POETRY PROPER

Issue 2

POETRY PROPER
Featured Poem: Derek Mahon, A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford Gail McConnell: On A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford Sinead Morrissey: Sometimes the scene is an avenue C. B Anderson: The Show Must Go On Jean Bleakney: Lacrimation Michael Schmidt: Family Tree Fergal OPrey: Three poems Featured Poet: Vidyan Ravinthiran: Foreign Bodies Ed Larrissy: Two poems Emily Dedakis: Six drabbles Editorial 3 5 6 7 8 17 18 21 32 34 36

Photographs by Paul Maddern, from a series entitled Harland & Wolff : Drawing Office Windows

A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford Let them not forget us, the weak souls among the asphodels Seferis Mythistorema For J.G. Farrell Even now there are places where a thought might grow Peruvian mines, worked out and abandoned To a slow clock of condensation, An echo trapped forever, and a flutter Of wildflowers in the lift-shaft, Indian compounds where the wind dances And a door bangs with diminished confidence, Lime crevices behind rippling rainbarrels, Dog corners for bone burials; And a disused shed in Co. Wexford, Deep in the grounds of a burnt-out hotel, Among the bathtubs and the washbasins A thousand mushrooms crowd to a keyhole. This is the one star in their firmament Or frames a star within a star. What should they do there but desire? So many days beyond the rhododendrons With the world waltzing in its bowl of cloud, They have learnt patience and silence Listening to the rooks querulous in the high wood. They have been waiting for us in a foetor Of vegetable sweat since civil war days, Since the gravel-crunching, interminable departure Of the expropriated mycologist. He never came back, and light since then Is a keyhole rusting gently after rain. Spiders have spun, flies dusted to mildew And once a day, perhaps, they have heard something A trickle of masonry, a shout from the blue Or a lorry changing gear at the end of the lane.

There have been deaths, the pale flesh flaking Into the earth that nourished it; And nightmares, born of these and the grim Dominion of stale air and rank moisture. Those nearest the door growing strong Elbow room! Elbow room! The rest, dim in a twilight of crumbling Utensils and broken flower-pots, groaning For their deliverance, have been so long Expectant that there is left only the posture. A half century, without visitors, in the dark Poor preparation for the cracking lock And creak of hinges. Magi, moonmen, Powdery prisoners of the old regime, Web-throated, stalked like triffids, racked by drought And insomnia, only the ghost of a scream At the flashbulb firing squad we wake them with Shows there is life yet in their feverish forms. Grown beyond nature now, soft food for worms, They lift frail heads in gravity and good faith. They are begging us, you see, in their wordless way, To do something, to speak on their behalf Or at least not to close the door again. Lost people of Treblinka and Pompeii! Save us, save us, they seem to say, Let the god not abandon us Who have come so far in darkness and in pain. We too had our lives to live. You with your light meter and relaxed itinerary, Let not our naive labours have been in vain! Derek Mahon
From Collected Poems (1999) by kind permission of the author and The Gallery Press

http://www.gallerypress.com/

On A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford It seems something of an irony that a poem repudiating the possibility of lyrical compensation for suffering is widely acknowledged as one of Derek Mahons Greatest Hits, frequently requested though rarely recited at his poetry readings. The representative function of the symbolic mushrooms crowding the keyhole has been the source of some debate. But it is precisely the impossibility of ascribing historical specificity that renders these feverish forms so haunting. The speakers apostrophe falls flat in the knowledge that these ghostly figures are from every place and time where injustice has been done. In such knowledge, Mahon turns to self-accusation, orchestrating their voices to indict himself for the very act of writing poetry. Poetic meter is made to look ludicrous against the ghost of a scream / At the flashbulb firing-squad. As in Father-in-Law (retitled A Curious Ghost), Mahon associates poetry with failure from the outset poetic revelation is only ever an instance of his own lyric lunacy. But while A Disused Shed renounces elegy, explanation and epiphany in the aftermath of historical violence, its masterful formal achievement complicates the pronouncement that all is mere vanity. The poems intelligent rhyming structure and rhythmical variety may not compensate for the futility it acknowledges, but it relishes the ironies of the attempt. Gail McConnell

