Graham Fulton and Peycho Kanev
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Graham Fulton
hfulton32@btinternet.com
Bio (auto)
Graham Fulton was born in 1959 and lives in Paisley in Scotland. His poems have been widely published in the USA and Europe in magazines, anthologies and online journals such as Edinburgh Review, Ambit, The North, Envoi, Orbis, Other Poetry, Gutter, Hospital Drive, Poetry Super Highway, Raintown Review, Stand, Staple, Stride, Hidden City Quarterly, San Pedro River Review, French Literary Review, Dream State: the New Scottish Poets, Scottish Literature in the 20th Century, Valve, Chapman, Chaparral, Scotland on Sunday, Orizont Literar Contemporan (Romania), The Potomac, Word Riot, The Echo Room, Iron. Visit him on th web here: http://www.grahamfulton-poetry.com/
The following work is Copyright © 2013, and owned by Graham Fulton and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.
Sucked Out Like Goldfinger
The windscreen of our plane
has cracked
………………………..and as
………the clouds part
and we float orgasmically
………………over the Erskine Bridge
it’s clear
……..there’s an excellent chance
………………………it will break entirely
and the pilot with his epaulettes
……………….will be sucked out like Goldfinger
………….with his feet first and hands flapping
and eyes bulging
………………as the rest of us
including the Susan Boyle-lookalike stewardess
…………..with her alluring trolley of erotic baguettes
…………………go plummeting to earth
…………..screaming and swearing
………………………….and shouting Brace! Brace!
with the oxygen masks whipping
……………………..in front of our heads
and our silly lives flashing
before us.
…………………………….But the window doesn’t break
…………………and we land on the same runway
we took off from
thirty minutes before
…………………………………and as
…………………we disembark
…………a stag night survivor
who never got to where he was going
……………………..offers his double glazing services
…………….at a competitive price
and there’s a seven foot tall
………………………gun-toting policeman
waiting to meet us at the bottom of the steps
in case things turn ugly
………………..and we start writing old-fashioned letters
wanting to know if a near-death-experience
……………..was included in the price
or start singing I Dreamed A Dream
………………………………..right into his face
as we demand a fucking refund.
The Removal of Angelina Jolie’s Breasts
Two women facing each other
who got on at Blantyre
wearing glasses
are discussing Angelina Jolie’s two breasts
which were taken away yesterday
with Brad holding her hand
and saying
she had a nine in ten chance
of getting cancer
and there are no guarantees
about anything,
while at the same time,
on the other side of the world,
in Glasgow’s Buchanan Galleries
a man definitely jumped four floors
to his death
for a reason known only to him
as the train scrapes out of Cambuslang,
and the two women
begin to speak a bit quieter
as if
they know they’re being listened to
and I can only make out
the word Australia being said twice
and the three words Psychologically of help
being said once
with the wires swaying above the tracks outside
and the high-rises standing in the distance,
and I think of his manly broken back
and his surprised eyes,
and her flat scarred chest
and homeless breasts being burnt
in a hospital furnace,
becoming limitless untouchable energy
with the people on the shopping mall escalators
watching in, silence
EEGH EEGH EEGH EEGH
EEGH EEGH EEGH EEGH
someone’s left their car alarm on
outside the flats
……………………and it’s going
EEGH EEGH EEGH EEGH
EEGH EEGH EEGH EEGH
at spectacularly unpredictable intervals
…………and there’s no way to
EEGH EEGH EEGH EEGH
EEGH EEGH EEGH EEGH
………guess when it’s going to
EEGH EEGH EEGH EEGH
EEGH EEGH EEGH EEGH
happen next,
and everyone is obediently going insane
and the man who owns it
is probably away for the weekend
at some golf club
or sauna
…………..or lying dead on his
EEGH EEGH EEGH EEGH
EEGH EEGH EEGH EEGH
kitchen linoleum
with a fish burnt to a crisp in the oven.
and there are dark crescents
under the eyes
on the faces of haunted people
flattened against the windows,
and children are looking up and asking
when will the noise stop mummy?
and please make it go away daddy
and we’re all lying
awake at night
wondering when it’s going to go off again
as our harmony unravels
and anarchy reigns supreme,
and the days pass with nothing happening,
and people
start to believe again, believe that it’s
……………………..going to be
EEGH EEGH EEGH EEGH
EEGH EEGH EEGH EEGH
all right.
Set the Controls For the Heart of The Club Bar in Paisley
Scotland have just beaten Croatia 1-0
in Zagreb
when we least expect it,
and to add to
the amplified wash of unreality
the pub is now playing
back to back songs by Pink Floyd
beginning with
Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun
which I’ve definitely not heard
in a pub before
with Nick Mason’s moody voodoo drums
and Roger Waters’ mumbling zombie vocals,
and to enhance even more
the giddy sense of insanity
the barman offers me a choice
of lemon
or lime
to plop in my gin and tonic
which just doesn’t happen
in this town.
and Roger has quietly asked
is there anybody in there,
and we’re huddling in here like apes feeling
uncomfortably dumb
and wondering if
we imagined it all or someone put something
psychedelic in our drinks
as Roger philosophically winds things up
with
all that is gone ……all that’s to come ….
which is probably
a 0-0 draw with San Marino. |
Peycho Kanev
peychokanev@gmail.com
Bio (auto)
Peycho Kanev is the author of 4 poetry collections and two chapbooks. He has won several European awards for his poetry and he’s nominated for the Pushcart Award and Best of the Net. Translations of his books will be published soon in Italy, Poland and Russia. His poems have appeared in more than 900 literary magazines, such as: Poetry Quarterly, Evergreen Review, Columbia College Literary Review, Hawaii Review, Cordite Poetry Review, Sheepshead Review, Off the Coast, The Coachella Review, Two Thirds North, Sierra Nevada Review, The Cleveland Review and many others. He lives in Chicago, IL and in Sofia, Bulgaria.
The following work is Copyright © 2013, and owned by Peycho Kanev and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.
One Poet in Chicago
This city is scary and supreme.
Its shiny lakeshore with white yachts
and seagulls and herons tilting
quietly upon the marble waves.
The hard-blowing wind
licking the rind of the imposing trees.
Those crazy and beautiful people
walking up and down the streets,
as the Sears tower pierces the alabaster sky.
A long time ago, in some small house,
Carl Sandburg was writing his dreams.
Not too far away, Hemingway learned
his way with the shotgun.
This city of butchers, gangsters,
and sky-drinking poets.
This city of uncertainty
and misunderstood simplicity.
This city of fondness
and knives leading to oblivion.
But it is still early…
One of these days when you wake up with words
in your head transforming into money–
unallowable poet’s dreams…
God did not give His permission to each and every scrivener.
Cup of coffee or the unsolved color of the whiskey–
which absurd will the poet pick and choose?
This city will take care of it!
Back in the day, you could see the little Gwendolyn Brooks
skipping rope with the words forming in her head.
Now, the slam joints are full of screaming typesetters.
This is your place under the sun. City of destiny!
Do not leave it…
The stones of the ruined city wall
will never say: Goodbye!
I count to 11
the impossibility of life is in
his beauty:
the beauty is a flower in
the cemetery- new life
and old death:
dung-beetle pushing his own
little treasure,
and sunshine, always sunshine
why? I hit the window
and my phone starts to ring,
I count to 11
and it stops.
somebody wants to speak to me,
to listen to my voice, somebody needs me
why? I want to set on fire all the pigeons on
the square,
I want to drive my index finger on
the edge of the knife
I will send my love in a package
to Africa the phone is silent I water the flowers. |
