What a wonderful wriggler this one is, suppose I'm biased and Sally is just
soooo nice. Seriously, great to see Worm back. Well done eds.
bw
James
>From: Christina Fletcher <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: ~~~~~~~~~~~~ (the poetry) WORM ~~~~~~~~~~~~ 16
>Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2002 16:52:54 EDT
>
>
>
>---
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~ (the poetry) WORM ~~~~~~~~~~~~ 16
>--
>
>The worm returns! Welcome to WORM 16.
>
>All poets appearing in ~ (the poetry) Worm ~ have granted a limited
>copyright
>waiver for electronic replication [only] of the relevant collection as a
>whole [only]. If you like this Worm, please forward it, intact, to others.
>
>The deadline for submissions for Worm 17 is 25 October 2002. Please send
>your work to <A
>HREF="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]</A>
> Worm will continue to be
>archived at <A
>HREF="http://www.villarana.freeserve.co.uk/">www.villarana.freeserve.co.uk</A>
> Please address any queries related
>to Worm 16 to <A
>HREF="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]</A>
>
>Many of the poets appearing in ~ (the poetry) Worm ~ feature on The Works
>email forum. The Works provides peer group review of work-in-progress, plus
>links, news and general discussion on all things poetic. The Works is not a
>talking shop. It is serious, international, and is free. You can join in.
>Just send a blank email to: <A
>HREF="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]</A>
>
>Many thanks to all who have contributed to WORM 16. We hope you enjoy the
>tasty little creature.
>
>csjf
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------
>
>--
>
> Thumbscrew
>
>
> Poetry bores me.
> I think I will become a poet
> so I can bore people.
>
> Inflicting boredom’s not so far from pain.
>
> I have always been interested in pain.
>
> I had never thought of poetry like this
> till now. I am less bored than I was.
> I think dinner can wait.
>
> I have written a lovely poem about a thumbscrew.
> Let me show you my new metaphor.
>
>
> .c. Helena Nelson
>
> _________________________________________________
>
>
>
> The Lone Star
>
> See him walk
> past Netto in his black Stetson, loose-knotted red bandanna,
> pearl buttoned shirt, patterned leather waistcoat, belt and boots,
> the spit of Cheyenne, The Virginian, or Rowdy Yates from Rawhide,
> then pause, roll a smoke, and, like a Marlboro advert, light up
>
> and everyone, tonight, as the sun sets over the Ouseburn’s Rio
>Grande,
>
> will call him "Stranger" as he sips his two fingers of Red Eye in The
>Raby,
> decide if his accent is still Tyneside or Texas, hear that everything
>that
> hurts
> "is just a flesh wound," and believe Apaches, one of whom is a secret
>blood
> brother,
> watch over him from Presto’s roof. But, for now, he stubs out his
>cigarette
>
> slowly pushes the Job Centre’s double doors open, fingers his UB40,
>
> and, after checking over the hombres in the A to L queue, moseys over,
> knowing all he must do is keep himself to himself, watch his back,
> say "Yes Ma’am" and "Yes Sir," and unless someone’s hand moves
>mighty
>fast
>
> just smile.
>
>
> .c. Bob Cooper
>
> _________________________________________________
>
>
>
> Tired
>
> As if in the school sick room with the sound of the secretary’s
>heels
>
> on polished wood fading away, the dials on the old teak wireless
> turn and it tunes in once more to a voice with the pitch and fall
> of your mother's.
> The needle scrolls through London, Welsh
>and
>Midland
> you get off the tube at Holborn or somewhere, after trying not to feel
> the breath of someone chewing gum by your ear, and you've hummed
> a slow tune so hard, you're walking it against the street's quick
>pace,
> no idea the ground you've covered.
> Somewhere down
>my
>street, once
> a boy was arrested - his cuffed hands held out like a prayer and the
>muscles
> of his back stretched as if they might burst into wing and it seemed
> the policeman said hey a little softer than usual.