Sometimes the scene is an avenue Les Murray From the French, avenir, to arrive, its axis in English has been angled backto approach, as though imagination faltered on the brink of what is possible, and lost itself in process. The first heat you raise by your avenues and approaches will fail, warns Saltmarish, turning a military term into an amorous one, and a hill into a woman. As old as Egypt, sphinxes not yet dust, set down as measuringposts, declare the tomb of Queen Hatshepsut. And where mists and tempered sunlight foster trees, aspens, with their yellowing witches tongues, the ache of straight-backed poplars, oaks arching to hold hands, the standing cones of the inedible chestnut or limes tiny, five-fingered flames gather us in, shelter invading armies from rain, knock out the heart-lifting rhythm of tree-sky-tree to keep us moving, open wide miles of cities, suburbs, parkland both grand and modest, or some derelict clifftop inheritanceto us, with our sensible walking shoes and foil-wrapped lunch. The end is irrevocable and only ever itself: a palace or a parliament, a radial traffic hub, a winking Masonic watchtower over a field of war dead, but the avenues which lead us there unfurl, as carpets do, into the vanishing distance, and the best of the them seem endless. In Antrim, avenues of trees have been planted simply to hold up the road. Sinead Morrissey

The Show Must Go On Within the boundaries of the Fertile Crescent, the times when peace obtained throughout the land if such there ever were were evanescent, and disappeared like water into sand. What ancient kingdoms undertook for food a modern-day regime will do for oil, without much difference in the attitude toward whats above and whats below the soil. The greatest treasure lying underneath is treasure wasted: moldering remains of loyal soldiers and civilians, teeth and bones to fertilize the crops spring rains will force into another round of door-die where future generations are the wager. Holocausts are nothing new, and always theres a copper samovar in place for heating water. Whether tea or coffee shall be poured is anybodys guess, but to stage a proper tragedy its needful to refresh the understudies who must be called upon to act the parts of those whose legs are broken. Plots will thicken if players marshalling their martial arts forget the lines once spoken by the stricken. C.B. Anderson

