Tag Archives: Snakeskin

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, ‘Qué hermoso es ver el día’, translated by Paul Burgess

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Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (1836-1870)

How beautiful to view the crown
of fire encircling day, to watch its rise,
to see its kiss illuminate
the brilliant waves, its blaze ignite the skies!

How beautiful in gloomy fall
to drink perfume from flower petals still
a little moist from morning rain,
to breathe in sweetness ‘til you’ve had your fill!

How beautiful to watch as white
descends in silent flakes of powdered snow,
to gaze at crimson tongues that stir
within the hearth that frames their crackling glow!

How beautiful when feeling tired
to rest a snoring head on pillows’ fluff,
to eat and drink and fatten up!
And what a shame these things are not enough!

*****

Paul Burgess writes: “Instead of providing a strict, academic translation, I have sought to recreate the experience of reading Bécquer. While recognizing that this is “my” Bécquer, I hope that this version will help contemporary English speakers enjoy the nearly untranslatable musicality and lyricism of one of the finest lyric poets to have ever written in Spanish.”

‘A Translation from Bécquer’ was originally published in Snakeskin.

Rima LXVII: Qué hermoso es ver el día

¡Qué hermoso es ver el día
coronado de fuego levantarse
y a su beso de lumbre
brillar las olas y encenderse el aire!

¡Qué hermoso es, tras la lluvia
del triste otoño en la azulada tarde,
de las húmedas flores
el perfume aspirar hasta saciarse!

¡Qué hermoso es cuando en copos
la blanca nieve silenciosa cae,
de las inquietas llamas
ver las rojizas lenguas agitarse!

¡Qué hermoso es cuando hay sueño
dormir bien… y roncar como un sochantre…
Y comer… y engordar… y qué desgracia
que esto sólo no baste!

Paul Burgess is the sole proprietor of a business in Lexington, Kentucky that offers ESL classes in addition to English, Japanese, and Spanish-language translation and interpretation services. He has contributed work to Blue Unicorn, The Road Not Taken, Light, The Orchards, Snakeskin, Pulsebeat, Lighten Up Online, Apricity, Star*Line, Asses of Parnassus, The New Verse News, and many other publications.

Using form: George Simmers, ‘A Triumphal Ode’

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decorative

A TRIUMPHAL ODE
Humbly Inſcribed to the Occaſion of The moſt Joyous and Auspicious ARRIVAL of
ANDREW MOUNTBATTEN-WINDSOR, Eſq.
at His Majeſty’s PRISON of BRIXTON
Composed with all due Solemnity & Pomp
and designed to be ſet to Muſick by
the late Great GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL

All the echoing prison round
Let great tumultuous welcome sound.
Let each incarcerated fellow
Loud and jubilantly bellow.
Let there be no dereliction;
Convicts, show your true conviction
In strong words and in minatory songs
That he is now where he belongs.

Let there be all kinds of musical cacophonies
Let there be mighty rattling of warders’ keys
Let there be synchronised humming of drug-transporting drones
Let them sound, the unharmonious ringtones of contraband phones
Let noise be noise in our unanimous celebration
Of this long-overdue incarceration.

He comes! Let every crooked eye be fixed on
The arrival of Mr Mountbatten-Windsor at Brixton.
He who for so long has sinned with impunity
Let him now be welcomed into the criminal community.
Here with the weaklings and the wicked,
Here with the druggie and the dickhead,
Here among the child molesters,
The frauds and Just Stop Oil protestors
The terrorists, the traitors
And the far-right agitators,
The ponces and the nonces, plus the mugger and the blagger,
The cracksman with a jemmy and the psycho with a dagger,
All citizens of this prison world, the scum of every slum
Rejoice and raise a happy voice that he at last is come
He, born second in line to the throne, now come to live
In the world where the snout baron rules, and the man with the shiv

Let him, the ex-royal, the ex-envoy for trade
Come here among his kindred, to the future he has made.

*****

George Simmers writes: “The Epstein revelations have muddied the reputations of many eminent men, and nobody looks grubbier than Mr Mountbatten-Windsor. The distasteful stories and compromising photographs have told their story. The only way is down. This Ode looks forward to celebrating an event that the British public is anticipating eagerly.