>
> And now this girl
> knocks on the door saying, I need to talk to a woman. It's raining
>hard,
> she’s no coat or umbrella, and no-one’s around, although through
>the wall
>
> they’re singing hymns – you can hear the organ, but not the words.
>
>
>
>
>
> .c. Helen Clare
>
> _________________________________________________
>
>
> ethereal garden
>
> a
> clay frog
> sits in the
> crook of a tree
> nearly hidden by
> the dried leaves of a large
> bird of paradise, while flies
> circle, then land, upon orange
> and purple blossoms so heavy with
> sap that they hang over the garden fence.
>
>
> .c. Terrie Relf
>
> ethereal garden (John Carley's Editor's Choice)
> This is a poem of gorgeous absence.
> The reader might ask questions, but the poem does not. A single
>sentence
> broken arbitrarily, or an entelchy... an infinite moment of
>revelation?
> Whatever. Flies or no flies, the clay frog is unmoved.
>
>
> _________________________________________________
>
>
>
> Ready for the Show
>
>
> The house was like an auction or a fair
> until the lot of us were safe in bed.
> -Charlotte Mew: The Quiet House
>
>
> I, hammering away at Baudelaire.
> You round me. Witches from Macbeth
> never in a line, tripping on spills of toys.
> “This doll is the wicker queen. This.”
>
> “No, have one who squeaks evil noises.”
>
> The play, like a ghost train, couldn’t miss.
>
>
>
> Five full faces, bidding for an audience.
> “Five minutes. Less. Four. Or just three.”
>
> “So short you’ll have it in a sentence.”
>
> “Come and watch our puppets, Daddy.”
>
>
>
> Such intimate theatre. And no two acts
> the same. The affecting silences, the shot
> glances, the instant re-writes, edits
> on the hoof, the ever-stirring pot.
>
>
>
> .c. Philip Burton
>
> _________________________________________________
>
>
>
> Bread and Butter
>
> In my day we 'made do'
> stale became fresh
> Bread and butter pudding
> pulled us through
> All you need is
> Bread
> Butter
> Raisins
> Eggs
> Sugar
>
> When you say bread
> do you mean any bread
> or do you mean
> brown, white, naan,
> pitta, soda or
> a baguette?
> Butter?
> Salted, unsalted?
> Is there such a thing as an organic cow?
>
> Raisins
> That should be easy
> a partially dried grape
> not too wet
> not too dry
> Eggs?
> Free range,
> brown, white,
> small, medium
> or large?
>
> Sugar?
> White, brown,
> cubed or granulated?
>
> I told you to 'make do'
>
> Mother, I can't 'make do'
> choice doesn't allow you to
>
>
> .c. Lynn Owen
>
> _________________________________________________
>
>
>
> Next Year in Jerusalem
>
> I pretend-read my book
> drowse
>
> Stuck in LAX
> with dogs sniffing violence
>
> Next Year in Jerusalem
> Passover prayer answered
> I await my plane
>
> Crowds eye one another
> watch for a gun to flicker
> a knife to swing
>
> Shuffling for survival
>
> The Midwest thunders a tempest
>
> I pace the Via Delorosa
> in airport daydream
> plant a paper in The Wall's crevice
> wail the Garden of Gethsemane
> heaven-ascend The Mount
>
> I sweated three jobs for this trip
>
> Plane alights
> Weary faces search
> me others
> for hopes or fears
>
> A man stiff with resolution sits next to me
> He wears a yarmulke
> grows payos
>
> He reads a prayerbook
> pleads for peace
>
>
> .c. Ryfkah
>
> _________________________________________________
>
>
>
> On Ageing
>
> Have you ever thought about us growing old together?
> I sometimes think that I'm already too old for the places
> that my mind wants to be and for my various desires,
> but that's a solitary thing. I don't generally imagine a process
> that carries the pair of us along. More usually, it's an accusation
> that I 've levelled at myself in response to an avoidable stupidity.
> You don't think me old. You give me messages of youthfulness
> that I need to examine carefully to understand the business
> about it being a state of mind. Sometimes I think I age you,
> adding years through my hesitations and the determination
> not to make mistakes. It doesn't stop me but it slows me, us, down.
