Warning by Jenny Joseph

Warning by Jenny Joseph

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple. 

‪Troll by Shane Koyczan (Lynn)

Once upon a time,

You and all your kind lived underneath bridges,

Had ridges for ribs that dropped off into empty chests as if your

Hearts were all stolen treasures,

As if an excavation crew were hired to dig up and remove the part

Of you that let you feel.

And while the world above you invented the wheel, you stayed put,

Knowing it would one day need to roll over top of you to get to

Where it's going.

You had an endlessly flowing supply line of food.

You began to brood over humanity and made meals of our hope,

As if crushing our spirits would make your mirrors cast better

Reflections than the ones they gave,

As if the only way you could save yourselves was to make the world

Ugly so no one would notice you hiding in it.

You learned to knit pain into a kind of camouflage,

Treated hope like a mirage that you could use to lure in your next meal.

You lived off of our fears, as if you could taste what we feel.

And every night, as the moon read bedtime stories to sunlight.

You took darkness as an invite to head out into the world,

You curled your hands into wrecking balls, your breath became

Squalls, you made rocks rumble, you made land shiver

You made boys and girls pray that someone would deliver them

From you

We told them you aren't real.

Then one day, the world changed, but you all stayed the same.

Just migrated from living underneath bridges to living underneath Information super-highways.

Days and nights became meaningless, each already deepened

Chest became an abyss that no one would ever find the bottom of.

Concepts like love fell into your gravity, we turned ourselves into

Live preservers hoping to save as many as we could,

But the fathers who stood guarding closet doors and the mothers

Who secured the floors underneath beds,

All shook their heads not knowing how to deal with you.

You, who crept into our lives with tongues like knives stabbing your

Words into our skin.

You began to begin uploading yourselves into our homes you had

Computer screens for eyes, and software for bones.

You turned your hate into stones and hurled them at beauty,

As if you couldn't bear to see anything other than ugly, anything Different.

You had fingernails like flint, and scraped them along decency hoping we would be the ones to all catch fire.

You all had smiles like one-way barbed wire not meant to keep us out,

Meant to keep us in

Voice like a firing pin, you spoke in explosions

It isn't cute. It isn't funny.

You've talked strangers into death, and laughed.

And as each family learns to graft skin over the wounds you gave them, you hem yourselves into the scar.

You have coaxed the sober back into bars,

Handed out cigars at memorials,

Offered nooses, cliffs, and pills to those who unfortunately found

You before they found help.

You have praised suffering,

Waltzed in between tragedies,

Gracefully dipping misery as if we would somehow be impressed

With the dexterity of your animosity.

You have cheered on rape, dashed through police tape as if it were

The finish line in a race of who can be awful first.

Even now,

You somehow see this as an invitation to turn your keyboards into Catapults,

Wondering which of you can be the first to hate this best.

Your loathing, already dressed in riot gear,

Ready to incite rage,

As if each message board is a stage,

Where you recite hostility,

Turning freedom of speech into freedom of cruelty.

We are stuck with you, the same way you are stuck with you.

Your mind is glue, and it keeps malice fastened there like cheap wallpaper.

We were once upon a time told that none of you exist, we

Dismissed you as make believe or myth.

Now armed only with resolve, we can no longer afford to tell

Ourselves that you aren't real.

We will not let you make your dinners out of the things we feel.



Level: Lower Secondary
Themes: Troll, cyber bullying
Stylistic Feature: Free verse, imagery, diction

A Postcard from the Volcano by Wallace Stevens (Lavinia)

A Postcard from the Volcano

BY WALLACE STEVENS

Children picking up our bones 

Will never know that these were once   

As quick as foxes on the hill; 

And that in autumn, when the grapes   

Made sharp air sharper by their smell   

These had a being, breathing frost; 

And least will guess that with our bones   

We left much more, left what still is   

The look of things, left what we felt 

At what we saw. The spring clouds blow   

Above the shuttered mansion house,   

Beyond our gate and the windy sky 

Cries out a literate despair. 

