When the ravages of Alzheimer’s leave an elderly woman marooned in painful memories of October 1950, her grandchild comes up with a creative strategy.
In as many languages as necessary:
nyet, nein, less chance
I’ll click love on the latest post-
post-avant-garde patio you’ve addended
to the foundationless house of your theory,
than of a bull exiting a slaughterhouse’s iron jaws
with his swaggering rump intact.
I’d rather tear out bits of my own liver
with an argumentative breadknife,
mash it into a pâté and serve it
atop water biscuits to the next meeting
of your posh ladies’ poetry semi-circle
than listen to those who say hourly rosaries
to the Etruscan goddess Mania
to be made tenured Chair of Thin, Fat, or Bald Studies,
when you open a mouthload of exquisite
teeth to speak of the pink-willy privilege
of discontinued West Virginia coalminers,
who have nothing better to do now
than sit on the porch all day,
blackening their hankies
like aristocrats.
ANDY CROFT welcomes the publication of an anthology of recent poems published by the Morning Star, and hopes it becomes an annual event
RUTH AYLETT reviews two collections of outright political poetry
by Josie Giles
ANDY CROFT rallies poets to the impossible task of speaking truth to a tin-eared politician


