Three plus one: four poems for a birthday

TORCH
I was born the day my mother stopped being pregnant
a full-baked warm wetness taking its first breath
flame flickering, a miniature torch; a moth fluttering
against the pane, the porch. She held: a curved moon-nail,
thistle-like lock, darkened milk; and the clarinetist curled
slow circles around the moon


WISH
the crack of eggs, the weight of flour, chocolate powder

Wardrobe Mistress

My mother is ninety and likes
To wear a nice dress.
But she is tiny.

Size ten, and only five feet tall, she likes
Colour, nothing too clingy.
And needs a collar.

She would also like some nonslip
Ankle boots that are
Size four and a half.

Please help.

Nobody seems to cater for
Small, slim people of a certain age
Who are not terrifically flexible.

Do not want low necklines.
Do not like black and beige.



Taken from the "Wardrobe Mistress" column in the Sunday Times' Style Magazine, 29 September 2013. Submitted by Kirsten Luckens.

Wood Green chopping city

I've shown you how to chip,
I've shown you how to chop,
I've shown you how to dice and slice.

These sad people who spend
all their time chopping stuff up
in the kitchen - all you need's just
three cuts across like this.
You won't find an onion chopper any quicker!

They're not cheap.
If you're looking for cheap stuff getahtofere.
I've been using this same machine
on my demonstrations for fifteen years.

And you get a free spirally cutter, look -
you can use the peel for earrings.
There's a booklet with both words and pictures
so if you can't read the words, just look at the pictures.

They're �24.95 on TV,
so you're saving almost a fiver.
If you can't afford it today,
stick to the knife,
don't bother me,
Not bein' rude,
but I don't have to live in your house.



The patter of a cockney guy demonstrating an elaborate kitchen vegetable cutting machine in Wood Green Shopping City, London, 2004. Submitted by Richard Tyrone Jones.

"Tuatara", by Nola Borrell

Matiu/Somes Island, Wellington




Keep your distance
you�re new here
rough-edged and arrogant

One step closer
and you won�t see me
you won�t see me anywhere

Always lie low, I say
I�ve learnt a thing or two
over 200 million years

Take away your �ecologically
appropriate quarters�
this drainpipe will do

And quit drooling over me
I pounce on skinks and wetas
eat my own kind

If a female

Scientific American

You sink into their brains
a little socket with a screw on it
and the electrode can then
be screwed deeper and deeper
into the brainstem,

and you can test at any moment
according to the depth,
which goes at fractions of the mm,
what you're stimulating,

and these creatures are not
merely stimulated by wire,
they're fitted with a miniature
radio receiver so that they can be
communicated with at a distance.

The technique is very ingenious.
I mean you could press a button
and a sleeping chicken would jump up
and run about, or an active chicken

would suddenly sit down and go to sleep,
or a hen would sit down and act
like she's hatching out an egg,
or a fighting rooster would go into depression.



Taken from Aldous Huxley's speech "The Ultimate Revolution", given on 20th March 1962 at Berkeley Language Center. Submitted by Howie Good.

Buddhist bullseye

The look of
the moment
Infinity scarves



Sign in the Juniors department of Target, 1 March 2014. Submitted by J.R. Solonche.

"Bonsai" by Cecily Barnes

Who needs your stunted style, your tiny jewels

of thwarted art, to snatch a kite flown loose


or bad-thrown ball? Or your unsayable rules

of infinite pleasures unknown, delights abstruse,

to feel soft feathers, their talons' sponsal band?

To splinter a street, plumb galaxy's soil, or hold

a heaving noose? To grasp your child's hand?


To be unbound by any soul, un-bowled

by death, to