The Poetry Village

Nigel King

Applecore Sam Takes a Walk

Death takes Sam by the arm;
they promenade like Regency dandies
along the inner ring road.

Think of all the ways I could have you
says Death: a stumble
in front of a Ukrainian truck
its driver hollow-eyed,
five days out from Kiev;
a nail piercing the rotted sole
of your boot, the wound untended,
turned septic.

Death puts a hand on Sam’s shoulder.
He shrugs it off.

Why not choose a simple way?
A shop doorway on a frozen January night.
And you with so much less to lose than most:
that heart I clutched in the golf club bar,
that spine I snapped at the wheel
of a new Mercedes.

But Sam has halted and stands
near the market steps,
transfixed by a column of ants
bearing fragments of pizza crust
through a crack in a wall.

Death taps a foot, glances
at his half-hunter,
mutters
another time!
spins on his heel, strides off,
his silver-tipped cane clicking
towards the corner of Zetland Street.
Behind him
pigeons fall from the skies.

Anne Mikusinski

Afterparty

I watch you study
The token
Resting
In the nest
Of your hand
As if it can be read.
Around me
The world stops
Except for all the
Real
Words inside
Clicking against each other
Like dice thrown
On a table
This is how I press my luck tonight.
And when you look up
To play your wild card
I fold
And meet you halfway.
All bets are off.

Johanna Boal

When I Have Eaten Wolf

I always like a bit more salt when I cook Wolf!?
I don’t mean a large saucepan of boiling water like the story – The Three Little Pigs
I’m talking about salt in terms of preservation – respect for the Wolf.

Its highly social structures of ranking like a nuclear family
establishing territories far more than it needs to survive. The wolf is a stalker,
a nuisance, powers of endurance follow their target day and night.

Its octave, the spine-tingling howl, creepy an almost sound of out of tune
in the wilderness; bears sleep in the deep forest and mountains,
the legendary Wolf high up on the food chain is not afraid.

A cooked-up story; historically tried by people and burnt at the stake
for its intelligence and flexibility, and I relish in the Wolf,
notorious villain of fables and fairy stories that outwitted man.

Johanna lives in East Yorkshire and works in the libraries for the East Riding Council. She has been widely published with poems featuring in Ink, Sweat and Tears, The High Window, Poetry Space and more. Johanna’s debut pamphlet is published by Poetry Space, Bristol.

Ben Banyard

Exit Planet Dust

She looked up, all those nights
from her bedroom window,
marked out paths in the sky
where they’d flee.

Only the brightest stars
showed themselves in the city’s glare,
but they signposted
light years of travel.

Mum would have their bags
packed, a neat row in the hall.
There’d be another row,
the soft slap of fist on bone

and then they’d be off
without even closing the front door,
fast at first, stars smearing to white lines,
not one backward glance.

Ben Banyard lives in Portishead, near Bristol, UK. He’s the author of a pamphlet, Communing (Indigo Dreams, 2016) and a full collection, We Are All Lucky (Indigo Dreams, 2018). He blogs and posts mixtapes at https://benbanyard.wordpress.com and tweets @bbanyard.

Image: Waiting at Well Lane – ©David Coldwell.