John Mason
Priority Viewing
In the middle of prime-time cops and robbers,
corpses at crime scenes, autopsies – to news:
to wander-witted old men
roaming blood-puddled streets, calling
the names of sons, grandsons and Allah;
veiled women wail, hands raised in the air
calling down vengeance on the killers of husbands,
children who bullet-riddled, broken
lie strewn untreated in ruins; young men
brazen-faced or scarfed fire pistols, rifles,
threaten tanks with slogans, stand
in streets fool-hardy, tempting martyrdom;
what can be done?
Back to home-grown dramas,
celebrity disasters, woes
of split ends, dropped consonants,
pains of crashed marriages, relocations,
failed cookery skills, renovations,
body-shape hells;
no-one cares, really cares.
Edited version after peer review at Cannon Poets 4 March 2012
Page(s) 33
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The