“It is doubtful whether prosecutions will follow for many of Mr Epstein’s guests. Their morals may be questionable and their reputations have suffered, but illegality can be hard to prove – it was Mr Epstein himself who did all the luring and procuring. But Mr Mountbatten-Windsor, because of his distinguished family connections, was lured not only with massages, but also with financial inducements. At the time when he was an official trade envoy of the British government, he had access to financial information (such as details of a forthcoming budget) that could have been very valuable to an investor like Mr Epstein. Documents in the voluminous Epstein archive suggest that such information was indeed shared. Mr M-W could therefore be prosecuted for the very serious offence of misconduct in a public office. This ode looks forward to the time when this foolish man is made to answer for his misdeeds.

“Such are the delays that have slowed the British court system since the hiatus of the Covid years, that legal experts estimate that Mr Mountbatten-Windsor’s case is unlikely to reach a court until 2030. It’s a long time to wait, but in the final eventuality, I hope that this ceremonial ode will be sung joyously by a massed choir. I imagine it set to music by that eminent composer George Frideric Handel, who was very good at such things. To those who object that Mr Handel is dead, I would point out that there is a psychic in America who has made productive contact with the shade of Mozart. Several peasant concerti have apparently resulted. I’m sure the lady could persuade Mr. Handel’s ghost, too, to come up with the goods. I imagine something a bit like the Hallelujah Chorus, but maybe even more jubilant.”

‘A Triumphal Ode’ was first published in Snakeskin.

George Simmers used to be a teacher; when he retired he then amused himself by researching a Ph.D. on the prose literature of the Great War. He now spends his time pottering about, walking his dog and writing a fair bit of verse. He is currently obsessed by the poetry of Catullus, and has self-published a slim volume of translations. He has edited Snakeskin since 1995. It is probably the oldest-established poetry zine on the Internet. His work appears in several Potcake Chapbooks, and his most recent general collection is ‘Old and Bookish‘. Another may be on the way.

Chris O’Carroll, ‘Dorothy Parker on Andrew Marvell’

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He doesn’t have the time, he pleads,
For long and patient wooing.
A mortal man with urgent needs,
He would be up and doing.

He’d worship for two hundred years
Your left breast, then your right,
He swears, but can’t because he fears
Death’s swift-encroaching night.

He notes how brief are human lives.
He says you mustn’t tease,
For once that chariot arrives,
You’ll have no days to seize.

Though you know joining him in bed
Is what you’ll likely do,
You’re certain romance will be dead
Before the two of you.

*****

Chris O’Carroll writes: “Dorothy Parker’s verse paints her enthusiastic about sex but skeptical about romance. I wanted to incorporate both of those outlooks into her imagined response to Marvell’s famous come-hither argument.”

‘Dorothy Parker on Andrew Marvell’ was first published in Snakeskin.

Chris O’Carroll is the author of four books of poems — The Joke’s on Me, Abracadabratude, Quantum Creed, and the newly published Ridiculous Positions. He is a Light magazine featured poet and a contributor to Love Affairs at the Villa Nelle, Extreme Sonnets, New York City Haiku, and The Great American Wise Ass Poetry Anthology, among other collections.

RHL, ‘Fifty Year Argument: Old Fool, Young Twit’

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1. To Myself in Fifty Years Time

Old fool!  You really think yourself the same
As I who write to you, aged 22?
Ha!  All we’ve got in common is my name:
I’ll wear it out, throw it away,
You’ll pick it up some other day….
        But who are you?

My life’s before me; can you say the same?
I choose its how and why and when and who.
I’ll choose the rules by which we play the game;
I may choose wrong, it’s not denied,
But by my choice you must abide….
        What choice have you?

If, bored, I think one day to see the world
I pack that day and fly out on the next.
My choice to wander, or to sit home-curled;
Each place has friends, good fun, good food,
But you sit toothless, silent, rude….
        And undersexed!

Cares and regrets of loss can go to hell:
You sort them out with Reason’s time-worn tool.
Today’s superb; tomorrow looks as well:
The word “tomorrow” is a thrill,
I’ll make of mine just what I will….
        What’s yours, old fool?

2. Reply to Myself – Fifty Years Later

Young twit! You really think we’re not the same?
That means you’re too young to extrapolate.
You’re the mere seed of what I since became:
    a husband, father, game creator,
    global skills facilitator…
        well paid; thought great!

You claimed to thrive, renting some garbage heap;
you travelled: hitchhiked, froze, thought life’s a bitch,
and ate whatever you could find that’s cheap;
    I travel too, and I eat well,
    and choose to sleep in a hotel…
        not in a ditch!

