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WASPS
by Maria Jastrzębska
Sarwa, says be kind
to the wasps, show respect.
They’re at the end of their lives
just looking for some sweetness
before they die. Give them
what they want. I don’t think so,
I say, remembering one that crawled
into my can of Pepsi, the way
my lip swelled up that time.
And how come he notices
wasps but can’t see Govinda -
once Molly - worn out with looking
for their son Ramen, who’s twelve,
stoned three days in a row
while Sarwa sits drumming
in the late summer sun at Glastonbury.
Even so, for a moment the world
shifts on its axis, as one by one
the wasps land on my apple, caught
in rapturous absorption.
I can even see the delicacy
of their wings.
But when Govinda finally packs
her bags to leave him,
it’s Sarwa who looks up
as if he’d just been stung.
Laura of the tangents
from The Shadow Thorns sequence
by Alan Morrison
Laura ambles along paths of tangent,
Garbled thoughts of jarred arrangement
Babble to brooks of golden derangement,
Disarming shallows, alternately plangent,
Then gushing with gusto, rapid salient
Flashes of sunlight, a dazzling raiment —
Insights hit the surging waters of her
Coursing, curiouser and curiouser:
Our world’s becoming rounder and rounder
But we’re becoming squarer and squarer —
We’re on a collision course with nature
Because we can’t fit into the future...
And other pearls of upside-down wisdom,
Stepping tropes crossing imponderable ponds,
Archipelagos of lapsed logic, long
Spindly islands of lilied digressions
In limpid nostalgia’s padded sarong
Glimpsed in the murk of a corroding gong —
Her head’s half-immersed unreflecting lake
Lodged in her lobes like a clattering plate
On a sideboard that seems to levitate
In a plummeting parlour — Mustn’t be late,
This twitching white rabbit’s rattling prate,
Scratching in shadow, a scurrying freight,
Thumping about in a dumb-waiter burrow;
Plum role in Carroll’s obscurest last bow,
Alice on the Acute Ward — curls her toes
At her EAT ME meds and DRINK ME depots:
Magical jabs that make her shrink or grow —
Things keep changing size; that’s good I
suppose...
Waterloo Press
Waterloo Press offers readers an eclectic list of the most inventive and stimulating poetry from the UK and abroad. Our beautifully designed books range from lost modernist classics to translations of senior international poets and vibrant collections by the best young British poets around.
Waterloo Press brings radical and marginalised voices to the fore, mirroring the aesthetic value of their work in outstanding book design, including dust jackets; large font; and original artwork for the covers. With its diverse and growing list, Waterloo Press breaks down the borders between contemporary schools of poetry, to forge a new poetics based on respect for craft, innovation and the challenge of real communication.
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