Tuesday poem #594 : Naomi Foyle : How to Write a Prose Poem

for David Swann

Play a game of disco chess in an overgrown allotment. Send a postcard to a fremeny from a moonstruck nest. Dive into a drowned library wearing nothing but lyrical flippers. Gently wash a hand-unknitted sweater. Mix an orchestral cocktail after a bust up in a holy karaoke parlour. Foster the love child of Ulysses and a silk jacket pocket. Don’t forget to break an open window before you go.

Naomi Foyle was born in London, England, and grew up in Hong Kong, Liverpool and Saskatchewan. She spent the late nineties working in South Korea and travelling in Central America, Asia and Australia, and now lives in Brighton UK, a pebble’s throw from the sea.

Naomi is the author of five novels, ten poetry pamphlets and three full collections: The Night Pavilion, a 2008 Poetry Society Recommendation and The World Cup (2010) both from Waterloo Press; and the transatlantic publication Adamantine (Red Hen/Pighog Press, 2019).  Her tenth pamphlet, Importents, was published by Waterloo Press in 2021. Her poetry readings include appearances at The Cuisle Festival in Limerick, Tacheles Art House in Berlin and the Babylon Festival for International Cultures and Arts in Babil, Iraq. Originally trained in theatre, she has collaborated with artists, musicians and filmmakers on projects including the prize-winning videopoem Good Definition (2004) and several spoken word CDs.  Librettist of the award-winning bouffon opera Hush (Theatre Passe Muraille, Toronto 1990), she has also written a short verse drama, ‘The Strange Wife’, produced by the Bush Theatre in 2011 as part of 66 Books: 21st C Writers Speak to the King James Bible, and ASTRA, a Brighton Fringe Award-winning adaptation of her eco-science fiction quartet The Gaia Chronicles.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #593 : Karl Jirgens : Creamation

for Steven Ross Smith

 

cream of spinach,
cream of potato,
cream of mushroom,
cream of leek,

cream cream,
cream team,
cream your jeans,
get creamed, dare to cream,
read cream magazine,

in your dreams,
make cream,
stir cream, eat cream,
cream de menthe,
get creamed!

cream-ation for the nation,
cream, cream,
cream, cream,
cream of broccoli,
cream of wheat,
cream of tartar,
sour cream!

sweet cream!
Boston cream,
Bavarian cream,
Devonshire cream,
Hollandais cream,
crème de la crème,
saucy cream,
cognac cream,

creamy wasabi,
cumber cream,
creamy garlic,
rhubarb cream,

creamy custard,
heavy cream,
crème fraiche,
basic cream,
cocoa butter cilantro cream,

cream, cream,
cream, cream,
dare to cream,
cream a dream,
time to dream!
a dream of cream,
sour cream,
creamy cream,
she creams, he creams,
we scream for sweet cream!
cream and sugar,
cream, cream,
cream, cream!
I cream, you cream,
we scream
for whipped cream.         

The police arrive,

          it’s awkward.

 

 

 

Karl Jirgens, Prof. Emeritus, former English Dept. Head (U Windsor), and Chair of the Creative Writing Program (U Windsor), is author of five books (Coach House, Mercury, ECW, Porcupine’s Quill), and is published globally (most recently in Japan). Jirgens founded, edited, published Rampike (an international journal of art, writing, and theory) digitally archived at U Windsor: (https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/rampike/about.html). Jirgens edited two books (on painter Jack Bush, and poet Christopher Dewdney), plus, an issue of Open Letter magazine with Beatriz Hausner. His latest book of short fiction, The Razor’s Edge, was a Finalist for the Forward Prize and earned a Bronze medal for the ELIT awards. See: www.jirgens.org  He recently guest-edited an issue of HA&L magazine. See: https://samizdatpress.typepad.com/hal_issue_fifteen-2/hal-magazine-issue-fifteen2-cover.html His poetry was selected for the anthology Best Canadian Poetry, 2023.

The Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

 

Tuesday poem #592 : Gabriel Ojeda-Sague : The Mange of Parking Lots

 

 

Every time I eat salmon, that coat
in my closet gets shinier.

You’d be right to assume inability
from such a cast as this.

All these things with fins: sharks,
taxis, old movies.

A map of Canada could be the size
of a scale model of Canada.

No one would be the wiser if you
stopped smoking cigarettes.

He said he couldn’t call it less than a
a Kentucky Derby of the heart.

Something to do in the event of hair
loss other than to recant.

I sleep silent, boyfriends have told me,
but I snore plenty in my dreams.

You drew the short straw; you must
plan out the Eiffel Tower.

To draw from memory the day your
father died.

In the beauty of his wife’s face, he saw
three months’ salary.

Be at rest, and you will inherit a country
unworthy of pigeons.

Because of this, the corrosion of towns,
the mange of parking lots.

Slalom among trees and think of
kids in the road.

Your cat moans, rather than meows,
an unsettling variation.

With the dedication of a parent, I
raise everything in front of me.

The night you became angular,
a firefly was perfectly still.

The novel you read devastates you
in a very literal sense.

Children are easily spooked, but are clearly
superior in inventing rivers.

Because he adopted the highway, all that
drove on it were seen as enemies.

Mind you, I wrote a memoir
and dedicated it to my life.

A magic trick has three parts: the one where
you weep, your mother, the prestige.

If I am in heaven by the time of this event, be sure
I am pricking little holes in the ground.

 

 

 

 

Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué is a poet and writer living in Chicago. He is most recently the author of Losing Miami (The Accomplices, 2019) and Madness (Nightboat Books, 2022), which was a finalist for the Publishing Triangle's Thom Gunn Award in Gay Poetry and the TS Eliot Foundation’s Four Quartets Prize. He is also co-editor of An Excess of Quiet: Selected Sketches by Gustavo Ojeda, 1979-1989. He is currently a PhD candidate in English at the University of Chicago where he works in the study of sexuality.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan