{"id":941,"date":"2010-12-26T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-26T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=941"},"modified":"2020-12-14T11:14:53","modified_gmt":"2020-12-14T11:14:53","slug":"the-second-day-of-christmas-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/the-second-day-of-christmas-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Second Day of Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christmas Day<\/span>

Blackbirds here again,<\/span>
hopping across the lawn,<\/span>
signal that this is<\/span>
a day like any other<\/span>
and all is right with the world \u2013<\/span>

despite water,<\/span>
coming through the ceiling,<\/span>
and grandma directing my wife <\/span>
and daughter with her stick, <\/span>
with boxes to catch the drips.<\/span>

Back and forth they hop, <\/span>
pecking clean upturned apple halves,<\/span>
turned to coracles of skin;<\/span>
stripped to the core and skewered, <\/span>
as by a mast.<\/span>

The female has brown feathers<\/span>
and is more diffident than him.<\/span>
He runs, hands clasped behind his back, <\/span>
chasing away all competition, <\/span>
however familial; beak thrust <\/span>

out in front, its orange<\/span>
the means of telling him apart, <\/span>
as if its orange-ness <\/span>
is what is left when black<\/span>
is washed away by apple juice.<\/span>

We set off, belatedly, for lunch, <\/span>
a plumber having finally fixed the leak,<\/span>
Dad, head down, nose pushed <\/span>
confidently in front, hands behind his back,<\/span>
re-buoyed by alcohol.<\/span>


Phil Barrett<\/span>



Jingle bells and Highballs<\/span>

it’s colder than a snow angel on PCP right now.<\/span>
I’m trippin so hard. Jimmy is laughing because<\/span>
I’m making tiny\u00a0 pimento cheese sandwiches <\/span>
in my underwear. Jimmy’s kind of cute when<\/span>
he laughs. He has this wicked grin and his <\/span>
nose wrinkles up. Sometimes he laughs so hard<\/span>
he nearly hyperventilates. We’ve been drinking<\/span>
gin and tonic out of art deco highball glasses<\/span>
I stole from an old lady I used to work for.<\/span>
I take a bite of the sandwich after I pick off the<\/span>
crust and Jimmy wipes some Pimento Cheese<\/span>
from my mouth. Karen Carpenter is singing<\/span>
a Christmas song on Jimmy’s flat screen.<\/span>
Merry Christmas Darling… she croons.<\/span>
Karen didn’t want Pimento Cheese sandwiches,<\/span>
I tell Jimmy. She starved herself.<\/span>
That’s her tough luck, he says, <\/span>
eating another sandwich in practically one bite.<\/span>
hey, I’m the queen of tiny sandwiches,<\/span>
I tell him. Wheres my crown? where’s my<\/span>
damn crown? Jimmy starts laughing again.<\/span>
He grabs the remote and changes the channel.<\/span>
Unfortunately, it’s another crappy Christmas re-run.<\/span>

\n
Melanie Brown<\/span>

\n

\nRomance in Middle Age??<\/span>

I should like to have been the ghost at your feast,?<\/span>
to have beckoned to you with a long, white,?<\/span>
red-tipped finger, to come with me, away, away.??<\/span>

Me in my red silk dress flowing to the ground,?<\/span>
swishing as I walked, cut to the waist at the back?<\/span>
framing my luscious curves, the delicate pearls of spine;<\/span>
?my jet hair loose and sleek. ??<\/span>

I would have taken you?<\/span>
to the roof to swirl in a waltz far above the city,?<\/span>
your hand firm on my waist. We would have been magnificent. ??<\/span>

You would have come with me willingly, leaving?<\/span>
your dull company. You wouldn\u2019t have minded the roof.??<\/span>

The red dress would have drawn favour. Revellers<\/span>
?in the street below would have pointed at the couple<\/span>
?roof-dancing in winter, domed by stars.<\/span>


Angela Topping<\/span>

\n

*Phil Barrett<\/span> trained as a visual artist, with a career spent largely
\nteaching Art and Design. Since early retirement he has led poetry
\nworkshops in Primary and Secondary Schools. He has won prizes for his
\npoetry \u2013 most recently 2009 Barnet Open and joint 2nd Prize 2009
\nRavenglass Competition\u00a0 \u2013 with a poem in the 2010 Word Aid Anthology
\n\u2018Did I Tell You?\u2019 \u2013 1 31 poems for Children in Need.<\/span>

*Melanie Browne<\/span>\u00a0 writes poetry and fiction. She is a former art teacher
\nnow raising her three children with her husband in Texas. She is the
\nfounding editor of a new online journal The Literary Burlesque<\/span><\/a>.
\nShe has writing at various places on
\nthe web such as\u00a0 Bartleby- Snopes,Word Riot, and 34th Parallel.<\/span>

*Angela Topping<\/span><\/a> lives in Cheshire and has four solo collections, including The New Generation, for children, (Salt 2010). Forthcoming in 2011 is a chapbook, I Sing of Bricks<\/span> from Salt, and a sequence from Rack Press called Catching On<\/span>. <\/span>
<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christmas DayBlackbirds here again,hopping across the lawn,signal that this isa day like any otherand all is right with the world \u2013despite water,coming through the ceiling,and grandma directing my wife and daughter with her stick, with boxes to catch the drips.Back and forth they hop, pecking clean upturned apple halves,turned to coracles of skin;stripped to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-twelve-days-of-christmas-2010"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=941"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22147,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941\/revisions\/22147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}