Skip to main content

I know who he is but do not know him by Gareth Culshaw

I watch him walk in the fag ash wind.
He smiles with his eyebrows at a neighbour,
then talks with a brie tongue.
He has a woodpecker stance
holds his hands in his pockets to keep
them safe from the fruit machines in pubs.
He once had a wife and two kids but lost them
in a game of poker. I know he drives
a bin wagon each morning before the school
gates open. In the morning I hear him cough out
toothpaste in the garden, then watch him clean
his ears with the beak of a sparrow he catches
in a net. He rolls a newspaper on the garden wall,
paints a cigarette between his lips, swigs a can of cola.
His burp is a tenon saw on wood.
He taps the neighbour on the shoulder and walks
away with plumb bob straightness.

---

Gareth lives in Wales. He has two collections by FutureCycle called The Miner & A Bard's View. He has been Nominated for Best of the Net and won his first poetry competition at the RS Thomas Festival 2019. More information on Gareth and his work can be found here: gcwculshaw.moonfruit.com 

Comments

  1. James Anthony10 July 2021 at 19:52

    Chimes create what is known as chance music because the series of tones they play are guided only by the direction of the wind. Visit thislink for details.

    ReplyDelete
  2. qualityshop14 December 2021 at 03:08

    Great Post! Thanks for your Share.


    Quality Onesie: Kigurumi Onesie Pajamas For Adults And Kids

    Qualityonesie offers Pikachu, Disney, Anime, Hello Kitty, Animals, Winnie the Pooh, Stitch, Unicorn Kigurumi Onesie Pajamas for Adults and Kids.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Home by Jessa Forest

Home scratches at her shingles with tree branch fingers, pulls the air conditioning unit close to her grimy aluminum siding, and keens an empty song of mourning. We found her wandering the tornado snarled wild three months ago, starved and lonely. She doesn’t know how to take care of herself, you see? We fed her shards of dining room tables, kindling for the fireplace, and cast iron bathtubs clawed feet first. She was slow to recover so we gutted her plumbing, ripped out her nerves, and rewired the electricity. She let the water in every time it rained so we put a new roof on her and let her out for regular walks around the wolf pen. Let her mingle with the vultures, I said, let her feel useful and clean up the dead but no one wanted to listen. We found rot an mold in her corners, infused her insulation with antibiotics, and quarantined her for two weeks while she belched ladderback chairs, sofa cushions, wind chimes, and broken bookcases. She still has her bad days. After feeding time
93 comments
Read more

Smoking and Swearing by Ian Manson

He’s stood outside, he’s on his break. He’s unsure whether to be smoking or swearing. He decides on both. Inhale. Fuuuck! Inhale. Fuuuck! A person, a visitor, or a patient. Heading to the hospital, sees his scrubs and scowls. “ It’s not very professional for a nurse to be smoking and swearing. ” But he doesn’t care. He’s already done his good deed for the morning and by midnight he’ll have done a dozen more. Yesterday was a paltry four. Tomorrow’s shift will be five or two or maybe eight, and another night of finishing late. Inhale. Fuuuck! He breathes a cloud of smoke. Watches it swirling, ascending, a spirit en-route to heaven. The person’s saintly sanctimony means nothing to him. Because he’s on his break. And he’s smoking, and he’s swearing. --- Originally from Scotland, Ian has lived and worked in Worcestershire for the last 11 years. He can normally be found performing his poetry and prose at events on the Worcester spoken word scene
24 comments
Read more

“Are You So Tired Then, Stranger?” by Ace Boggess

  —Dick Allen, “B&B”    Wind exhausts with its icy fists. Knives of rain wear me down, & leaves in their helicopter swirls like leaflets dropped from a plane. October depletes me, & November. They’ve too much busyness. They send me spinning, dancing, lonely with the rake, the broom. I surrender, collapsing like an old barn, debris of me piling in a chair with clear view of the television.  News is on. It spends me. Talk of politics, also. I’d like  to shut up the voices that fatigue. They hum like a B-flat in the pipes. They bicker & scold, condemn. They expend me like carrying  groceries up a flight of stairs  until I’m too drained to care  which side they’re on. --- Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, including  Escape Envy  (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021),  I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So , and  The Prisoners . His writing has appeared in  Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Harvard Review, Mid-American Review,  and other journals. An ex-c
1 comment
Read more