> Even when I look around to note that time is quickly passing by
> I don't move faster, I creep around, trying not to make a noise
> that might cause a fright or a change in the structure of routine
> and normality. I worry about the bills that keep on coming
> in and wonder how we will survive and god only knows
> I can't try any harder, but I think I mostly miss the point. I don't
> tell you often enough, not as often as you need, that I love you.
> I had a vision today, a fleeting glance, where I saw us both
> and knew that we were older, that the worry about school fees
> and power bills and mortgages had finally passed us by.
> Hand in hand, we looked happy, relaxed. Made me wonder
> about us growing old together. Do you ever think about it?
>
>
> .c. Frank Faust
>
> _________________________________________________
>
>
>
> a clerihew
>
> When Aphrodite
> wore a sexy nightie,
> green-eyed Hera
> went one sheerer.
>
>
> .c. M.A. Griffiths
>
> _________________________________________________
>
>
>
> LEAF
>
> Sometimes he would take the time
> take a leaf and look
> become the leaf
> and see it was impervious to rain
> open and inviting to the sun
> not entirely unique
> as one of a branch and
> that branch
> part of an entire bush
> rooted and in wait
> its ribs held taut
> as it sucked up water
> and minerals
> from its roots
> by osmosis
>
> and grew greener
> in its reaction
> to light
>
> He drew the parallels
> though balked at photosynthesis
>
>
> .c. James Bell
>
> LEAF (Sally Evans' Editors Choice)
> A concentrated, closely observed poem of somebody needing much
>reassurance
> from nature. You can see the bush although you are not told what kind
>it
>is,
> and feel the desperate need to make sense of it by the
>poet/protagonist.
> It¹s about survival and acceptance of the sun and the light, and
> understanding of the inescapable processes that keep us alive. It has
>a
> light touch yet it is serious, and I cannot see a single wasted word.
> Although very simple these physical reactions are felt to be very
>important
> to the life of plant and person, and the ending with a touch of humour
> reminds us that there is in fact a difference between the observing
>person
> and the thriving plant.
>
>
> _________________________________________________
>
>
>
> The Worm-Woman Drew a Muscle Out of Her Thigh
>
> nerve-ends buzzing, fibres twitching,
> wrapped it in filo,
> cooked in her assisted fan,
> tested with a sugar thermometer.
>
> 'Sweet,' she said, 'forty-five degrees:
> he'll walk, not stumble, arms hung loose,
> his neck suspended from an invisible arc
> in the sky, his voice emerging deep
> from my own God-spot,
> up the long alimentary corridor,
> resonating through the ohhhhh of the uvula,
> encompassing histories before and after'.
>
> She took out the little parcel,
> stroked it,
> left it to rise,
> still carries the wound with pride.
>
>
> .c. Christine Boursfield
>
> The Worm-Woman Drew a Muscle Out of Her Thigh (Christina Fletcher's
>Editor's Choice)
> What a woman. What a mother. I loved her immediately for her
>strength
>and tenderness.
>
>
> _________________________________________________
>
>
> Elegy for a lost poem
>
> 'I learned so much ... from his ruthless way of making words
> justify their place in a poem.' Ruth Padel, The Rialto 40
>
> I have excised a squirrel from this poem
> as it did not justify its right to stay in;
> neither did the burnt matches, the garden gnome,
> the empty salt (I kept cellar), the (cheap) stain,
> the scratches etched in (fading) time.
> All that’s left is fading in the cheap cellar then.
>
>
> .c. Helena Nelson
>
>
> ____________________________________________________
>
>
> Acknowledgement: 'Tired' was awarded first prize for poetry in The
>London
> Writers Competition, 2001 and was published by Wandsworth Borough
>Council
> in association with Waterstones.
>
> ____________________________________________________
>
>
> Compiling Editor: Christina Fletcher. Associate Editors: Sally Evans
>&
> John Carley
>
> ____________________________________________________
>
>
>
>
>
>
bw
James
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