Below are three poems forthcoming in Ben Stainton’s second book The Backlists (Knives Forks & Spoons Press). His poems have previously appeared in The Rialto, Horizon Review, Fuselit and SSYK (4).
At Saint Mary’s
the drink is cheap
red wine with a chunk of passion
fruit in it. Half the evening’s
unbridled
salad dressing
points > normal / abnormal
apples falling into bed > chatter
minus any debt to sense: faces
becoming identical
Rorschach tests / the room’s melody
(dissonant – atonal – bleep) sweetened
like sweet, tea. Two such people
exists {&} ghosts wait > in line
I hand her 3 small words on a playing card
red wine with a chunk of passion fruit in it
= love > a stolen earring / peanuts
becoming
eyes
Tasks
Create the perfect sandwich using only Kraft lose at least £25
before Lent learn to relish the taste of loss set up a foundation
for recovering chocoholics always wait for an opportune cough
before farting stop viewing breasts like televisions train voice to
employ the tone of others charm the pants off her quickly invent
a new dance using knives as props prevent the dark ballerina
from speaking my desktop is abnormal beg the Lord’s forgiveness
A Dream, Found in the Papers
I realise the severity of the situation
when she removes her underwear –
a wicker building where the vagina should be.
She is so utterly in control I apologise
for using the word vagina.
‘Have you ever considered italicising your sex life?’
Squeaking last-minute directions onto a whiteboard,
she sucks my clothes up a thin proboscis.
Sex Education needs a serious rethink, I think.
~
The river prepares its own version of the elapsed libretto,
attempting, once & for all, to quash those predictable
rumours. In the Citroen Dolly, we gradually accrue
a back-seat of lunatics. Feeling certain of my own insanity,
I offer to finance the building of a halfway house
for the socially bereft. ‘We’ll call it The Lunatic Hotel!’
Her elongated, inky tentacle acquires my neck,
as if to say ‘Nothing will harm you, darling.’
~
She left in a flurry of penny sweets.
I made a home for apathy in the white paper bag.
A tree, or 3 silkscreen prints resembling it, symbolised
oh, everything, I guess.
