Today’s choice
Previous poems
Frank Phelan
Renegade Voices
I am most visceral
when being disarmed
by a song, a lyric
written and sung…
in the broad New Yawk vowels
of Dean Friedman.
The scowl of Dylan.
The scat and growl
of George Ivan.
Matthew Devereux’s demonic staccato.
Pierce Turner scaling a single word
to a symphony of syllables.
These renegade bastard voices
of unconvention
dismantle the notion
of the perfectly formed,
crafted to within an inch of bland.
The very sheen of it dimming the soul of it.
Blunting the grit and sharp edge
of what it means
to be truly alive.
Frank Phelan is a Dublin born writer living in County Kildare, Ireland. His work has appeared in a broad range of print and on-line journals across Ireland, America and the UK. His work has been shortlisted and won awards the UK and The Republic of Ireland
On the tenth day of Christmas, we bring you Jenny McRobert, Angela Topping and Maria C. McCarthy
The tree makes its way into the garden
looms at the window, a disconsolate ghost
On the ninth day of Christmas, we bring you Caroline Smith, Bec Mackenzie and David Keyworth
After the lunch he gets his folder
of Christmas games.
On the eighth day of Christmas, we bring you Em Gray, Abigail Ottley and Emma Simon
And now you’re half a spin of the world away,
somewhere I’ve never been, like Narnia . . .
On the seventh day of Christmas, we bring you Sue Burge, Erica Hesketh and Max Wallis
Once there was nothing sweeter than snow
On the sixth day of Christmas, we bring you Amy Rafferty, Tim Kiely and D.A.Prince
We pick up where you left off, searching still,
choosing random cards from a dealer’s deck:
twenty-one crows in a night-time tree,
deep within the dark, with all that chatter
On the fifth day of Christmas, we bring you Paul McGrane, Kevin Reid and Helen Evans
As regular as Santa Claus, she’d call
around at Christmas, the next-door neighbour
and my Sunday school teacher, Mrs Williams.
On the fourth day of Christmas, we bring you Leusa Lloyd, Lydia Benson and Charlotte Johnson
It is always Christmas in the loft
On the third day of Christmas, we bring you K. S. Moore, Kate Noakes and Rachael Smart
Picture this:
little witch girl
in Alaskan wilderness.
On the second day of Christmas, we bring you Gill McEvoy, Rachel Burns and Cindy Botha
On the way to the registry office it snows, flecks of white like spittle hitting the steamed-up bus windows, I worry the petals from my wedding posy.