Geoff Hattersley - Frank O'Hara Five, Geoffrey Chaucer Nil

Photo taken in Durham when we were there!!!!

Frank O'Hara Five, Geoffrey Chaucer Nil

I think on the whole I would rather read
Frank O'Hara than Geoffrey Chaucer, and
this fine, non-smoking morning could well be
the right time to try out a new (uh hum)

poetic form. It's the funniest thing:
I am here, thirty years of age, having
put booze, and all sorts of, say, 'dubious
substances' behind me, now sweating it

all out in a small, constipated room
with a plump tomato of a woman,
conjugating Middle English verbs. I have
developed a line, a very brief line,

in gestures of friendliness, and in my
trousers an idea is taking shape...

http://yorkshiretimes.co.uk/article/Poem-Of-The-Week-Frank-OHara-Five-Geoffrey-Chaucer-Nil-By-Geoff-Hattersley

Taken from Don't Worry by Geoff Hattersely, published by Bloodaxe Books (or Dufour Editions, if you're in the USA)

Happy New Year!

New Year’s Day by Kim Addonizio

The rain this morning falls
on the last of the snow

and will wash it away. I can smell
the grass again, and the torn leaves

being eased down into the mud.
The few loves I’ve been allowed

to keep are still sleeping
on the West Coast. Here in Virginia

I walk across the fields with only
a few young cows for company.

Big-boned and shy,
they are like girls I remember

from junior high, who never
spoke, who kept their heads

lowered and their arms crossed against
their new breasts. Those girls

are nearly forty now. Like me,
they must sometimes stand

at a window late at night, looking out
on a silent backyard, at one

rusting lawn chair and the sheer walls
of other people’s houses.

They must lie down some afternoons
and cry hard for whoever used

to make them happiest,
and wonder how their lives

have carried them
this far without ever once

explaining anything. I don’t know
why I’m walking out here

with my coat darkening
and my boots sinking in, coming up

with a mild sucking sound
I like to hear. I don’t care

where those girls are now.
Whatever they’ve made of it

they can have. Today I want
to resolve nothing.

I only want to walk
a little longer in the cold

blessing of the rain,
and lift my face to it.

A Day Off in the Bridge Hotel by Ally May

Day Off in the Bridge Hotel

A cold beer sitting by the window
in the mid afternoon
the leaded windows shake
as a bus goes
over the high level bridge into Gateshead

ALLY MAY

John Burnside - The Day Etta Died

The Day Etta Died 

I was marking a stack of essays
on Frank O'Hara

and each had a Wiki-
paragraph to say

who Genet was, and who
was Billie Holiday

– just as this poem stumbles to its end, predictably
remembering the cold December night

I slow-danced with Annabelle Gray to 'I'd Rather Go Blind'
at the Catholic Club Xmas Party,

trees lit with frost outside and cherry-coloured
streetlamps round the playground at Our Lady's,

and here and there, on windows dark with soot
our blurred reflections, sightless in the glass

yet guiding each other, soundlessly, into the sway
of the future, almost swooning from the close

proximity of skin
and muddled breathing.

John Burnside

John Burnside - America

America

When I sleep, I am also the stranger I used to be,

driving from Monterey to Calistoga

or leaving the car at the edge of a country road

and crossing the Brandywine in the yellow of morning;

and this is as close as I come to a mind I can love,
slowing for deer on a fire road near Shipshewana,

or later, in some blue-lit Kansas town
stopping a while to watch, as a gaggle of children

play out the final innings of a day
they'd thought was theirs, and could have been forever.

A Disparate Group by Jim McCullough

Over three decades

Phone calls made

Emails exchanged

Absences excused

Plans made

Pubs frequented

All seasons

Through rain, hail or shine

Beers drank

Tales told

Songs sang

Troubles and joys shared

Laughter and tears

World put to rights

Heroes and villains toasted and duly blogged

Members lost and found

Babies born

Friends carried

Here's to The Friday Boys.

John Burnside - Blues

© 2000, John Burnside
From: The Asylum Dance
Publisher: Cape, London, 2000
ISBN: 0224059386

Geoff Hattersley - The Only Son at the Fish 'n' Chip Shop

The Only Son at the Fish ‘n’ Chip Shop

He lived with his mother till he was forty-five
and no one was allowed to touch his head.

He worked on a novel for twenty years
without writing a word. He didn’t like people

who wrote novels. He often drank. One glass of beer
was too many, two glasses weren’t enough.

Travel brochures were as far as he went.
A football match, one time. He often said

Why would anyone want to think about a potato?
He painted his door with nobody’s help.

GEOFF HATTERSLEY

From Back of Beyond: New and Selected Poems (Smith/Doorstop Books, 2006)