Lacrimation to James Schuyler Dear Jimmy can I call you that? We never met, but reading you this February Sunday, Ive things to say. I found you months ago: last of the quartet in Carcanets The New York Poets. Its like Im nine again and saying Paul! Pauls my favourite! Jimmy, youre my Paul. And now, at last, Ive finally tracked down your 93 Collected on the internet (Sam Wellers Zion Bookstore, Salt Lake City). In Afterward, glad to be home after the sad litany of illnesses and accidents you say This room needs flowers. Well, for diverse reasons, this sunroom has acquired three bouquets. Its like youre here and theres no one else Id rather talk to. I regret emasculating the oriental lilies (with nail scissors and a saucer to catch the anthers and their rusty pollen). I was running out of vases, wanting to double up, unmessily. But now their white is so stark, so clinical. And Ive been watching sap accumulate on each stigma like slow-motion tears. The heat, probably. All the radiators are on. Transpiration is a kind of sweating I suppose. This morning, a tulip had flopped. Just one. It looked sad;
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or plain bored. (Fifteen identical red-with-yellow-edge vase-mates?) Id forgotten to check the water! Isnt it miraculous the way they pick themselves up? Flaccidity to turgidity in an hour or so. No, thats an exaggeration. Half a day or so, more like. I want to talk roses, Jimmy. I loved Horse-Chestnut Trees and Roses: your discovery of Graham Stuart Thomas (he died last year), his passionate word-dense plant books and you, his disciple, giddily picking climbers and ramblers for arbors, walls and borders; your adoration and admissionFlicit et Perptue, Climbing Lady Hillingdon Its their names I like; and then seeing, on that Sunday stroll, the new owners utilitarian makeover. The dinky conifers. There are roses, roses, and more roses. Its the horse-chestnut trees I mind. you said. Id have wept. Your citing Rosa Mutabilis as my favorite, perhaps, thats what creased me up, had me scanning shelves for E. Charles Nelsons Daisy Hill Nursery, Newry (another plantsman youd have loved: taxonomist; shamrock demystifier; Irish plant historian) and sure enoughRosa Mutabilis: a Daisy Hill introduction. The thing is, Im a Newry girl. Born at the foot of Daisy Hill in a 50s housing sprawl, The Meadow. Reared on nearby Dorans Hill: Roseville, Dorans Hill, Newry.
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By then it was all hybrid teas and floribundas and heathers and yes of course, the dinky conifers. My parents knew the owners, Alan and Kitty. They gave us a dozen different heathers flower or foliage colour for every month when we left Newry in 73 (I cry when Tootie cries in Meet Me in St Louis). Id never have known its history if Clare hadnt taken me out that night: the Irish Garden Plant Society. By then (1989 I think) I was a mother and no lover of housework. Id discovered plants and propagation; was gripped with the urge to name; dazzled at my ability to remember. Here was Alan, finally persuaded, apparently to talk about his great-grandfather: Tom Smith, purchaser in 1886 of two daisy-covered fields. North-east facing, but topsoil to die for. Rich loam, slightly acid, eight feet deep in places, thanks to an ice-age quirk. Twenty years later: sixty acres, seventy staff, five thousand species (with up to one hundred cultivars each) and the largest collection of Old-Fashioned and species roses in these islands. I couldnt take it in. Still cant. At least three hundred plants introduced into cultivation by Daisy Hill Nursery; staples like Prunus subhirtella Autumnalis and Acer Senkaki. And he was good at publicity. Dont you love this advert from 1906: Daisy Hill Nursery is the only Nursery in Ireland worth a button, and is the most interesting Nursery probably in the world.
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underwritten by the testimony of Mr Watson, Curator of the Royal Gardens, Kew. And if Tom couldnt supply, hed source; Venus fly trap and Pitcher plants from Edward Gilletts Hardy Fern and Flower Farm, Southwick, Massachusetts. Plants were wrapped in hessian, wheeled down Daisy Hill, along Monaghan Street, up Edward Street, onto the train. They ended up in Glasnevin, Valentia Island, Lissadell, Kew, Edinburgh, the palaces of Europe, North America Australia even. Imagine the sheets of colour, the trial fields of broom, sea holly, red hot poker, aster, delphinium It haunts me. So much lost. The Wars, of course, and now housing estates, like metastases. Whats left is a couple of rows of not-so-dinky conifers; and a house Alan and Kittys Tanglewood abandoned, half-burnt, but strangely a tended garden. Somebody remembers. Graham Stuart Thomas visited in 1937, saw the sad remnants of Tom Smiths once magnificent collection. And he taught Alan an excellent, intelligent worker at Thomas Hilling & Co, Chobham, Surrey. But the rose your rose: Rosa Mutabilis; its single, changeable wings fluttering; its simple flowers deepening from yellow through apricot and copper to pink to rose pink to crimson; its mutable name. And heres the story. Lady Ross-of-Bladensburg, wife of Sir John plant collector, owner of Rostrevor House saw it growing in Baveno, near Isola Bella on the shores of Lake Maggiore.
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They named it Tipo Ideale, brought it home to Smith the propagator and marketer. Except Swiss plantsman, Henri Correvon another devotee of Daisy Hill, coincidentally had already been presented with the plant by Isola Bellas resident: Prince Gilberto Borromeo. Correvons Mutabilis prevailed. As to why the nurserymen of Daisy Hill christened it the penny-farthing rose well never know, says Nelson. Ive set my heart on a Mutabilis. Next year perhaps. Must prune my thuggish Rambling Rector: Daisy Hill again, but provenance unknown. Smith roamed the whole island for cuttings of old roses from big houses and cottages. But the written records are gone. Recycled in the 1940s war effort. Ive three other roses in my garden: Gertrude Jekyll, an Austen rose. Remember? David Austen, that genius who crossbred disease resistance and repeat flowering with old-fashioned voluptuousness and scent who, by the way, says theres no such thing as rose sickness; says its a nutrient issue. (O rose though art in need of liquid seaweed extract?) Anyway, the formidable Miss Jekyll it rhymes with treacle! obliges with intoxicating perfume. (Austens John Clare disappoints in that department.) She, who abhorred magenta, is underplanted with weeds and Geranium Ann Folkard:
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a scrambler with golden foliage and summer-long magenta blooms. (Arent gardens great for being cruel in?) Fifteen years ago I bought a climber, Rosa Seagull; planted it between the purple berberis and hardy fuchsia. Every year I faced the mystery: why did someone name an apricot-to-cream-tooff-white rose a Seagull? I adored the scent; believed the written label. (Im a sucker for labels.) Last year I found it in a catalogue, the exact range of tones, the petal number: Rosa Goldfinch. Strange the way we tip-toe around our senses as if complicit with the mystery sometimes. And thats my roses, except the Old China Monthly you knew so well. But did you know that Tom Smith identified it as Thomas Moores Last Rose of Summer? And Ive had a bunch or two. A dearly loved poet friend gave me roses when she left this city. Pink. I think she apologised for the colour, a warm coral shade. (I think she was apologising for leaving.) Days later, on a trip to Dublin, I parked outside Glasnevin cemetery. Wheres the poet Hopkins? I enquired. Would that be Manley? the reply. Directed thus, I found the Jesuit plot,
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its towering cross inscribed (so many names such a little patch of green) and there P. GERARDUS HOPKINS. And from a plastic bag I took two roses. One from her and one from me, notionally. Gripping their heads in my palm I tugged and loosed the petals, rained them on his name and photographed them. She hated the photograph, the act. It made her far too sad, she wrote. Why do we expect so much of flowers; of their capacity to salve? These lilies are still weeping. Depending on the angle, their beads of light-collecting sap trickle down the style, or hit this already littered tables half-baked poems, seed catalogues, last years calendar, birthday cards, get well cards, The Merck Manual and your Collected. I anticipate stickiness. Still Ive left your wipe-able book in the line of fire. Any minute now Yes, there it is, right on your blurb, or more precisely, overlapping two double-spaced lines from Liz Rosenberg (The Boston Globe). Short-circuiting, gluing, cross-pollinating the gushing forth of confessed love affairs and and restraints and subtleties. Right on the money. And a well-flattened drop: about the same surface tension as tears, I reckon, but clearer and with a Benedictine tinge or is it absinthe? Must have
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a Google for Mutabilis and while Im at it (youd have loved broadband) download your audio Unlike Joubert to hear you list assorted vivid grays; to hear those last two lines: subtle days in winter when thought sinks down in the presence of an absence. Oh dont start me, Jimmy dont start me. Jean Bleakney

