Bad Quarto
It seems my Folio’s out of joint
with the version that you scribbled down
while sub-plots drew the spot from kings
and courtiers waltzed on from the wings
or were bottled off by groundlings.
My favourite scene? The woodland spree
when, sappily, I carved your name
into the bark of every tree
and vowed I’d never love again
if love were sundered by Act III.
But in the Quarto that you stage
you leave the bloody business on the page:
of how I called the surgeons round
to hack the lumber to the ground,
revealing five pale rings per trunk,
scorching the salted earth’s black stumps.
Simon Barraclough
An everyday liturgy
I wouldn’t want to be you now, not even now
At this festive time of year, when you hit the headlines
In glitter and guilt, and with our sins of omission we trudge
Into dank stone gatherings of the annually faithful.
I wouldn’t want to see all this through your eyes, this life
Of shoppers, sinners, squanderers, and savers (but few saviours;
It’s not a well–paying position these days and we tend
To hack at the clay feet of former gods and nearly all idols).
I wouldn’t want to feel what you feel, or what you ever felt,
That height of altruism being beyond me, my days mostly spent
Keeping heads above water and wolves from the door,
Making ends meet and not meeting my maker just yet, but
Wondering all the same if you are somewhere, still, like me,
Clinging to a cross and hurling imprecations at the sky.
Brett Hardman
* Simon Barraclough is the author of the Forward-shortlisted Los Alamos Mon Amour (Salt Publishing, 2008) and the limited edition boxed mini-book, Bonjour Tetris (Penned in the Margins, 2010). Bad Quarto' is published in 'Bonjour Tetris'
*Brett Hardman is a
British-Canadian. She recently completed the Bath Spa MA Creative
Writing, lives in Wiltshire with her husband, and is writing a
collection of short stories based on her experiences working at
racetracks in North America.
