nescientis exercitium

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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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