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Family Tree Watching his creatures with a filial sorrow Christ, not a shepherd yet, not yet a man, Propped on a cloud at the edge of things, his hands, Unbroken, on his hips, wonders who hell be And knows its up to Adam to determine What human pleasure might feel like, and what pain, To the Son of God -- Adam whos in mourning, Adam whose Maker has withdrawn the Kingdom All for a fruit, a serpent and a rib. The Son of God sees Eve grow plump as a pillow Bearing a mallet and three nails inside her, Bearing a spear, a sponge and vinegar. Michael Schmidt

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Hedgehog Its not as if one day the hedgehog woke to find That the world it knew so well its berries and fattening worms Had changed beyond rebellion; as if in the weirdness of dusk, On a modernising whim, it swapped the grass for roads And left these trundling fortresses, each flank of pikes, Each dragging, armoured skirt and burly bug-fed girth, To become by nightfall a hamstrung mockery of strength, Like cavalry bugling blindly into no-mans-land. Having seen so many others predictably ground Beneath a wheel into the tar like spat out gum, This one, wrangling progress, tried to fly away, A sorry umber wing of leaves across its back, Vulnerable arse flicked up to moon the morning sky Through which it fell to crash and die snout-first in a drain. Fergal OPrey

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Bollock Dagger
Before the centuries of lying silent Spilled from a broken wooden chest And become intractable with salt, weed, molluscs And innuendo at the bottom of the Solent, Who knows where you had been; Were you peeling the skin of a spit-roast squealer Or slashing at the velvet cheeks Of a double-talking Flemish dealer? With time the paper records were uncovered From a dusty mess of chandlers ledgers, Bound in battered Friesian leather, And there you were, A faded written truth uncovered, Blunt, Like that other Anglo-Saxon C___. So the institutes great censorious prigs Made the usual attempts to get you clean You filthy little bugger Renaming you the kidney- or dudgeon-dagger, And promoted you to ornament, a fig, A prize bestowed upon the chivalrous and chaste, (Examples being produced of intricate designs Commissioned by the court from no less than Holbein), And the records were in turn destroyed by fire, As if a word could be evaporated. The suppression was judged a success and celebrated, The occasion marked with a glass of sherry Or two, as was customary. Proclaiming more loudly with every sip A victory, hard-won and thorough, Over you, a base inheritance of modern speech, Its mongrel tongue, tooth and lip Administered to with swift dispatch. They drained the bottle and their ire, Then home with rangy drunken swagger As if each man was stabbed, run through, Or bollocksed. Fergal OPrey
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The Execution of Mata Hari

(15.10.1917 Photographer unknown)

