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Second Light Network Enfield Poets Shortlands Poetry Circle

poetry pRO     Bucharest visit
2016, 6 poets anthology

Poets: browse the list

  

ppf SHOP ONLINE      MEMBERS’ EVENTS     MEMBERS’ COMPS & CALLS May26: Frogmore
 
see/hear: Listen to Patrick B Osada reading his poem On the Red Light

donations will be very gratefully received.

latest on site:
   Joseph Long
   Peter Ualrig
       Kennedy
   Judith Wozniak

latest new pages:
   Dennis Evans
   Dorothy Yamamoto
   Dennis Tomlinson
   Ruth O’Callaghan (biog)
   Margaret Wilmot

COMPS & CALLS:
May 26: Frogmore

latest comp results:
   Frogmore 2025

selection of books:
   ppf shop online

previous projects:
   Blyth Valley Radio
   poetry tREnD

featured poet – Angela Kirby


Angela Kirby

 

Mr Panutka’s finest hour

Mr. Panutka purses his mouth
and, after some thought,
moves two pins
an infinitesimal distance
somewhere to the south
of a left shoulder-blade
as, on tiptoe, he circles
the general and head on one side
runs his eyes, knowing as a starling’s,
across collar, vents, button-holes,
lapels, appraising the miracle,
this cut of the cloth, this way
he has persuaded it to hang,
mercifully by-passing
that which the general
still thinks of as his waist
and this is Mr. Panutka’s finest hour,
this, he realises now,
is what he was born for –
to measure, cut and fit,
to tack and sew these fragile threads
to-and-fro across his President’s
dress uniform in which,
very soon, though Mr. Panutka
does not yet know this,
General Ramon Garcia Ramirez
will be shot, at ten o’clock exactly
on the morning of June the fifth,
by one of the mothers
whose sons he tortured
and, smiling over his coffee,
fed to the flesh-eaters
in his shimmering lily pool.
 

Angela Kirby

recommended, National Poetry competition, 2003;
published in collection, Mr. Irresistible, Shoestring Press, 2005