Poetry
Issue #1
Drink
Only need to hear the right laugh
And mi hairt's in the taverns of Ayrshire still -
The red-faced brawlers sweating gin
And a sense that hands mingle, not join;
Lips put and lifted and put again
To the whisky spring, the single crippling flow.
You, your hearts are porous, stewed in wine,
Your breath singes the damp air,
And the throb of your hands and cheeks
When you go outside, makes
The very wind and grass heat in fellowship.
And faced with yet another black-dyed girl
Who's powdered over her sweat, and
Feeds solely on wit and cigarette smoke,
I almost wish we'd all followed your lead.
Let our hearts all bloat, spill over,
swell out – rise, ripe for the taking
Homing
Learned of late
this our genteel, Southern blood
has too, a spike of Lowland Scotch.
Up in the Lakes last year
and as if I'd come home
- may the hills rise to meet you,
felt I could have lain forever
in the shallows between those heights, and been kept,
and rocked, and blanketed by the rain
of the land that bore me once.
Prodigal daughter returns,
talking all Wordsworth, as if invoking
a deity who, radiant, descends.
She goes back to where he hung his hat,
ate porridge and giblets and ached.
All those luxuries, the lectures and poems
she lavishes on herself
don't cut much ice up here.
Her bright spoutings on the dissertation
fall flat on the old families' ears.
As if the voices first raised in greeting
now sit her down and demand:
lower your head
give up your gold
away with that foreign shine.
Your ruffian forbears will have you back
but first, cease those effusions.
Heft loads on your back with the rest of us;
show us your blood; dig in.