The sun having yet to rise, The Eye of the Day gazed Through Paris; skys fuchsia, Its mustard-yellow clouds, And there, as white as a flag The moon; its superficial Crescent contrived to draw The eye, like tides from earth, From life in gaol to awe. A cell is no suite in the Plaza. One must make oneself Comfortable with fancy: Saffron kimono, emerald pumps, A scribbled testament. Make ready to die beautiful If not beautifully die; With hands still fair if not At the mercy of fair hands. From behind a mask of names, Accepting like yesterdays news The black and white of her terms, Gretja Zelle sees Every side at once, Line and cant and plane, And might have been an artist, A Picasso or Cezanne If she were not so subject. Dora Maar au Chat, Still Life with Cherub. Perspective comes and goes As Mata Hari stands Lonely in the risen sun, A blur in a tri-corn hat Waiting for a sentence To be handed out, a name Given, an action taken. Fergal OPrey
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Featured Poet: Vidyan Ravinthiran Foreign Bodies But the jewel you lost was blue. Ted Hughes

1. Rajes The sari my mum gave you wasnt silk but nylex, difficult to google. That sari she watched as it flew up from the foot of her bed that night in the sticks, up from the bare cement in reels of blue only slowly fleshed out by your adulterous body... She pushed you away, she says, without a word, out of the room where she and my sister lay fast asleep manhandling your embarrassed shade round the back until one last decisive shove hurtled you out through the green wooden gate for reasons she still cant explain. Because youd left your hair unplaited, its drifting witchery grazed your waist...And she claims it was the very next day your acquiescent hubby, still half-asleep, found the house key shining on the hot stone lip of the well, instead of clothes left there to dry; and when my uncle searched the well they found blue nylex, drenched and luminous and safety-pinned right up your thigh and across your breast to protect your modesty, from my mum and all the rest.

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2. Kuthimama Prickly uncle so named for his rough whiskers troubling my infant sisters skin as he kissed her. I think of all his CPU fans, their white noise, the big fan on the ceiling smacking mosquitoes out of their flight paths set on our sugary sweat; and I remember also the tell-tale red dot quivering on my aunties once-beautiful forehead as my uncles laser pointer tried to draw a bead on his remaining aspirations as he laid out why a new computer room for his pupils would mean knocking through a wall. A kind of code whispered itself that night around the carom table, during the daily power-cut given to excessive cologne and shining fat, my uncle would have resembled a Buddha carved of sandalwood, were it not for the flicker of candlelight across his forearms broad scars. How Trincos barbed-wire mauled him as a boy; the kind of wound he lost his practice for when he stitched up men he should have turned away.

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3. Colombo Outside Majestic City where the local KFC did extra spicy chicken, and McDonalds poured hot sauce, unasked, over my McRice, an amputee eyed us up his stump a purple-black gourd with red pixels on show through the bandage. His battered lifelines had nothing to do with age; his saffron-yellow eyes, as he held out his palm, raised toward a billboard ad for skin-lightening cream... The haze kicked up by the breakers that night meant a stick-thin boy came by every few minutes to keep our beachside table wiped and bright lobster and ros, the stippled thorax it hurt to snap as we watched a Japanese family run the beach, smacking dead with their sandals clear baby crabs. Some were terrorized into the sea; other survivors merely dipped one claw in the glaze then scampered back up the moonlit dunes, playing fort da with themselves, a neurotic series no further violence could break. They shone in the moonlight like dropped bunches of keys.

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4. The Moon Under Water It was the same day I got my reply unfortunately we cannot use your work on this occasion. Fair enough the poem itself hardly merits a mention, just another unembarrassable ort, scrolling gently as a teleprompter down the page to make a stand of margosa glow through the authentic gloom of a Ceylonese garden I never saw hitting home as only punchlines can. Anyway, as it so happened I was in the WC down the local, all set to flush when out the corner of my eye I glimpsed the BNP etched into the lockless doors scuffed varnish like someone had scraped their own house key aggressively you could see it against the grain, or snapped their pocket-knife open, and with a firm grip forced the blade-tip through each splinter group to carve here for posterity each Nordic rune I traced with my finger, remarking the craftsmanship, painstaking, lightyears beyond your token swastika wobbling out its legs in biro or felt-tip yes, how I relished each letter of rejection!

