Fairground colours fade with sunlight;
chrome still glints, but tawdry pastels
replace pounding neon, and disproportioned
Disney silhouettes pale under ragged awnings.
(Notes for a poem, rather than a finished piece.)
Continue reading “fairground colours”
I don’t have many more shooting stars poems to post on the blog, but there are other things being celebrated this weekend, as well as the perseids.
It’s been several years since I’ve spent August in Spain, as I’ve attended the Swanwick Writers’ Summer School, both as participant and as course leader, since I first won a place some years ago.
Before that, though, I was living in Madrid, and August was important en mi barrio for la fiesta de la Paloma. This year, Monday 15th August will be a fiesta nacional (la Asunción de la Virgen), and in her honour I have dug out this old poem. It was first published in the New Entertainer, I think, when I was writing my Capital Letters column:
Continue reading “stars and doves”
Today is January 6th: el día de Reyes, the day when Spanish children finally get their Christmas presents. (Although we were told that Santa took gifts to children all round the world, he doesn’t visit many houses in Spain as he leaves it to the Magi to deliver the parcels – or coal for those who’ve been naughty – on Twelfth Night.)
Continue reading “kings, sages and magicians”
The fact that it’s almost Christmas doesn’t mean I am any less busy, so, having no time to write, here’s a festive photo:
And an old, but seasonal, poem, slightly tinkered with. Well, it was a poem with line breaks, but the page format splits the long lines so awkardly I’ve given up and pretended it’s just prose:
Continue reading “that time of year”
This should, of course, have been posted a couple of days ago for the fiesta de la inmaculada concepción on the 8th, but I’d completely forgotten its existence. It was written as an example of ekphrasis – in this case, a poem inspired by a painting – and I think for once it’s absolutely clear that I am not the narrator.
Es injusto, ¿sabes? They’ve hung me here,
expect me to balance on this blue-green planet,
not to slip and do myself a permanent
impaled on that luna creciente, despite the worm
at my feet and this beastly little cherub
pulling at my cloak while his colegas try
and sneak a peek up under my robe;
I’m pretty sure that even that one
over on your right who’s looking
rather more demure is actually
checking in the mirror, just in case
he gets a better view.
As for the clothes, ¡qué asco
de ropa me han dado! Couldn’t they afford
a bit of lapis lazuli? They call me
“Queen of Heaven” and yet they dress me
in the dowdiest of drab without a flounce
or furbelow. It’s no good telling me
my sandals have peep toes – sin plataformas,
ni tacones they’re not exactly what you’d call
“letizios”, now, are they? And what about
that blessed bird? Everybody thinks
that it’s a crown of stars I’m wearing, whereas,
in fact, it’s all the good-luck guano
Paloma, there, has found it in her sacred corazón
– or elsewhere – to contribute to this travesty
of taste. No es justo, like I said;
it isn’t fair: here I am, in Spain, hung
on the Prado wall, while out there
in the street, they’re living la movida Madrileña.
Can’t anybody see I’d really rather be
a flamenco dancer?
don't confuse the narrator 