Cassandra Voices

Category: Poetry

  • B Road Blues

    Born by the river, out in the sticks

    I was born on a bend on the Forty Eighty-six

     

    Making old friends, Rubicon tricks

    Much still to fix on the Forty Eighty-six

     

    Romans rode here, hear the hoof clicks

    Some see their ghosts on the Forty Eighty-six

     

    Journey’s the same, the dead and the quick’s

    Cutting through the mist on the Forty Eighty-six

     

    Executor, executrix

    Fresh eggs for sale on the Forty Eighty-six

     

    Love lasts forever, young love pricks

    Some are still searching on the Forty Eighty-six

     

    Stone and timber, timber and bricks

    Much to remember on the Forty Eighty-six

     

    Stacks with plenty, plenty with nix

    Weather unrelenting on the Forty Eighty-six

     

    Players pretend with frantic theatrics

    Not just teenage kicks on the Forty Eighty-six

     

    They fought before with axes and picks

    Fought a Civil War on the Forty Eighty-six

     

    The pain they pray is the lame and the sick’s

    May one day fade away on the Forty Eighty-six

     

    Some are flame throwers, swear like Bill Hicks

    Others grow church flowers on the Forty Eighty-six

     

    Hat-tricks won, missed penalty kicks

    Dislocating hips on the Forty Eighty-six

     

    Life ain’t a sweetshop just selling Twix

    It’s a big ol’ pic’n’mix on the Forty Eighty-six

     

    Simon called Peter, Richard’s nicked Dick’s

    Some names are made on the Forty Eighty-six

     

    Magicians vape smoke with their cash and card tricks

    Magic’s still a secret on the Forty Eighty-six

     

    Some write with quills, sharper than Bics

    Slanty-id italics on the Forty Eighty-six

     

    A thief may never know from whom he nicks

    Flash cars flashing past on the Forty Eighty-six

     

    Ringing guitars’ lickety licks

    Bending like Hendrix on the Forty Eighty-six

     

    Choose party sex over party politics

    Horny Burke’s dilemma on the Forty Eighty-six

     

    Peace wind blowing Vulcan aeronautics

    Once heroed Hurricanes on the Forty Eighty-six

     

    Hellfire statistics, bullet ballistics

    But now bombs won’t win wars on the Forty Eighty-six

     

    Some speak the truth, some speak synthetics

    Some don’t speak at all on the Forty Eighty-six

     

    Birds and beasts, lambs and chicks

    Nature’s an engraver on the Forty Eighty-six

     

    No slow runners, torched Olympics

    Silver, bronze, gold on the Forty Eighty-six

     

    Carabosse dusk dirt-track dominatrix

    Allsortsa country matters on the Forty Eighty-six

     

    Peacock feathers flair in fancy flicks

    Pride falls like darkness on the Forty Eighty-six

     

    Ain’t surprised the dead get more crosses than ticks

    Many miles of road on the Forty Eighty-six

     

    Paul Curran was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1975. He holds a degree in English Language and Literature from the University of Oxford and a Masters Degree from the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama. He has worked widely as a professional actor. His Only Sonnet loosely follows the pattern of the seasons, comprised of 100+ ‘alternative’ sonnets; Repeat Fees and its 80 sonnets and longer poems was published in July 2017.

  • Visitations

    Come on in. Try our new Chicken Selects.
    Forget food. We should send them luggage.
    Watch this sexy star win in just five words.
    Do you like who your party elects?
    You could always reverse your mortgage.
    A better demographic is diehard nerds.
    We’ve never seen a storm like this before.
    Get cash: Sell us your diabetes strips.
    What’s worse than all is that the world won’t end.
    Buy “Flip This House” and be a millionaire.
    Call now to book amazing summer trips.
    You’ve typed up your break-up. Now hit send.
    Won’t you take a moment to show you care?
    We’ve never seen a storm like this before.
    Here’s one weird old trick to get rid of belly fat.
    Go on. Guess who just got a Guggenheim.
    It’s true. Everyone says you drink too much.
    A great run of growth has finally gone flat.
    It’s pointless in our time to use rhyme.
    You really are just entirely out of touch.
    We’ve never seen a storm like this before.
    A mob has formed outside the convention.
    We have no way of knowing what’s kept offshore.
    Please hang up now or choose an extension.
    We’ve never seen a storm like this before.

     

    Ernest Hilbert is the author of three collection of poetry, Sixty Sonnets, All of You on the Good Earth, and Caligulan, which was selected as winner of the 2017 Poets’ Prize. He lives in Philadelphia where he works as a rare book dealer, opera librettist, and book reviewer for The Washington Post. His poem “Mars Ultor” will appear in Best American Poetry 2018.

  • Blaze

    We say we are ready to be eaten by the music
    but have scant idea what that entails,

    what fire those geometric petals conceal.
    In need of advice, we turn to the dead:

    their eyes are forests, they cannot speak.
    This room begins to seem a temple

    raised to a pixellated god,
    to the warp and weft of that ultimate blaze.

    Did we never think that the light’s envoys
    would be our furnishings and our toys,

    that a wild grin of insect glee
    was waiting outside the dormitory?

    Phantoms are urging us to panic
    but the whole city’s a sounding bell,

    the mind’s ancient everglades
    flourishing at last.

     

    Ned Denny’s debut collection Unearthly Toys was published by Carcanet in February 2018.

  • On Suicide

    What a beautiful day to be a nihilist. The sun
    shatters like a wine glass on the sheer ocean.

    Someone is stretching a canvas on the patio.
    Little blue flowers whose names I will never know

    sprout up in the grass, crickets trill,
    an empty crab shell contemplates existence on the window sill—

    the compost bin exudes its sweet
    ammoniac rot.

    Down in the surf,
    small children scream their heads off.

    Christopher Robinson is a novelist, poet, and futurist. He is the co-author, with Gavin Kovite, of War of the Encyclop aedists (Scribner, May 2015), which received glowing reviews in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. He lives in Seattle with his partner, Amanda Knox, who pushes him daily to be more empathic.

  • Psalm 70 by Edward Clarke

                                        70

	I’d like to set you to
			The tune
		Of ‘Wolves A-Howling’,
	So you can make no tarrying,
			And hurry
		Out across
	The peaks of wild Arkansas,
	The heights of south Missouri:
	Make haste, O Lord, to help me,
	Make haste, O God, to seize me,
Can’t you see the wolves a-howling
All round my pretty little darling?
		The tail end of
		Another text
		The prelude to
		The song that’s next,
This song is but an interlude
		Of perfect prayer
	With hardly any words
	That fiddlers howl with care.
	And I would put it in
		Some wild quatrains
		To try and heed
		The word that frames
			Its words:
			Make haste,
	Let them be confused
			That chase
		My living soul,
			That howl
		And are a-howling
		All round my darling.
		Let all that seek you
		Exult and howl,
	Let God be magnified
		Inside my soul.
	As I am poor and needy
		Make haste to seize me:
	O how the wolves are howling
All around my poor little darling.

    Edward Clarke’s latest book is called The Vagabond Spirit of Poetry.

    Featured Image: Daniele Idini