Your search for happiness was excellent;
you lived with several countries, faiths and girls,
though little lasted from those years you spent;
    for when you can’t tell love from lust
    and never work out who to trust…
        of course life whirls!

Your limited perspective proved a sham.
Your rude invective, though a load of shit,
helped fertilise my growth to what I am.
        My resumé –kids raised, loves gained,
        a business built –shows much attained…
            what’s yours, young twit?

*****

I was proud of the form I created when I wrote the first bratty poem, with both the rhyme scheme (abaccb) and the lines getting shorter (3 pentameter, 2 tetrameter, and a dimeter) contributing to the effect of each stanza ending with a punchline. But after I wrote that first poem to my future self at age 22, I was nagged by the need to respond as I got older; and I was never able to produce anything I liked. Finally, a full 50 years later, I produced the 72-year-old’s point by point rebuttal in the same form as the original. The original took a couple of hours over two days to write; the response was done in a couple of hours in one day.

The argument was first published in Snakeskin.

The illustration is one of Tenniel’s for Lewis Carroll’s “You are old, Father William“. And, yes, I still do headstands.

Sonnet: Saad Kayani, ‘Sonnet’

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I see no pretty things to write about.
Industrial smoke obscures the summer skies.
No novel image schemas to lay out—
no logical entailments to devise.
I’ll write instead of how efficient, say,
a cluster bomb can be, the skill it takes
to mow the grass on which the children play
and monetize the rubble that it makes.
But better artists beat me to that muse:
the medalists whose medals killers win,
the columnists who weave the daily news,
and spin, and spin, and spin, and spin, and spin!
I’m dizzy now—no pretty things to say.
Poetry is for fascists anyway!

*****

‘Sonnet” was first published in Snakeskin.

Saad Kayani lives in Toronto. Recent poems appear in Shot Glass Journal and Neologism Poetry Journal.

Photo: “GAZA Crisis July 2014” by Syeda Amina Trust® is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Villanelle: Susan Jarvis Bryant, ‘Gassy Asses – a windy villanelle’

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He had a wealth of worthless words to say –
A jawing maw of poppycock to spout.
His bellyful of bluster blew all day.

From dawn till dusk the cosmos heard him bray.
He hee-hawed on until the sun went out.
He had a wealth of witless words to say.

Like rasping bagpipes cranking up to play  
With unremitting eardrum-splitting clout
His bellyful of bluster blew all day.

One Stone-of-Blarney afternoon in May
He heard a louder bloviator shout.
She had a wealth of wicked words to say –  

A brassy blast – a gossipy array
Of noxious guff – the lingo of a lout.  
Her bellyful of bull blew him away.

Their hot air flared. It seared the Milky Way.
It charred a slew of stars and left no doubt   
They had a wealth of wedded words to say –  
A honeymoon of hooey night and day.  

*****

Susan Jarvis Bryant writes: “Through fear of reprisal, I have nothing to say about the bloviating brayers who prompted this windy villanelle. Asses have been known to bite and kick (savagely) when mocked. I know this from personal experience… and livid scars.”

‘Gassy Asses’ was first published in Snakeskin.

Susan Jarvis Bryant is originally from the UK and now lives on the coastal plains of Texas. Susan has poetry published on The Society of Classical Poets, Lighten Up Online, Snakeskin, Light, Sparks of Calliope, and Expansive Poetry Online, The Road Not Taken, and New English Review. She also has poetry published in The Lyric, Trinacria, and Beth Houston’s Extreme Formal Poems and Extreme Sonnets II anthologies. Susan is the winner of the 2020 International SCP Poetry Competition and was nominated for the 2022 and 2024 Pushcart Prize. She has published two books – Elephants Unleashed and Fern Feathered Edges.

Photo: “Braying donkey” by arcticpenguin is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Elizabeth Hurst, ‘April’

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I have to admire their heartless lust
Performing with no emotional fuss,
And when it’s done, no flower cares
That its lover still sprawls bare
To bees and wind, to hummingbirds.
Petals don’t worry if they’re the third
Or fourth—it just doesn’t matter
After they’ve spread pollen’s splatter.
They live to turn their airy tricks.
No rumpled sheets, no mess to fix,
No wet spots stuck to sated thighs
And stamens aren’t concerned with size
Or any of our skillful lies
Or hearts destroyed as sorrows rise.
No flower mourns when another dies.

