Texax 1940s – The Boy

They were mean critters
You’d never invite them to dinner;
tough, hard, fast, taller than me.
He was telling me of his childhood
on his granddad’s farm.
 
I could shoot a Jack Rabbit,
leaping at full speed by the time I was 4.
He grinned, In officer training
they classed me as a sharp shooter.
 
He told me how to kill a rattle snake,
to wave a hoe in front of the varmi’t
back and forth, back and forth, make it dizzy
lay its head on the ground
so you could chop it off.
Rattlers don’t die until the sun goes down.
We’d hang them on a fence
and they’d writhe until night.
 
The flies were fat, blue-black
and as big as peas.
You had to be quick
but I could snatch a handful
from the window pane
throw them to the floor, crack!
 
It was self-protection
the flies, jack rabbit, rattlers.
 
The pig pen was our rodeo.
Boy would they squeal,
twist, turn, run and buck.
We’d leap and most times
fall flat our faces, we aimed
to lie flat arms around them
or holding their ears.
We laughed and laughed –
it was such fun.
 
We were happy –
didn’t know we were dirt poor…
 

Anthony Fisher

published in Prosopisia, Vol VI No 2, 2013

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Londinium

Put your ear to the ground –
and hear the shouts of rotten flesh,
the clash of smith and wheel wright,
twist and stretch of the rope maker.
Your eyes will sting with the scent
of wood smoke, run with the bite
of ammonia from foetid urine.
 
Long below all this runs
the mark of Boudicca’s revenge
in the thin, red slice of burnt iron;
splitting a line of ash and clay
layered in the stones and tiles,
wood, old fires and bones.
 
Now squeezed by North and South
within its mud-soft lined canal;
the river once nurtured Neanderthal,
Homo Sapiens; lonely itinerants
drifting by for half a million years.
 
The first hut 15,000 years ago,
now a city of a myriad tongues
that adopts all who come –
hunter, farmer, the dispossessed.
 

Anthony Fisher

published in Prosopisia, Vol VI No 2, 2013

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Silas Jones

He was a small man, belted gabardine raincoat
and thirteen languages tucked around his person.
A fine hand disciplined: copper plate, italic,
sharp steel nib, dipped in iron blue ink,
smooth, white paper that crackled when folded.
Even in an unknown tongue it could be enjoyed
each word soaking in to the hand that stroked it.
 
One grey day I looked for Silas Jones
but all I found was a mist of languages
drifting in the Welsh air.
 

Anthony Fisher

published in Welsh Poetry Anthology, 2001

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The New Inn

Was once a man’s domain –
bright white-washed walls,
dulled, flake-painted sign –
Buckley’s fine Welsh bitter.
Through the small brown door
a beer-splashed, yellowed bar,
smoke of ages hanging in the air.
Square tables busy with cribbage,
dominoes, shove ha’penny
and just one grey woman,
shrinking behind her Guinness.
 
That’s Arthur’s drinking companion,
John told me. She’s my neighbour
a legend in the village, from the War.
Why? I was surprised. She’s so still,
doesn’t speak, moves only to drink.
Well, they tell me jeep-loads of GIs
came from the town to see her here.
She had a trick, standing on that table,
with the thick end of an empty bottle.
She then had sex with them all somewhere.
Yes, her and the Americans, we still talk of it.
 
I closed my eyes and am there as she
lifts her skirt, becomes Sheela Na Gig,
shouts… Look… I am the glory!
Was beautiful, proud Inanna roaring
Who is to plough my wet field?
 
It was the only time I saw her.
 

Anthony Fisher

published in Barnet Poetry Anthology, 2011,
ISBN 1-9-002872-69

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