We knew for long the mansion's look   

And what we said of it became 

A part of what it is ... Children,   

Still weaving budded aureoles, 

Will speak our speech and never know, 

Will say of the mansion that it seems   

As if he that lived there left behind   

A spirit storming in blank walls, 

A dirty house in a gutted world, 

A tatter of shadows peaked to white,   

Smeared with the gold of the opulent sun.

Level: Upper Sec

Themes: Transience, Mortality, Generations

Stylistic features: Free verse, Tercets

Oranges by Roisin Kelly (Lavinia)

Oranges

BY ROISIN KELLY

I’ll choose for myself next time

who I’ll reach out and take

as mine, in the way

I might stand at a fruit stall

having decided

to ignore the apples

the mangoes and the kiwis

but hold my hands above

a pile of oranges

as if to warm my skin

before a fire.

Not only have I chosen

oranges, but I’ll also choose

which orange — I’ll test

a few for firmness

scrape some rind off

with my fingernail

so that a citrus scent

will linger there all day.

I won’t be happy

with the first one I pick

but will try different ones

until I know you. How

will I know you?

You’ll feel warm

between my palms

and I’ll cup you like

a handful of holy water.

A vision will come to me

of your exotic land: the sun

you swelled under

the tree you grew from.

A drift of white blossoms

from the orange tree

will settle in my hair

and I’ll know.

This is how I will choose

you: by feeling you

smelling you, by slipping

you into my coat.

Maybe then I’ll climb

the hill, look down

on the town we live in

with sunlight on my face

and a miniature sun

burning a hole in my pocket.

Thirsty, I’ll suck the juice

from it. From you.

When I walk away

I’ll leave behind a trail

of lamp-bright rind.

Level: Upper Sec

Themes: Love, Possession

Stylistic features: Free verse, extended metaphor

Nocturne by Louise Glück (Lavinia)

Nocturne

BY LOUISE GLÜCK

Mother died last night,

Mother who never dies.

Winter was in the air,

many months away

but in the air nevertheless.

It was the tenth of May.

Hyacinth and apple blossom

bloomed in the back garden.

We could hear

Maria singing songs from Czechoslovakia —

How alone I am —

songs of that kind.

How alone I am,

no mother, no father —

my brain seems so empty without them.

Aromas drifted out of the earth;

the dishes were in the sink,

rinsed but not stacked.

Under the full moon

Maria was folding the washing;

the stiff  sheets became

dry white rectangles of  moonlight.

How alone I am, but in music

my desolation is my rejoicing.

It was the tenth of May

as it had been the ninth, the eighth.

Mother slept in her bed,

her arms outstretched, her head

balanced between them.

Level: Upper Sec

Themes: Death, Family, Grief, Sorrow, Alienation, Escapism, Denial

Stylistic features: Free verse

Lost in the Hospital by Rafael Campo (Lavinia)

Lost in the Hospital

BY RAFAEL CAMPO

It’s not that I don’t like the hospital.

Those small bouquets of flowers, pert and brave.

The smell of antiseptic cleansers.

The ill, so wistful in their rooms, so true.

My friend, the one who’s dying, took me out

To where the patients go to smoke, IV’s

And oxygen in tanks attached to them—

A tiny patio for skeletons. We shared

A cigarette, which was delicious but 

Too brief. I held his hand; it felt

Like someone’s keys. How beautiful it was,

The sunlight pointing down at us, as if

We were important, full of life, unbound.

I wandered for a moment where his ribs

Had made a space for me, and there, beside 

The thundering waterfall of his heart,

I rubbed my eyes and thought, “I’m lost.”

Level: Lower Sec

Themes: Living, Health, Illness, Death, Relationships, Friendship

Stylistic features: Blank verse

Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper by Martín Espada (Lavinia)

Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper

BY MARTÍN ESPADA

At sixteen, I worked after high school hours

at a printing plant

that manufactured legal pads:

Yellow paper

stacked seven feet high

and leaning

as I slipped cardboard

between the pages,

then brushed red glue

up and down the stack.

No gloves: fingertips required

for the perfection of paper,

smoothing the exact rectangle.

Sluggish by 9 PM, the hands

would slide along suddenly sharp paper,

and gather slits thinner than the crevices

of the skin, hidden.

Then the glue would sting,

hands oozing

till both palms burned

at the punchclock.

