Sheena Blackhall Poems

I had a purple pilchard
It jumped off out the gate
And ran off with monkey
With a cerulean pate
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Hairy face, hairy face,
If tashes are your thing
Handlebar, Hitler
Chinese Manadrin
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The Busker
A busker who played the kazoo
While standing inside Belfast zoo
Was forced then to budge
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Maggot's End, Nether Wallop, Ottery St Mary
Upper Slaughter, Great Weeke, Martyr Worthy

Barton in the Beans & Queen Camel
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Industrial Estate
Acres of cars sit silent as cemetery graves
In orderly rows, slotted into allotted margins
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Edith Piaf: The Little Sparrow
Edith Gassion was born to a gypsy mother
An acrobat father. Reared in the squalor
Of Belleville, a Paris slum
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Five foot three, with bad skin, and ‘artistic temperament'
Beethoven, with his Graf piano
His ear trumpet, his chamber pot covered with music to smother the smell
This eccentric often dipped his head in cold water
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My mother loved cake stands and sheets of pure nylon
And hairnets and hankies for children for children to cry on
At midnight the macaroons danced with the scones
The sandwiches jived with the ham and bon-bons
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Undertakers assemble them like dolls
Waxed mannikins in a silk lined box
Dogs gnaw them with bared fangs
Seamen carve scrimshaw into them
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When I was small the sweet wind sang to me
Birch trees rattled their leaves like lisping tongues
The waves of the great river leapt up to greet me
Grasses stroked my legs when I walked through them
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