Poetry mixtape for April 2010

Being the third in a list of poems what I found in the interwebs that I think well of:

The Laugh Track of their Sloppy Fists – Sean M. Whelan

I can hear them at the front door.
They keep bangin’ at it with their sloppy fists.
I think they want something from me.
They’re like telemarketers, but with less table manners.

Sean M.’s contribution to cordite’s recent zombie-themed issue is short, wry, and to the point. It plays funny-buggers with the zombie apocalypse trope and weaves in some nice pop cultural references without veering too far down the cliched path of unoriginal observational zombie comedy.

Boxes (2) – Joanna Penn Cooper

Of these two neat little concrete poems, it’s “Boxes (2)” that grabs me more with its existentially recursive loop and evocation of those origami fortune-telling toys everyone was making back in primary school.

Before We All Hung Out in Cafes – Lynn Davidson

At primary school on the monkey bars
we’d hang, aching, from the middle rung

And speaking of primary school, here’s something else I remember from my single-digit years. These days as a dad I’m back among the play equipment and sad to say I’m no longer spry enough to even make it halfway across. I pretty much every time have to drop to the tanbark on my knees after only three rungs.

Apology + Opportunity – Gabe Durham

Have I been in love? I would hesitate and then say yes. But there is love and there is the ineffable mountain you’re scaling. To review: you two share the same favorite show, favorite movie, favorite band, favorite song, you both run track, and you both find camp a little immature.

I’m gonna nick this one from the fiction pile, totally ignoring the fact that it’s been published by a journal called NANO fiction, and claim it for the poetry team by citing the prose-poem rule because it’s got such an impeccable balance between creepy and sweetly romantic that I still don’t know which one it really is.

6 Ox Poems – Ryan Ridge

Message From Ox

XOXO Ox

I just thought this one was cute. The thought of an ox writing a mash note tickles me the right way. “Oxen” and “Ox Porn” are nice and wordplay-y too.

The Triantiwontigongolope – CJ Dennis

There’s a very funny insect that you do not often spy,
And it isn’t quite a spider, and it isn’t quite a fly;
It is something like a beetle, and a little like a bee,
But nothing like a wooly grub that climbs upon a tree.

A nice Classic OzPo note to end this mixtape on, “The Triantiwontigongolope” is one of the wonderful nonsense poems in Dennis’s A Book for Kids, which we’ve just started reading to our three-and-a-half-year-old. She’s been raised on a reading diet that includes fair-sized portions of Lear and Carroll, and Dennis’s lovely, silly, jaunty, playful poems sit perfectly alongside. Once again Mr. Dennis’s impeccable and addictive rhythms are evident.

For those who wish to know exactly what a triantiwontigongolope looks like, I would direct you to this page, in particular Ms. Meg Ellis-Drury’s colourful rendition.