamran : The White Bread
A translation from the Urdu by the author with Roshan Ara Dilber & MBB
There was once a family down in the slums
living off garbage and eating from dumps.
They’d never seen a three-course meal:
too poor to buy one– but too proud to steal.
One moonlit evening their excited small son
saw something amazing. He came at a run
to look for his mother; and when he’d called her
along narrow alleys and pathways he hauled her.
Holding tight to her hand, the little boy said
"Look mother, I’ve got you some lovely white bread.
Call brother and sister, we'll each have a bite –
no sleeping on empty stomachs tonight!”
At this, the boy’s mother burst into tears.
She knew what he’d seen was only a clear
full-moon reflection on his metal plate.
A loaf of white bread wasn’t part of their fate.
Kissing him gently on his puzzled head,
"Hold it to up your face" the boy’s mother said,
"This is how life is." This truth that she told
taught him the lesson that truth can be cold.
Yet although he heard he did not understand
till he turned the plate over onto his hand,
shook his head, dropped his eyes and with hope turned to stone
set out with his mother, still hungry, for home.
Kamran hails from Andaman, India and is an avid reader and writer of English, Urdu, Hindi and Bengali literature. He has published many articles, essays and poems in different languages. He is currently pursuing a degree in civil engineering
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Adriana Caudrey : Moon
… of many faces,
pale mother,
anxious child,
glow ball in night sky.
Once a month you are perfect whole,
shedding light from your womb.
They say you are pock-marked
with imperfections.
Your only fault is when you are
eaten away with jealousy –
a tiny bite out of your side.
So we would be perfect,
if whole and rounded,
like the moon full.
We are damaged children’s faces
and our task to find the child
undamaged;
ingenuous and full,
through having stared for years
from the dark sky of the soul.
The full moon is rich and giving,
shedding a beam so strong
at midnight,
that it stripes with brilliant light
and shadow, all the country lanes.
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Adriana Caudrey : The Cat
The Cat has wisdom
of unrestrained expression,
passing through padded paws,
purring harmoniously,
his legs like hands in gloves,
or the dancer’s continual mime,
stroke the air,
sending its waves
in spirals caressing.
The Dancer, the Singer,
the Rain-maker,
have woven a circle about them
of music that flows from within;
the Dancer fashions
his pattern about him
with every movement he makes
like a ribbon or a sparkler
that slices or lightens the air.
The Conductor waving this baton
entrances the entire concert hall,
the lonely child by the coast
shifting the shingle
and wetting the dusky pebbles,
always stooping, gathering relics,
in a language he must decipher –
though a shock of coral
will call without a name.
He stores his finds
shoring the Castle from waves,
till time when coral can be strung,
the notes can be sung,
the man is the mime,
and reaches out a hand
to reach another hand
to form a line,
to dance.
Adriana Caudrey read English at Oxford having won a scholarship to St Hughes. From 1979 she was a journalist with a special interest in health and education and was frequently read in the national press. Two years running she won the young woman journalist of the year award. From her teenage years and throughout this time she quietly wrote poetry. Adriana ceased her journalism once her first child was born but continued with her poetry. Sadly she died in 2005.
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Edward Mycue : Word Kittens Are Echoing
By now so many movements and -isms
Have blown through my word kitchen
That the kitten in my mind’s corner,
In the basket under the old gas stove,
Is bouncing from surreal- to symbolism
Now the post avant garde is a canker
Maybe I mean a cantankerous jungle-
Jingler with yens for villanelles and rime
Or maybe rondos with deep koans inside.
Once I had a dream that I’d memorized
A lot of sacred books from the Koran,
Bible, old & new, the Book of the Dead,
Kalevala, I Ching (if it is a sacred book).
It all came to seem like hitting speed-bumps
That smelled of another pheromone breakdown.
Life is a riddle leaving paw-prints on parchment
Edward Mycue lives in San Francisco and is the author of many books – most recently: Mindwalking, New and Selected Poems (2008) and Song of San Francisco (2012) published in the U.K. by Spectacular Diseases Press
07/01/2013 @ 10:54
Its great to see such a talented and extraordinary poet like Kamran to be a part of London Grip. He’s mesmerizing at what he does. I have been of his writings for long. His poetry is the truth Hats off to his poetry!