The Politics of Abstinence

“Here’s the #SexStrikethat matters: Do not sleep with anyone who believes in forcing women to give birth. Do not fuck misogynists or white supremacists. Don’t have sex with people who don’t see you as a person. Apart from anything else, they’re generally rubbish in bed.”Laurie Penny‏ @PennyRedMay 12

Today begins the great cross and clench

for the Guardian columnist            

as her area shuts up shop in solidarity

with people who don’t want to be but are

pregnant in Georgia, Alabama

and places even further from Islington than that.

Tiny flying pickets circle

the entrance to the promised land

with signs that shout:

They Shall Not Pass! 

or Dispute On Here.

Though you’d need

a magnifying glass to read them.

So far today, they’ve turned back

the former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan,

who, on inspection, was found to be

naked beneath his gleaming white sheet;

a guy called Doug wearing nothing

but a Make America Great Again cap

imported from El Salvador;

some dude she met in college

who used to like to

have his bum lightly chastised 

with briars; the professor she once,

at his own request, 

fastened to the bedroom door

with strategically placed

black leather belts; and the late 

Anita Bryant carrying

what looks suspiciously like             

an excessively sized strap-on.

For none shall break this strike

until it’s achieved

the far better ecstasy 

of enough people in the internet

exclaiming our heroine’s name. 

© Kevin Higgins

Actress Alyssa Milano calls for sex strike in protest at abortion bans

https://twitter.com/Alyssa_Milano/status/1128019637810024449

https://twitter.com/PennyRed/status/1127433319723851777

Kevin Higgins 

Kevin is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events in Galway, Ireland. He teaches poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre, Creative Writing at Galway Technical Institute, and is Creative Writing Director for the National University of Ireland - Galway Summer School. He is poetry critic of The Galway Advertiser. He has published five collections of poetry. His next poetry collection, Sex and Death at Merlin Park Hospital, will be published by Salmon Poetry in June 2019.

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On The Birth Of Prince What’s-His-Name

before Carol Ann Duffy 

Receive this boy-child, world, 

to pursue him about the pages 

of the tabloids and glossies that were 

his granny’s premature end.

Under the sign of the Express,

and Nicholas Witchell of the BBC, we conspire

for him a life of turning up to declare

things that would’ve opened or closed anyway

open or closed. We beseech the gathered 

spirits of Fanny Craddock, 

Lord Denning, and Sir Patrick Moore

that he exhibit no more 

fascist sympathies than absolutely necessary,

and no more casual hatred of the Irish

than the late Princess Margaret. 

Oh ghosts of Edmund Burke

and Lady Jane Birdwood we beg

you allow the mob disturb not one follicle

on this particular head; and ensure he’s never led

down to the basement by Bolsheviks,

even in the unlikely event of a Labour government

that actually keeps its promises.

We ask God, as Michael Heseltine and 

Julia Hartley Brewer understand him,

to arrange for this child a life 

of tennis, polo

and knowing as little as possible.

© Kevin Higgins

Royal baby: Meghan gives birth to boy, Harry announces

Kevin Higgins 

Kevin is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events in Galway, Ireland. He teaches poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre, Creative Writing at Galway Technical Institute, and is Creative Writing Director for the National University of Ireland - Galway Summer School. He is poetry critic of The Galway Advertiser. He has published five collections of poetry. His next poetry collection, Sex and Death at Merlin Park Hospital, will be published by Salmon Poetry in June 2019.

What Put The Diamonds In Your Owner’s Wife’s Ears?

after Bertolt Brecht

You clean collared columnists

should first help us fix the basic roof-over-head

dilemma, before penning your next sermon. 

You shower, who preach careful now

and always know your own exact bank balance, 

what is this mature democracy towards which you sweat?

Without a door I can safely lock behind me

to keep your pity at bay, civilisation

doesn’t even begin.

First bring those of us who get by on Supermacs 

each our own mahogany table and a big, silver knife 

with which to cut the turkey and ham into manageable slices

(with a vegetarian option for those so afflicted)

and answer us this:

What put the diamonds in your owner’s wife’s ears?
Or the Prince Albert ring in her boyfriend’s willy?

The fact you’re in there polishing phrases 

and we’re out here in the undemocratic rain

which everyone – from the Primate of the Church of Ireland 

to the Council for the Women of Consequence – agrees

must never be allowed land on you,

this is what keeps pinning diamonds 

to your owner’s wife’s sad little lobes, 

and puts the ring that winks up at her 

in her boyfriend’s knob.

© Kevin Higgins

Housing crisis set to become a catastrophe, warns Fr Peter McVerry

Kevin Higgins 

Kevin is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events in Galway, Ireland. He teaches poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre, Creative Writing at Galway Technical Institute, and is Creative Writing Director for the National University of Ireland - Galway Summer School. He is poetry critic of The Galway Advertiser. He has published five collections of poetry. His next poetry collection, Sex and Death at Merlin Park Hospital, will be published by Salmon Poetry in June 2019.

My Wishes For You

That your son at Trinity College

may graduate

to become a rogue gynaecologist. 

That his brother, the paediatrician,

be suspended without pay. 

