The State of Things

Poor pupils filling pockets with food.

Poor teeth, grey skin, they’re tired, they’re thin.

Monday’s worst: hunger’s accrued;

a weekend of neglect. How do we begin?

Poor teeth, grey skin, they’re tired, they’re thin;

their parents work three jobs, scrimp and save

a weekend of neglect. How do we begin:

if your belly was empty would you behave?

Their parents work three jobs, scrimp and save:

poverty’s expensive – leccy meter, payday loan.

If your belly was empty, would you behave,

dismissed as scroungers, struggling alone.

Poverty’s expensive – leccy meter, payday loan –

Monday is worst; hunger’s accrued;

dismissed as scroungers, struggling alone –

poor pupils filling pockets with food.

© Myfanwy Fox

Child poverty: Pale and hungry pupils 'fill pockets with school food'

Myfanwy Fox has had a weird life and would like to make yours weirder, too. She occasionally blogs at Fox Unkennelled

The Presidents Men

Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by*


There’s a disclaimer

welcoming us to the most un-PC

event of the year.

Bid for Boris or the Bank

of England’s ear. Imagine deals

in a strip joint;

peel monkeys

from your bulging pocket wad:

and watch them dance.

Or spice up your wife

with cosmetic surgery.

You choose

from a catalogue

of skimpy women parading

boys’ toys: casino

roll play for the night.

Down that glass, rip off

your knickers and dance,

He’s letting off steam.

You’re nineteen? Come

up to my room.

Three balance sheets to the wind.

It’s all for charity. So much

on offer. How can you

refuse?

© Myfanwy Fox

*A Smuggler’s Song, Rudyard Kipling

Men Only: Inside the charity fundraiser where hostesses are put on show

Myfanwy Fox has had a weird life and would like to make yours weirder, too. She occasionally blogs at Fox Unkennelled




PartyPartyParty


It’s hard not to brush up
against someone you know here.

Familiar faces pack the room,
quite a squeeze.

Everything at eye level
is pretty straight

but, like swans, it’s all going on
down below.

My dominant hand holds a glass,
my other hand.

With such a crowd, I can balance
on one leg, not fall.

My other leg can slide into position,
like a trombone.

Great men doing it for charity, just
giving something back.

© Pat Edwards

Presidents Club dinner: Charity Commission boss 'horrified' by groping claims

Pat Edwards is a writer, teacher and performer living in Mid Wales. Her work has appeared in various publications including Prole, Picaroon, The Curlew, Ink Sweat and Tears and the soon to be published #MeToo Anthology. Pat runs Verbatim poetry open mic nights and curates Welshpool Poetry Festival.

Vital Signs of Our Time

Political health

Theresa and Jeremy turn up at the oz.

Two more in the queue - well, the queue that once was.

Today it's a scrum, a melee, a crowd,

Sick people on trolleys, or waiting outside.

Alerted for months, predicted for years -

Where's the prescription for crocodile tears?

© Charlie Lambert

Theresa May changes tack to apologise for postponed operations

Charlie Lambert is a former journalist and sports broadcaster who turned to a different form of media in 2016 when he started writing poetry. He lives in Liverpool, where the hospital is known universally as 'the oz'.



Pandemic

That strain again, it had a dying fall.
            Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

Poetry mutates like flu: a core of purpose
embedded in an ever-changing surface.

Milton decried the modern bondage of rimeing.
So many ways with words have died through time.

Mostly we’re immune from art, resistant
or silently infected, jingle-listening: coexistent,

but when disease ensues it may be serious,
casualties often become obsessed, delirious

and secondary infections may present:

poetry voice, slam stance or olde inversion (not so quaint).

Or perhaps poetry is more like chicken pox or shingles?

Once caught it’s integrated, for ever part of us that lingers.

Where this metaphor breaks down is in who suffers most,

an infected victim or those close to an afflicted host?

© Myfanwy Fox

What is Australian flu? How to prevent the virus and the symptoms to look out for

Myfanwy Fox has had a weird life and would like to make yours weirder, too. She occasionally blogs at Fox Unkennelled