Smokeless Zone
Without chimney pots
the sooty mythology
of Father Christmas
would be written out
and B&E escapades
redefine Santa
as cheap housebreaker.
Milk and biscuits would be daubed
with anti-theft paint
and stark posters ask
“have you seen this reindeer team?”
Dogs would bark at vans
mistaken for sleighs.
Neighbourhood vigilantes
would aim for the skies
Neil Fulwood is co-editor, with David Sillitoe, of More Raw Material: work inspired by Alan Sillitoe (Lucifer Press, 2015), an anthology of prose, poetry, photography and artwork featuring 52 contributors, which took a year to bring to fruition. Neil intends to have a quiet Christmas, a drunken New Year, then undertake something equally time-consuming and over-ambitious in 2016
Whitethorn at Christmas
Christ the tiger
prowling, amber eyed,
in patchy winter snow.
The fetch and carry
of frugal life,
stilled to a single
frozen breath.
Low canal bridges,
snug whispering stone
offers hollow shelter
to the apostate,
or Judas,
seeking a suitable tree.
Whitethorn denies
the bowed head, bended knee
gospel of submission,
singing instead a pagan joy
sunlight, moonlight, fertility,
wide eyed and bare arsed
beneath drifting dandelion seed.
This morning a heron
in the blue eye of winter,
begging the question;
will I go gentle
in to that good night?
I will in me bollix.
Mick Corrigan lives in Ireland with Trish his lifer and several devious dogs. His debut collection Deep Fried Unicorn was published in 2014 by Rebel Poetry Ireland.