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5. Rush-to-die Irked by my reading Midnights Children in the car my dad races a sky-blue Audi toward Ilkley the BBC documentary about the Rushdie affair showed him a pale cowardly man, whose unlikely prose style in his copy, half-read, of the Verses he found show-off stuff only, out of touch with real Indian people on the street. He tells me this now over filetto al pepe so pepe it brings a rush not of blood, but of sweat, to the head, his hairline now rendered beige by last-stage vitiligo; I think of the out-of-the-way temple he took us to at Matale, of the metal grid you cross on your way in, washing your feet before entry like at a swimming pool. Of how the mawkish shift from hot grit outside to the cool inner dust against each bare sole brought tears to my eyes he took for racial pride... From the landing I watch his bulk doing pooja before his commute, doze off to the Baila he sings in the shower; slowly the photos of mythbusted Sai Baba return to the walls of the prayer room and lounge.

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6. Journalism Im not one of them but its shocking occasionally, made current when news read-outs transpose the letters of my name only slightly Vithyatharan taken from a funeral in one of those notorious white vans and beaten... Though I dont know the facts and Ive revenge fantasies myself, loosely drawn from Pulp Fiction and involving my grandfather who beat my father randomly and took from him what he still somehow gives to me; I imagine myself like Bruce Willis with the katana, sneaking past the sensitive boy bruised into manliness absorbed in his Tagore or Tennyson, equally dog-eared then skewering the morose bully in the back room with a gnomic one-liner before I take his head and set it down to one side of my sleeping fathers dream, replacing his unfortunate copy of Maud niggers are tigers, cried Tennyson, niggers are tigers! with a newspaper from the future, like in Early Edition or a photo of his grown-up poise, a difficult acquisition.

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7. The Mahabharata Of course its only natural, only to be expected that Peter Brookss film of his own stage production his scanty props and effects, a cast of cosmopolitan blacks and browns and whites determined to reject the sumptuousness and melodrama of Chopras TV series its kohl-rimmed bluster, the kitschy glare and gore and all those arrows the camera just had to pan with from the bow all the way to the pierced breastbone with a whizzing sound-effect yes, its only natural that Krishnas Englished injunction at the films climax that Bhima should break the rule established before battle even began and strike below the belt Duryodhanas thigh as bared in provocation once to menstrual Draupadi only natural that dharma, broken like a thigh-bone by the pragmatist Krishna, no longer a blue boy but a wily statesman, should, in my mind, click with The Karate Kid, the cleft-chinned master of Cobra Kai telling his young blond beast to sweep the leg!

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8. Kutner Noon sun picks out the stitches like mould, dots of darker green on the curtains emerald; House, streamed illegally, mulls Kutners motive the kid who saw his parents shot in India and went on to live with Jewish foster parents, changed his surname, out of place forever and, for our amusement, at the mercy, forever, of his analytic, TV-genius boss, the insider glee of the outsider close-reading the periphery... As the sun continues to burn through the curtain and my dads insisted-upon triple-glazing I shift the office chair and eye with envy my bathing elephants painted on felt, so many rupees of bad taste, the black and silver tower humming with efficiency. It was smart to cast the beer-brown star of Harold and Kumar instead the clich House calls the true non-conformist the ethnic student buried in his textbooks 24/7. Well, he specified Chinese, but the ethnic reason was wrong, anyway. It wasnt hard to work out Kutner was his password.

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9. Wilde The would-be gentleman refused the ugliness of I called to a ruckus in the street or that raw sunset glow Turner perfected, Oscar would merely say no gentleman ever looks out of the window; and when he forced as in the Manics Holy Bible ersatz rhythms on his gem-hard patter iambs gambolling twixt Irish bulls well, the less said about such proclivities, the better. But in his own way he was fearless and I loved him. Forget Dylan the night I rolled down to Oxford town I spent reading and re-reading Betjemans poem about our heros final stay at the Cadogan; writing IRONIC down the margin changed my life. My aspirational parents were counting on years of elocution lessons, the Complete Britannica Id had to have. Of my older sister, whod reduced to tears the middle-middle-class audience of her peers bussed to Horsforth for her Salome, we joked she might be the next beautiful brown newsreader the old white man on the box had become.

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10. Mercy Invincibility So Im walking to the Faculty Library to research acoustic images in Andrew Marvell watching through my hangover the clouds side-scroll across the blue, like thought-bubbles... As I assay the student crossing where you just walk out into the road like in Manila or Rome or Colombo, refusing to break your stride and trusting the flow of traffic to stop for you thats when a coarse shout and a San Pellegrino bottle drop past my head, a held-up hatchback cursing a blue streak rapid as Hindi go home, paki cunt!... Putting aside the Civil War for the moment, Marvells park of peaches reaching themselves into the hand is a way of feeling superhuman. The ear at home in his verse-line may, without injustice, withstand comparison with Sonic the Hedgehog around whom flowery zones wrap like a mothers arms. Should he forget to roll himself up, before his foes, into a blue wrecking ball, our hero merely flashes for a second with such pain as lets him sprint, invincibly, through just about anything.

