Tag Archives: families

Poem: ‘Family Reunion’

2 Replies

Once we were all one tribe, our branch that broke
from those who now are bonobos and chimps;
but wandered off when restlessness awoke,
went poking into any land we’d glimpse,
new seas, new clime.
Now: family reunion time!

We’ve found each other, these last centuries,
gone to each other’s homes for ill or good,
marrying cousins from across those seas
in worlds of travel, music, football, food:
sing! ring! chant! chime!
It’s family reunion time!

Aggressive individuals still fight,
still work to drag their group into a brawl,
but no one any longer has the might
to be successful when confronting all.
War’s now a crime.
It’s family reunion time!

We merge by TV, plane and internet,
we dye and body-mod against the flow
of currents mixing us to one fixed set,
and build a culture of both yes and no,
crass and sublime.
It’s family reunion time!

Once more we’re all a family; once more
some will roam out across the galaxy,
and we will grow apart, till on some shore
of spiral arms we’ll meet, first disagree…
shift paradigm…
then… family reunion time!

*****

Ancient history and far-future science fiction are all part of the same story, the same continuum, of equal interest to me. This poem was published in Snakeskin 303, i.e. February 2023 – thanks, George Simmers! (And the good news is that the Snakeskin Archive – decades of good poetry – is now functioning again!)

Photos: “Notting Hill Carnival 2008” by Lplatebigcheese is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Tom Vaughan, ‘Happiness’

Leave a reply

It’s easy to forget they’d fought a war:
his father drowned, half-brother bayoneted;
her kilted sibling captured at Dunkirk,
locked up for five long years. But yes they met

in uniform, lost half their friends, before
the normal world re-started when they wed:
mortgage; children; grinding office work –
all I suppose they wanted when they set

out as a couple. We must have been a shock:
busting their rulebook; scornful of sacrifice;
mocking their past and their belief in ‘progress’;

too young, too smashed, too angry to unlock
their silence, or to understand the price
they’d paid for what they’d still call happiness.

Tom Vaughan writes: “I chose Happiness it because I hope it gets right not just my own retrospective feelings about my parents, but also something more general about the generational shift between those who went through WW2 in their youth, and their less-tested offspring.

Secondly, because it’s a sonnet (a favourite form of mine), but in what I call a ‘roller’ rhyming (not always full rhymes) pattern, which tries to pull the reader down to the final line with a lurch which I hope is also of the emotions.

It was published in Dream Catcher in 2016, but has been picked up a couple of times elsewhere since then, including in your Families and Other Fiascoes chapbook.”

Tom Vaughan is not the real name of a poet whose previous publications include a novel and two poetry pamphlets (A Sampler, 2010, and Envoy, 2013, both published by HappenStance). His poems have been published in a range of poetry magazines, including several of the Potcake Chapbooks:
Careers and Other Catastrophes
Familes and Other Fiascoes
Strip Down
Houses and Homes Forever
Travels and Travails.
He currently lives and works in London.
https://tomvaughan.website

Poem: “Head of the Table”

Leave a reply

Your grandparents die
And your children are born;
Then your parents die
Then grandchildren are born;
And you move one more seat
Round the mad table
To the head of the table,
At which point you’re expected to go.

As when the crow came
Wild, not tame – all the same
It cawed you the news
That confirmed death and time;
So when your time comes
And you feel in your bones
That the body is over
Where will you, the guest, go?

Then bring food and drink!
Glasses clink! Glance and wink
As you move to the brink
Of eternity.
Who knows what follows next?
“Afterlife” is absurd –
But then all life’s absurd –
We just know, when it’s time, that we go.

This is about as religious as I’ve found myself in the past 30 or 40 years – in other words, I waver between mild atheism (“None of this God stuff makes sense”) and militant agnosticism (“I don’t know, and neither do you.”) But at least you have a seat at the table! Enjoy the party while you can (preferably while being pleasant to others).

Originally published in Snakeskin No. 232 (or #232).

Formal Launch: Potcake Chapbook 4 – Families and Other Fiascoes

Leave a reply

The fourth Potcake Chapbook is now launched into the wide world, with its contributors coming from England, Wales, Greece, the Netherlands, Canada, and coast to coast in the US.

04 Families and Other FiascoesPoets new to this series are, in order of appearance, Maryann Corbett, Vera Ignatowitsch, Kathryn Jacobs, Anthony Lombardy, Susan de Sola, Jane Blanchard and Michael R. Burch.  A glance at their profiles in Sampson Low’s Potcake Poets page will show you they include editors at Able Muse, Better Than Starbucks, The Hypertexts and The Road Not Taken, as well as various prizewinners.

Returning contributors are A.E. Stallings, Ed Conti, Tom Vaughan, Ann Drysdale, Gail White and Chris O’Carroll, who of course can boast their own editing and prizewinning. And returning as well is the artwork of Alban Low.

It’s hard to do justice to families in a mere chapbook. Not only are there dozens of possible family relationships (and the number is actively increasing thanks to both social changes and biotech developments), but each of those relationships can close or distant, sweet or bitter, simple or complex, present or merely remembered. It requires science fiction to describe an individual entirely without a family.

This chapbook touches on a great deal, but by no means all, of what “family” means. Send a copy to someone who appreciates the bittersweetness that accompanies family love, up and down the generations.

Call for Submissions: Careers, Families

Leave a reply

The next titles in the Potcake Chapbooks series are tentatively named “Careers and Other Catastrophes” and “Families and Other Fiascoes”. This is a call for submissions to them.

Potcake Chapbooks

Poems should be in formal verse, from 2 to 24 lines in length preferred but up to 50 lines possible, witty, vivid, elegant, and previously published.  Contributors receive five copies, and a discounted rate on additional purchases.

By submitting you acknowledge you are the sole author and give us the right to publish your poem; you retain copyright. Please identify the place of prior publication so that we can acknowledge it. Simultaneous submissions are fine. The chapbooks are scheduled for publication in January/February 2019.

Email in a doc file to robinhelweglarsen -at- gmail.com