Issue 25: David Greenslade
Tonypandy Ciao! (for James Green)
Handshakes go around
kisses on both cheeks
but you’ve never learned
to say goodbye
until you’ve heard
the Tonypandy ciao!
Shop doorbell rattle/jingles
and the head waiter bows
we’ve had one last drink
in the barnyard
pledged our souls
complimented dogs and cows
but you’ve never learned
to say goodbye
until you’ve heard
the Tonypandy caio!
Ciao Vasile! Ciao Iestyn!
Ciao Ahmed! Ciao Miguel!
Ciao Nino! Ciao, ciao, ciao!
Letters
Just before opening my eyes I receive
a letter from Desmond Morris.
Idle, living in a lighthouse,
I write to people I admire
and wait for a reply – Bobi Jones
replied, Robert Bly, Gerallt Lloyd
Owen, David Ignatow, Lopez Pedraza,
Russell Edson, Ron Padgett,
Marie Louise von France, Norman
Wisdom & more. Desmond
writes in large loops
using a broad felt-tip pen,
squeezing an extra message
along the franking
waves, between the postage stamps
and top of the envelope –
Surrealism is Alive and Well
in Wales.
Pembroke Potatoes
I love buying potatoes
and today I had a real choice –
spuds from Pembroke, Cornwall
Cyprus, Egypt and . . . unexpectedly,
Ukraine!
I choose Cyprus. Complicated.
Some mainland shippers wash potatoes
in red mud to pass them off as Cyprus. And
if I so much as whisper the word Armenia
this could release a potato fatwah
while dissident Turkish writers
study fish and chips in Cardiff.
I can show you photographs of exiled
poet Nazim Hikmet with Mihai
Sadoveanu (and Pablo Neruda) in Falticeni, Romania.
Potatoes still seem generally relaxed
despite being asked to join
some hefty, poetry inspectors
in an ominously opulent ‘therapy’ room.
Even in a Country (for LR)
Even in a country
as small as this
there’s room for an ego
as damaging as yours.
Our agents spotted you
dusting spiders’
webs from inside
your mutton knees
designed to trap
and sabotage
until the last,
the very last
when you returned
to Luton (Exeter, Los Angeles, Oxford etc)
having well and truly
screwed things up
down Cardiff way.
Baltic
This dry, relentless
Baltic wind
scorches when what
we’re used to in Tir Iarll
are misty cardigans at twilight,
morning cloud inversions between
Blaenau and Bro.
Gardens withered
and the fields crave driven
moisture up from Swansea Bay,
Atlantic needles blown
through clothes and skin
add white to hawthorn
green to ivy, blue shrimp
our shingled lips
whenever welcome rain
hydrates the thirsty hills.
Tir Iarll, Blaenau, Bro – areas in south Wales
Twins / Efeilliaid
Searching for the right word
in an awkward situation – Welsh
linguistic buffers come in handy – especially
faces I’ve known since school,
but their names are just forgotten.
After all these years
I can hardly greet the village
twins with a vacant stare. This
is where, swivelling between
poles of the dizzy past,
plural ‘you’ must do, because I’m
impressed how enthusiastically
they remember mine. I’m sure
that as soon as we say goodbye
one will finish the sentence
of the other, “He’s
forgotten who
we
. . . ”
David Greenslade (b. 1952) was born and still lives in Cefn Cribbwr, a village near Bridgend. Bilingual, he has travelled widely and worked in the USA, Japan, and Oman as a teacher of English. He is a prolific and versatile writer with a marked interest both in used and usable material objects (diagrams, tools, vegetables, signs) and surrealism. He is committed to collaboration, and often works with filmmakers, performers and visual artists.
His many books include Each Broken Object (2000, Two Rivers Press), Adventure Holiday (2007, Parthian), Lyrical Diagrams (2012, Shearsman), Signs Like These (2015, Aquifer), and Objects from the Footcopier (2017, Red Ceilings). His most recent publication is Imagined Invited (2020, Hafan), an anthology of poems describing imaginary meals illustrated with surrealist collages by Mark Sanders. He is currently preparing a new collection titled Full Pareidolia which ‘takes visual and aural pareidolia [creative misperceptions] as an opportunity for adding grease and soap to already slippery words.’
Copyright © 2021 by David Greenslade, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.