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The Mekon; or Quality Control (The Mekon was an evil alien tyrant in the Eagle comic) One day Ill go to Venus, to confront his skull jaw and reptile eyes, and watch his baby body bend under the bulb of his head as he drifts through the control room on his hover desk in the gassy atmosphere. Ill ask him where Qualitys kept, and hell point to a room with glass walls where a transparent plastic egg trails wires to a screen flicking pictures of Earth: a room with workers at screens. The Capitol. A room with desks and children. An excellent cheese-burger. Ed Larrissy

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The Broken Greenhouses The rows of greenhouses were a nursery for the public gardens, but now theyre abandoned. You can still see the flowers, becoming dishevelled the dahlias spiky, the geraniums crinkled, the rambling nasturtiums replicating leaf on leaf, like little water-lilies on stilts. They dont look their best. They need a guiding hand. They press their faces to the pane or seek the sun through the shattered roof. They cannot know that this once-bright world is now a prison where their formal education wont do them any good. Little faces they want to say, Look at me, but theyre too many and this is no time for vanity. A blackbird sits on a watering can and sings his evening song. The ancient rituals go on. The shattered sky is still a kind of sky, is still a kind of sky. Ed Larrissy

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Six Drabbles A Good Lover Mom wasnt a drinker. Tap water only: Keeps the skin clear, the mind fresh. I dont know what she was thinking. I hadnt seen her in years. But when my best friend got the book deal, had a reading in her hometown I didnt have the money to go too, but I told Mom. Sent her his picture. Tall. Red-brown hair. A good smile. Leather jacket. Hed have been a good lover. He could cook too. Before the reading, they met on the bridge near the bookstore. I dont know how long they talked before she pushed him off.

I thought I saw a familiar voice, as I felt the bus pull stopped at a station, midway home. I opened my eyes to dusk, tough grey river, puttering traffic, melon-coloured fairylights on bare treelimbs. I saw the bus door open, whiffed snow on the air. A schoolgirl (pink and black plaid ankle skirt) stood talking to a thin quiet boy, his eyes on her hands, her hands in clockwork beat with her mouth. I picked out words from their fluent rhythm box latch faith running tbere you again and before she pulled her sleeves over her hands inkling toad tingle thumb to chin = speak? lie?

The Orchestral Clarinettists Groupies Three: Recognizable footfalls arriving at the choir-stall seats, close above his egg-bald head. Feeling young at fiftyish, he guessed, after queuing for the cloakroom and cubicles amid all the octogenarians. Sweater sets, hairnets. Pearls not from any anniversary. And season tickets for the cheaper seats, behind the woodwinds. First he was shy; he blushed at even half-fudged notes. Whispers and toe-taps clued him that they knew the scores. Tiny gasps as he hit pinkie stops and glissandos. He didnt notice them all growing old. And one night, a glance at the stalls during tuning made him miss his entrance: Two.

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Twins 1. Persephone Always a new next-big-plan with her. Wed gabbed half an hour before she laid the latest on me. Phone calls dont make things real; but you know an old friend well enough to picture her belly carrying twins, four of her hazel eyes blinking from a crib. I bought her a flamingo ring and a card in Liverpool. We ran through sprinklers summer after summer, singing Eight Days a Week and Yesterday. I bought thirty-two baby socks and sixteen bibs. Were crossing our fingers her dad lives to meet those sons or daughters (or one of each) both at once. 2. Oscar Theyd kissed twice, known each other a month, when they drove out West. His hippy mother grinning, elbowing Was she his girl? a Catholic? into avocado with mayo? Mom cracked out baby albums: his sisters, him, and the identical boy beside him. You should meet Youd really love She sent them back East with a holy trinity of wine, corkscrew, and cash for hotels. It didnt last long. It keeps her alert at the call center, thinking someday his twin might be on the other end. I know your height, your voice, how to make you laugh. Im halfway there.

