“Cafe Six” by Kate O’Neil

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CAFÉ SIX

Try our new

Infestation Menu

 

It’s the food of the future

so we have created

some fine dining dishes

to keep you updated.

 

Are you itching to try

mosquito mousse?

 

or fleas flambé?

 

Perhaps you’d like

a light stir-fry

of tender glow-worms.

 

Crusty crickets

would add some crunch

to vary the texture,

served as a side.

(By Jiminy, that’s what

I’d have for lunch.)

 

Try truffled termites

with pesto sauce

on maggot mash.

 

Or fruit-fly fritters

with grasshopper gravy

 

or cicada croquettes

and hairy-bug hash.

 

Caterpillar curry’s

a dish to-die-for –

a robust feed.

rich and nutritious

(fabulous grub).

 

If a smaller snack

is all you need

you might like a serve

of buttered fly.

 

Or a coddled moth.

 

Perhaps you’d like

cicada soup.

 

Or a medley of mealworms

cooked in broth

then lightly charred.

 

Silverfish soufflés

(in moulds and baked twice)

for special occasions

 

????are a gourmet delight

you’ll remember forever

(expensive but nice).

 

And when you’ve had your fill of these –

a platter of crackers and assorted bees.

 

?©  Kate O’Neil

A Rhupunt for Spring by James Aitchison

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A RHUPUNT FOR SPRING

Spring’s colour thrills
when daffodils
and bold jonquils
burst into bloom.

Tulips tower,
freesias flower,
colours shower,
banishing gloom.

All spring we’re blessed;
bulbs give their best,
’til time to rest
in a dark room.

James Aitchison

A RHUPUNT (pronounced hree’-pint) is a Welsh poem with some curious rules:

  1. Each line must have four syllables
  2. The first three lines of each stanza must rhyme
  3. The final line of each stanza must rhyme with the final lines of the other stanzas (in other words: aaab, cccb, dddb, eeeb, etc)
  4. Each stanza works as a complete sentence or verse in itself.
  5. If you prefer, stanzas can have three lines (aab, ccb, etc) — or five lines (aaaab, ccccb, etc) — it’s up to you.

“Dinosaurs’ Breakfast Special” by Katherine Gallagher

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Dinosaurs’ Breakfast Special

 

Urns of slime

and reptiles’ heads,

giants’ feet

and mouldy breads.

 

Icy hearts

and mountain eggs,

a ton of tongues

and turtle-legs.

 

Frogs and beetles

chewed to gristle,

old pine cones

and spicy thistle.

 

Snake-flesh paste

and baby whales,

slowly simmering

heads and tails.

 

Blackfish eyes

and stingray skin

mixed and mixed

till slimy thin.

 

All gulped down

with spidery glue

which sleepy dinosaurs

forget to chew. . . 

 

© Katherine Gallagher

 

“Haystack” by June Perkins

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Haystack

Look! Rats and the children run out from

their hiding places in the haystack to

dance in front of us in a merry line?

Who else do you think hides here?

 

Do you have a memory of haystacks or

artist’s haystacks?

(Perceval’s Angel)

 

Tumble down the Haystack

dreaming columns of Greece.

 

Tumble down the Haystack

?              with childhood farming friends.

?

Tumble down the Haystack

?              to horses and the cows.

 

Now,

climb up that artist’s Haystack

and tumble down again.

 

June Perkins?