That your husband be caught 

selling wheelchairs that don’t work 

live on national radio. And the day 

you discover all of the above, may 

the traffic wardens, every one of them,

be East Galway Gestapo. May you lose 

your winning ticket,

and the gun not go off

when it’s supposed to. 

May your reflux be acid

and your bowel be cranky.

May your water forever be cloudy

and the pharmacy be shut. 

May the funeral parlour

            refuse you, 

and the lies you told haunt you

            long after the cat 

has made a litter tray of your ashes.

© Kevin Higgins

Julian Assange should not be extradited to US - Jeremy Corbyn

Kevin Higgins 

Kevin is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events in Galway, Ireland. He teaches poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre, Creative Writing at Galway Technical Institute, and is Creative Writing Director for the National University of Ireland - Galway Summer School. He is poetry critic of The Galway Advertiser. He has published five collections of poetry. His next poetry collection, Sex and Death at Merlin Park Hospital, will be published by Salmon Poetry in June 2019.

Heroic Ode for The American Resistance

for CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times & all those

who hoped the Mueller report would be the thing

Rather than fight the man-child from Orange

on the metres deep concrete of his actual crimes,

you did battle with your size twelve dress shoes 

gallantly planted in quicksand – just now grown suddenly

ravenous – or failing that in the largest serving 

of Jell-O and ice cream since Christopher Columbus 

showed up to tell America he’d discovered it.

Given the chance you’d have stood pluckily before the jury

and – neglecting to mention the shortcomings 

in his approach to childcare –accused

Josef Fritzel of bad carpentry; courageously focussed

on Elizabeth the First’s bald patch and not her public 

disembowelling of her critics; fearlessly 

taken issue with Peter Sutcliffe’s driving

and not what he did to those women

with his menu of hammers and screwdrivers;

dared take to a radio talk show to criticise the late Adolf Hitler

for his side parting and inability to gather a crowd,

and told the plebs it’s time Franz von Papen rode to their rescue. 

You who heroically blew the bags of Dollars mom and dad invested

putting big ideas into your little skull by trying to convict this wolf

temporarily taken human form of eating the one sheep he didn’t.

© Kevin Higgins


Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Report Is Reportedly More Than 300 Pages Long

Kevin Higgins 

Kevin is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events in Galway, Ireland. He teaches poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre, Creative Writing at Galway Technical Institute, and is Creative Writing Director for the National University of Ireland - Galway Summer School. He is poetry critic of The Galway Advertiser. He has published five collections of poetry. His next poetry collection, Sex and Death at Merlin Park Hospital, will be published by Salmon Poetry in June 2019.

The Thing from Planet Gove

Its handshake is that of a slightly disreputable funeral director.

Its eyes those of an opinionated alligator

that sometimes reviews opera forthe London Times.

Its mind is a free trade slaughterhouse, busy 

making mincemeat, as cleanly as possible,

of other people’s children, bony old parents 

and the occasional small business person 

who was just wrong place, wrong century.

But its regular appearances on TV impress

the sort of people who have sexual relations

with their cars. Or their neighbours

cars. The female it dreams of is 

Rupert Murdoch’s more withered sister 

who lets it stand on its tippy-toes in a tutu 

inherited from a former grandmother 

who was briefly a dowager Duchess 

until the unfortunate headlines 

made her true position undeniable.

And it is written in Scripture 

that at a time such as this

a thing such as this

would ascend to Earth and give us –

leaving god aside for the minute –

proof of Satan’s existence.

© Kevin Higgins

Theresa May is told she must go as ministers plot to install Michael Gove in No 10 to save Brexit

Kevin Higgins 

Kevin is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events in Galway, Ireland. He teaches poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre, Creative Writing at Galway Technical Institute, and is Creative Writing Director for the National University of Ireland - Galway Summer School. He is poetry critic of The Galway Advertiser. He has published five collections of poetry. His next poetry collection, Sex and Death at Merlin Park Hospital, will be published by Salmon Poetry in June 2019.

To My Friends Who Said Nothing During the Witch-hunting of Ilhan Omar

Those who stuck to the practical stuff,

people-carrying your children – all

of whom are now at least seven foot tall –

to soccer or lacrosse,

or to paraphrase Malcolm X at the intervarsity

debating championship;

sympathised with yourself

by buying for yourself tickets

to see Jackson Browne sing songs –

three consecutive nights –

about what’s really going on.

Your political integrity, the apple

that went off in the bowl

all that time no one was looking, collapsed

rotten in the hand of the first person

who picked it up and tried

to take a clean, clarifying bite.

Now you prove your maturity

and commitment to demawcracy

by secretly buying Israeli oranges

and daring yourself to eat them.

© Kevin Higgins

Ilhan Omar's words were twisted – and Democrats were part of the problem

Kevin Higgins is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events in Galway, Ireland. He teaches poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre, Creative Writing at Galway Technical Institute, and is Creative Writing Director for the National University of Ireland - Galway Summer School. He is poetry critic of The Galway Advertiser. He has published five collections of poetry. His next poetry collection, Sex and Death at Merlin Park Hospital, will be published by Salmon Poetry in June 2019.