Clare Pollard, Poet

Clare Pollard is a English poet, and new to me. I read her book Changeling, from Bloodaxe Books in England recently, and was struck immediately by some refashioning of myth that so many people do badly, but not her, thank God, as well as some stark confessional poetry that hit me even more. It's Sextonish, yes, but with a contemporary and more cynical feel. Well worth the time to track it down, this book. Go forth and do what you must: consume.

Adventures in Capitalism

Nothing is real and I want it to stop.

I cut my wrists, but the blood looks like make up.

I slump in toilets snorting cocaine

but it doesn't seem true, just a grimy dream.

I wanted to feel, so had a tattoo done.

I chose a sea-blue anchor near the bone,

then saw it in a tabloid and felt a fake.

Crashed a car dad bought me. Nothing broke.

I went to see Othello swallow a lie

and cried at the end, but it was only a play.

Read some Rimbaud, bought a black polo-neck

and a bottle of absinthe, but felt like a prick.

I whisper 'I love you' and 'Tie me down,'

but all that moan and fisting is just porn.

Signed an online petition but it made no difference.

I bought a house, but it's like playing house.

I own How to be a Domestic Goddess,

but I've never cooked from it, if I'm honest,

and the brownies and aprons are only props

and my wardrobe's a Fancy Dress box,

and I yell at everyone who cares. I hurt them

because I need something to fucking happen.

Comments

David Oliver Cranmer

Not Just Another Playlist Often, I sit in my swivel chair looking out the window, while jazz, country, or rock music plays. This pleasure goes on for many hours a mystic trance of sorts streaming—the glue maintaining my soul. I turn the best songs into playlists (once we called them mix tapes) puzzling over the perfect order. Does Satchmo’s “What a Wonderful World” kick off my latest list or make it the big soulful closer? And does “Mack the Knife” go higher in the set than “Summertime?” That’s an Ella Fitzgerald duet! “Foolishness? No, it’s not” whether you are climbing a tree to count all the leaves or tapping to beats. These are the joys that bring inner peace and balance (to a cold universe) lifting spirits skyward. David Oliver Cranmer ’s poems, short stories, articles, and essays have appeared in publications such as Punk Noir Magazine , The Five-Two: Crime Poetry Weekly , Needle: A Magazine of Noir , LitReactor , Macmillan’s Criminal Element , and

Corey Mesler

I think of you tonight, my Beats I think of you tonight, my Beats, and I am grateful. I walked the narrow lanes of Academia and never felt at home. There were men and women in the flowerbeds, their heads full of theorems and poems. There were teachers who could lift their own weight in prose. I was lonely. I was too loose. I was a lad from the faraway country of Smarting. But I had you as so many before me. I had you and I knew secret things. I could count on you like a percussion. And now I want to say: I love you. If not for you, what? I want to say. If Allen Ginsberg did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. COREY MESLER has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Five Points, Good Poems American Places, and New Stories from the South . He has published over 25 books of fiction and poetry. His newest novel, The Diminishment of Charlie Cain , is from Livingston Press. He also wrote the screenplay for We Go On , which won The Me

Amy Holman

My mother made herself the deer with a broken leg We saw a deer through the pane into someone else’s yard. The leg moved like a tube sock pinned to the hip and half filled with sticks. I did not like to see it suffer, either. She was upset —my mother —that no one helped the doe. Was it a mother, too? As if we were the first to observe the scene. We weren’t. All had been told to let her be. My mother had suffered a destruction of the self, a divorce, and no one cared. That wasn’t true. We were grown, on our own. I agree it was hard. Yet in those moments of a cold November day, we watched a doe, disabled and enduring, walk across a yard and eat a hedge. I wish she could have seen it like that. Amy Holman is the author of the collection, Wrens Fly Through This Opened Window (Somondoco Press, 2010) and four chapbooks, including the prizewinning Wait for Me, I’m Gone (Dream Horse Press, 2005). Recent poems have been in or accepted by Blueline,

Live Nude Poems

Search This Blog