Held The patron saint of lost causes lit my cigarette. I took a drag in and couldnt stop just in and in and in until he and the table we sat at and the room and the city were in me. Minutes ticked before I could let a breath out. Saint Jude found this so funny he could barely breathe. He owns a lot of buildings here. He keeps talking about selling it off, splitting his profits with the destitute and leaving town. But his shoes are too big and its always raining. He thinks, O hell. Next year. Maybe then. Emily DeDakis
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Editorial It is unlikely that a new age or renaissance will be announced in English-language poetry any time soon. If it was possible a hundred years ago for the coteries of Ezra Pound, this was because in 1911 there was a much narrower geographical conception of the artistic culture, which, for these esoteric groups, was specifically, and aggressively, centred on London and Paris. The Ulster Renaissance of the 1960s and 70s is also couched in these terms of cultural kinship, with all the assumptions and assertions that go along with this. But such literary clarions are increasingly unlikely to be sounded, partly, it seems, because the unprecedented accessibility of culture of all forms and eras (though complaining about this would be churlish) has detracted from the historical sense of writers, and made them feel that there is nothing specifically to react to, or against. For the fledgling modernists there was also a clear sense of disjunction from the Victorian era, and from the ambience of Georgian poetry, as they perceived it: an intently historical consciousness which gave them a (sometimes overblown) sense of duty and of their place in the march of literary events. In other words, an oppositional mentality was desirable, and possible. However, any conception of Englishlanguage literary culture must now take into account the complex material and cultural interrelations within the English-speaking world. While this is of course desirable, it has meant that, regardless of the poets geographical origin, the English language is often treated as a lingua franca rather than an evolving historical continuum. Or perhaps this is simply the difference between good and not-so-good poets in any era that is, the ability to attend to the specific resonances of words in history and in culture; the precision of the artist. Cultures current ubiquity thus makes contribution to it more easy than ever, but, paradoxically, makes changing or shaping its general course almost impossible; one might as well try and waft away a fog. And this is becoming true of literary culture, in which novels and poetry collections proliferate regardless of quality. More than ever, there is a perceived rift between the academic poet and the civilian poet, which should not necessarily translate into an easy distinction between good and bad poetry. However, just as the prize-winning culture has led to a professionalisation of poetry, so the increased access to publication has led to there being an increasing amount of poetry which traces a familiar pattern, taking the easy route to the pleasure principle.
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In an essay on W.H. Auden, Seamus Heaney has written of the real artists urge to avoid the consensus and settlement of meaning which the audience fastens on like a security blanket, to be antic, mettlesome, contrary, to retain the right to impudence, to raise hackles, to harry the audience into wakefulness. What we wish to promote and encourage at POETRY PROPER is exactly this: the poetry of overdrive, poetry which does more than reinforce already-existing world-views, or describe cultural and political clich, or trace the familiar patterns of the pleasure principle. Being an internet publication, we hope we can bypass at least some of the market politics involved with print, to publish and promote daring and interesting poetry, by poets who wish to become individuals. As a small magazine, POETRY PROPER is of course aware that its purpose is to publish aspiring poets, but also that its preference is toward an audience of poetry lovers, whoever they may be, rather than toward those who possess a secret password.

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POETRY PROPER
Editors: Miriam Gamble, Paul Maddern, and Alex Wylie
Please Note: POETRY PROPER is keen to encourage submissions in Irish and Scots Gaelic (poetry, short fiction, or critical works). We are extremely grateful to Pdraig MacAoidh for agreeing to act as editor for these submissions.

Enquiries and submissions to: editors.poetryproper@hotmail.co.uk Submissions (email only)

We do solicit material but your submissions are welcome. Work is unremunerated. Copyright of all work remains with the authors/artists. Please attach poems and/or articles in one Word document and also include the work(s) in the body of the email. Receipt of your submission will be acknowledged by email. We do not publish contributors biographies and do not require you to send one with your submission. Just your name will suffice along with a declaration that the submitted work is yours and that it is available to be published in POETRY PROPER. The editorsdecisions are final. Advice or comments on work will not be offered. 38

Poems: There are no restrictions on subject matter, length, styles or schools. That being said, 75 pages on the marvels of Navel Gazing, presented in Broadway sized 16 font (and the like), will not be read. Translations are welcome, as long as they are accompanied by the original. Articles / Essays: We encourage the submission of reviews and commentaries of up to a 1000 words. Essays of up to 4000 words will also be considered. However, please send us, initially, only your proposal/abstract/description. We will then confirm suitability, format and timescales with you. Artwork: Please send work in high resolution (300dpi+) JPEG format only.

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