BACK | CONTENTS | NEXT The Big Smoke From Denver to Dover, from Delhi to DelftFrom Dublin to Dar es Salaam—There’s a need that I feelAt the end of each mealAnd I sate it wherever I am. For some chaps it’s tea, and for others, a pee,But my own post-prandial itchIs a thing that I’ve […]
BACK | CONTENTS | NEXT Identity My mother called herself EnglishSome forty or fifty years back.Her tummy would feel all tinglishWhen she looked at the Union Jack,And she’d cry when she heard bagpipesDroning out on Remembrance DayAnd think of the British ArmyAnd the Empire gone away.But in spite of her British passportAnd her doll with […]
BACK | CONTENTS | NEXT Cain My father was born witha silver spoon in his mouth.Mother too. They had no ideajust how good they had it.A couple of bad decisionsand it was gone. My brother and I went to work.Commodities. Wheat, rice,livestock. Whatever. What can I tell you?One day he justdoesn’t show up. It was […]
BACK | CONTENTS | NEXT The Hat A doll-size boater, trimmed with plastic flowers,its forward tilt elastic-fixed, just right(but not too tight) for sitting out the hours.His master’s busking lasts until it’s night.The dog is bored but knows he has to sithatted and winsome, tempting people’s cash;that on its own the accordion isn’t it,nor has […]
BACK | CONTENTS | NEXT Faint Hopes (with apologies to Kipling) If you could listen and not aim to wrangle— Remember that to tango it takes two; If you could see things, sometimes, from my angle, A little more of me and less of you; If you had sometimes been a little kinder, If complimenting […]
BACK | CONTENTS | NEXT Mother, Superior On page 11 of his autobiography, Joe Biden recalls his mother confronting a seventh-grade nun who mocked him for stuttering: She “walked over in front of the nun and said, ‘If you ever speak to my son like that again, I’ll come back and rip that bonnet off […]
Poems of the Week Summer-Fall 2023 Clyde Always, Damian Balassone, Bruce Bennett, Jerome Betts, Dan Campion, Duane Caylor, Aidan Chafe, Brooke Clark, Edmund Conti, D.A. Cooper, Maryann Corbett, Pat D’Amico, Jennifer Dodd, Kelly Scott Franklin, Daniel Galef, David Lee Garrison, Rich Glinnen, Jane Greer, Julia Griffin, Max Gutmann, David Hedges, Robin Helweg-Larsen, Jan D. Hodge, […]