Ten years later, in law school,

I knew that every legal pad

was glued with the sting of hidden cuts,

that every open lawbook

was a pair of hands

upturned and burning.

Level: Lower Sec

Themes: Youth, Jobs, Working, School, Learning, Maturity, Social Responsibility

Stylistic Features: Free verse, juxtaposition

First Love by Jan Owen (Lavinia)

First Love

BY JAN OWEN

Titian’s Young Englishman with a Glove, circa 1530

It happened in Physics,

reading a Library art book under the desk,

(the lesson was Archimedes in the bath)

I turned a page and fell

for an older man, and anonymous at that,

hardly ideal –

he was four hundred and forty-five,

I was fourteen.

‘Eureka!’ streaked each thought

(I prayed no-one would hear)

and Paradise all term

was page 179

(I prayed no-one would guess).

Of course

my fingers, sticky with toffee and bliss,

failed to entice him from his century;

his cool grey stare

fastened me firmly in mine.

I got six overdues,

suspension of borrowing rights

and a D in Physics.

But had by heart what Archimedes proves.

Ten years later I married:

a European with cool grey eyes,

a moustache,

pigskin gloves.

Level: Lower Sec

Themes: Youth, First Love, Infatuation & Crushes, Unrequited Love, Reading & Books, Sciences, School & Learning

Stylistic features: Free verse, parentheses

Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney (Lavinia)

Mid-Term Break

BY SEAMUS HEANEY

I sat all morning in the college sick bay

Counting bells knelling classes to a close.

At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying—

He had always taken funerals in his stride—

And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram

When I came in, and I was embarrassed

By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'.

Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,

Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.

At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived

With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops

And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him

For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,

He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot.

No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four-foot box, a foot for every year.

Level: Upper Sec

Themes: Living, Death, Loss, Sorrow & Grieving, Relationships, Family & Ancestors

Stylistic Features: Lyric poem, Tercet

In the Home of the Homeless by Angkarn Chanthathip

In the Home of the Homeless by Angkarn Chanthathip

1.

One window among many
reflects events    mirrors rubbish
a broken roof lashed to its frame
collapsing and crumbling as it struggles on

the crowded world of the homeless
the community of the world could offer
the edge appears    missing a family  nearly recovered
the house stays cold   alien   hardship returns

to have your roots yanked out from under your family tree
to wander through different times and places
strength ebbs away    destitution    charity
impressions blur    hardship approaches

one essence in submission   those people
one essence    many differences
fallen    absconded    overgrown    neglected    just 'a case'
the times shift and change    on the move

'refugees' through circumstance
pressure wears you down    constricts you
until aborted hope collides with strength
grit marks fade    never entirely

grimy windows in the heart of the city
exist    go    are   strange    lonely    distorted image
portrait    identity    'ghost'    living
twisted shadow    blamed

the house you can't find    can't return to
the hope that sustains    the dream that warms
under the flyover    pavement    have mercy
image fuses    eroding love

possessions gone    roads closed    promises broken
can't go forward    can't go back    trapped
public place packed with the poor
the centre cordoned off

'refugees' through circumstance
melt into disarray
Sanam Luang Park* trespassed    altered
expands into every corner of the city

2.

look around aimlessly    against the world
instinctively connected    release
rubbish mounts    cast offs    abandoned
destitute    deprived    humiliated

looks unsettled like an unfinished house
dream no further than a home
a road    an alley    a side street    like a sign
nothing is what is seen

* Sanam Luang is a large public park in the centre of Bangkok that became 'home' to a large number of homeless people who were then 'cleansed' from the area.

Safe by Charles Bukowski

Safe by Charles Bukowski

the house next door makes me
sad.
both man and wife rise early and
go to work.
they arrive home in early evening.
they have a young boy and a girl.
by 9 p.m. all the lights in the house
are out.
the next morning both man and
wife rise early again and go to
work.
they return in early evening.
By 9 p.m. all the lights are
out.

the house next door makes me
sad.
the people are nice people, I
like them.

but I feel them drowning.
and I can't save them.

they are surviving.
they are not
homeless.

but the price is
terrible.

sometimes during the day
I will look at the house
and the house will look at
me
and the house will
weep, yes, it does, I
feel it.