Poem of the Month June 2013
Poem of the Month January 2013
SEASIDE TOWN
Stretching back
The seaside town’s lifeblood
Flows on tarmac veins
Sluggishly.
A hundred roads lead to the heart
That is beating to the sound
Of slot machines and bingo halls
Where student callers clickety click
Their way through summer seasons
And a thousand teddy bears change hands.
Hear the crazy-golf ball’s hollow rattle
Through miniature windmills
And monkeys’ mouths, 32 over par
Never mind it’s the holiday mood
And the whine of distant dodgems slowing down
Somewhere a clown laughs.
See the crowds along the front
Lapping idly over stone shop doorways
Between the swaying postcard racks
And plastic world cup footballs
Over squashed chips and shattered
Ice-cream cones.
The white stuff melts
Into pavement cracks,
Is licked by dogs
And the beach,
The dark part for cricket where the spinning
Tennis ball beats Jimmy’s forward defensive
With the spade and mother gets another turn
With the spade and mother gets another turn
Even though the bucket is scattered in the sand.
A six into the sea and the ball returns
Heavy and dripping like a sponge
And over there
In the dry cigarette ended sand
Oiled bodies glint
In the occasional sun,
Which all day long is dodging
The next malignant cloud.
The final sandwich is besieged.
Transistor radios capsize
And are filled with sand.
Periodically naked babies cry.
Everywhere marauding wasps
Suck away the last sweetness
And inadequate sandcastles
Topple beneath the encroaching tide
- David Tunaley
Poem of the Month January 2013
3.15 am - thoughts...
the spring has gone out of my step
winter is creeping into my toes
frosting over my arches
sliding up my achilles tendons
pausing icily on my kneecaps
building snow drifts on my thighs
cracking ice floes on my abdomen
marking fern patterns on my stomach
piling sleet between my breasts.
But under all that my heart still beats.
Anna Cheetham 4.1.2013
Anna has been writing poetry since the 70s concerned with CND, peace, art and relationships . Following a mature degree - Loughbrough, Fine Art Sculpture - has displayed poems alongside art works; read them on Lincoln Memorial steps and outside Congress, Washington. In Coventry Cathedral and, by others, Norwich Cathedral. In 2009 started workshops at Leicester Poetry Soc, but switched to Soundswrite Women's workshops.
Published - Leicester CND's newsletter + pinned to the fences at bases.
Sanity Magazine National Poetry Comp. -2nd Prize for "40 Year Vigil" - 1989
Cat Lovers Against the Bomb Calendar /February , USA 1990
The Best of Poetry now 1991
Quaker Voices October 2008
Soundswrite Anthology 2011