Browsing Category
Strange Bedfellows
Strange Bedfellows [08]: The Painter
The Painter
St John’s Point Lighthouse
9th August 1950
Sir
I have to report him absent from work all day yesterday
he did not return to station until 1.25 am this morning
his attitude is one of careless indifference and no respect for…
Strange Bedfellows [07]: The Iceman
The Iceman
They will find you face down on a higher plain
In feverish exaltation for Spring Gods who would keep
Your belly swollen. A coat of woven grass with tint of fern
And olive now abandoned. The crimson vigour of an Alpen rose…
Strange Bedfellows [06]: Goldilocks Was Here
Goldilocks Was Here
A tiny seed thing pops
from a warm crease of skin
as I turn over in bed.
All thoughts of sleep are plundered.
I roll the pip round and round
on the cushiony centre of my thumb,
and let my imagination…
Strange Bedfellows [05]: Diane Arbus
Diane Arbus
Black and white drag queens
Meet your gaze
Staring from their Metro posters
The last day of her retrospective
Waiting outside
At Place de la Concorde
Gold neon of the ferris wheel
Rippling out in circles
The…
Strange Bedfellows [04]: Nothing Is Stranger
Nothing Is Stranger
than what we settle down with every night ––
our bodies in the turned-on dark, its flight
into the swirling of the nowhere lights.
Nothing is stranger than what we truly own,
forgetting, when we can, that it’s on…
Strange Bedfellows [03]: Leonard Cohen on Centaur Street
Leonard Cohen on Centaur Street
It happened as if in a dream.
Leonard Cohen walked into my bedroom,
using my main window as if it were a door.
‘It’s not right that you be alone, poet,
it’s just not right. I’m here to bring you…
Strange Bedfellows [02]: Valentine for Bredeen
Valentine for Bredeen
Your face is a manure heap
your eyes John Deere hub caps
your nose a pitch fork
your mouth barbed wire.
Your breath is a slurry pit
your breasts are bulls’ balls
your waist is the long way home
your rump pork…
Strange Bedfellows [01]: Penelope’s Truce With Odysseus
Penelope’s Truce with Odysseus
The past was still barking at you
when you came through the gate
Someone who saw the wound long ago
recognized the scar
hoped for you
the memory was healed.
You sailed three sheets to the wind…
Call for Poetry Submissions: Strange Bedfellows
Back in February, in a year when the centenary of the Easter Rising loomed large, Ireland went to the polls to elect its 32nd government. The sins of both parties leading up to and during the recession were still fresh in the minds of…