. . .

You’re

BY SYLVIA PLATH

Clownlike, happiest on your hands,

Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled,

Gilled like a fish. A common-sense

Thumbs-down on the dodo’s mode.

Wrapped up in yourself like a spool,

Trawling your dark as owls do.

Mute as a turnip from the Fourth

Of July to All Fools’ Day,

O high-riser, my little loaf.

Vague as fog and looked for like mail.

Farther off than Australia.

Bent-backed Atlas, our traveled prawn.

Snug as a bud and at home

Like a sprat in a pickle jug.

A creel of eels, all ripples.

Jumpy as a Mexican bean.

Right, like a well-done sum.

A clean slate, with your own face on.



Sylvia Plath, “You’re” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 1960, 1965, 1971, 1981 by the Estate of Sylvia Plath. Editorial matter copyright © 1981 by Ted Hughes. Source: Collected Poems (1992)

(Photo by Carla Kreuser ©2009)

. . .

Maximus, to Gloucester: Letter 2

BY CHARLES OLSON 

. . . . . tell you? ha! who

can tell another how

to manage the swimming?

he was right: people

don’t change. They only stand more

revealed. I,

likewise

(photo by tim chumley)

...

Thick glossy cookery books entice me 

Mandy Mitchells  

Thick glossy cookery books entice me       the heavier the better         Layered with tangible ingredients and places Like apricot and prickly pear, kudu and Karoo        With recipes that read like poetry under my fingertips          I gorge my senses in bookshops               absorbing pictures of loaded tables and exquisite gardens           heavy with the luxury of time        I don’t quite know what they give to me              except                    maybe                    wistfulness     The sense of wanting to be somewhere else                  Far from traffic, concrete, the rush of ordinary lives          The reality of scrambled eggs                  or two-minute noodles.

(photographs by the very talented vanessa grobler) 

. . .

poetry all over...


i love it when poetry exists outside of the confines of the pages of a book - on Jeff Crandall's glass bottles, on a shirt (nice one, Kate!), on a pillow, on someone's legs...

x X x

public embroidery -
cross stiching performed on seats in buses and trains. if not quite poetry, then at least a public haiku!