*****

‘April’ was first published in Snakeskin… in March.

Elizabeth Hurst is originally from Los Angeles and moved up to San Francisco many years ago. She lives out by the beach with her husband, Gerald Stack.

“April Flowers” by Jocey K is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Using form: dactyls: Max Gutmann, ‘Junípero Serra’

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Critics of Father Junípero Serra
Maintain that the priest was a murderous churl,
Killing American natives religiously.
(“Serra,” too, sounds like the name of a girl.)

Minor official in Spain’s Inquisition, he
Saw many heretics tortured and burned.
Some people frowned on such zealous conversion modes.
Serra took copious notes. And he learned.

Later, his ministry in the Americas
Opened a chain of magnificent missions.
There, after doing the building, the natives were
Shepherded out of their base superstitions.

Serra’s supporters admit that the shepherding
Sometimes went overboard. “Perfect he ain’t.”
Many who died, though, were first brought to Jesus and
That is enough to make Serra a saint.

*****

Max Gutmann writes: “The poem may be a bit behind the times. In my youth, Serra’s sainthood didn’t seem to me widely controversial, but after writing the poem, I started seeing that that had changed. Shortly before the poem appeared in Snakeskin in November, even the statue of him overlooking a highway I grew up near was removed. Of course, given all the reactionary revision of history going on, this remains a good time for light verse to tell the truth.”

Max Gutmann has contributed to New Statesman, Able Muse, Cricket, and other publications. His plays have appeared throughout the U.S. (see maxgutmann.com). His latest book, Finish’d!: A Pleasant Trip to Hell with Byron’s Don Juan, is forthcoming from Word Galaxy..

“Titelprent voor Nederlantsche Oorloghen van Pieter Bor, 1621, RP-P-OB-79.017” by Rijksmuseum is marked with CC0 1.0.

Valentine’s Week: Lisa Barnett, ‘Evolution: A Love Song’

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What’s evolution but a whole lot of sex,
the slippery, mutating mix of Y and X?
Man laddered up out of the ooze and the muck,
ascending rung by rung and fuck by fuck—
DNA colliding and combining;
brains and bodies gladly realigning.

Now let us in our turn embrace the dance
and give our separate genes a moment’s chance
to alter, rearrange, exchange, reshuffle
and triumph in the rude ancestral scuffle.
What’s evolution? Just a whole lot of sex,
the slippery, mutating mix of Y and X.

*****

Lisa Barnett writes: “This poem is a testament to the powers of revision. It had a long gestation (or should I say evolution); it was begun in early 2021 and completed in January 2026. For a long time it was just a two-line fragment…then a failed triolet…and ultimately evolved into pentameter couplets.  At some point I was reading Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress,” which partly inspired the 2nd stanza. My husband is always partial to my poems about sex, and this was no exception.”

 Lisa Barnett’s poems have appeared in The Hudson Review, Measure, New Verse Review, Snakeskin (including this poem), and elsewhere. She is the author of two chapbooks: The Peacock Room (Somers Rocks Press) and Love Recidivus (Finishing Line Press). She lives in Haverford, Pennsylvania with her husband.  

Photo: from Snakeskin, February 2026

Valentine’s Week: Elizabeth Hurst, ‘Hearts and Flowers’

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Genitals? They look like mouths
Splayed wide open to the south;
The backyard’s cool and scented tongues
Sing the lyrics of mud and dung.
They slobber pollen on the wind,
Obscenely, but without meat’s sin.
No lubricated pump and writhe
But floating leakage to contrive
Survival of their rooted kind,
Just letting loose to maybe find
Receptive innards gaping wide,
Exposing their perfumed insides
To dust from reproduction’s floor.
So why so sexy? Not called for
When all they need is neutral breeze
To engage in flowery sleaze
As one sweet self blows to another.
Most chaste of all the planet’s lovers
And we give them for Valentines
Along with silly little rhymes
To sanitize our sweaty humps,
And thickened fluids in a clump.
But all this grossness turns to joy:
The heart’s true love or blissful toy,
As sticky human lust conspires
To imitate the spring’s desires.

*****

Elizabeth Hurst writes: “This poem was inspired by the short California spring.”

‘Hearts and Flowers’ was originally published in Snakeskin.

Elizabeth Hurst is originally from Los Angeles and moved up to San Francisco many years ago. She lives out by the beach with her husband, Gerald Stack.

“Lady Orchid” by anataman is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.