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the poet
Editor-in-Chief of Nine Pens Press, Colin Bancroft lives in County Durham. He's published a full collection, Vanishing Point, as well as the pamphlets Impermanence and Knife Edge. Colin also has a micro-pamphlet of wrestling poems, Kayfabe, which appeared in 2021.
the poems
Hermes gives a statement
about why he agreed to
abandon Dionysus
Well I’d seen what had happened to Semele/ burnt to a cinder/ like the bits you get in the tray at the bottom of a toaster/ so I knew he wasn’t messing about/ he had me scrape her up off the kitchen floor/ who was I to argue/ he spent the next hour sat at the table letting her dust fall through his fingers/ this is how I made the stars he said/ looking at particular specks/ wondering aloud what part of her body it had been/ put it on his tongue and shivered/ of course he said it wasn’t his fault/ that she had asked for it/ that he had got overexcited and had revealed himself too quickly/ I don’t know/ then he collapsed on the sofa/ blood everywhere/ the mad bastard had only gone and gouged a hole in his leg/ if you can you believe it/ there was a baby in there/ I could see its face pressed up against his skin/ you know how Ben Kingsley died in Slevin/ he hobbled around for weeks/ football injury he muttered when anyone asked/ he had me check on it every night/ disgusting/ his thigh blown up like a bee hive/ the baby squirming about like larvae/ Hera knew of course/ she was seething/ didn’t speak more than two words to him for months/ sat at the dinner table picking her teeth with a fork/ just staring at him/ the night he gave birth it just popped right out of his leg/ like when you get a mogwai wet/ he went down like a Brazilian centre forward/ howling/ I scooped it up just before Hera got there/ get rid of it he hissed/ I jumped out of the window/ walked around for ages/ ended up by the river/ I had no idea what to do/ I mean where do you dump the baby of a God on a Tuesday night.
How a Guide to Winning
the Royal Rumble is a
Guide for Life
The first thing you need is a good slice of luck as to when you enter. Nothing good ever came from being the first one in. More people have walked on the moon than have won from the number one position, remember that. You have no friends, not here. They will boot you in the face and toss you out like yesterday’s trash. Skulking helps as does hiding under the ring. A bag of thumbtacks or a barbed wire bat are not illegal. Never run towards the ropes because someone will send you over them. Likewise never climb too high because there is always someone ready to push you off. If Kane arrives then you have already lost. Always walk down the ramp. Enthusiasm will only get you killed & playing to the crowd is usually a big mistake. Perhaps the best piece of advice I can give you is that if you do go over the top rope, hold on for dear life, fight and claw as you dangle over the precipice, because no one has ever been victorious when both their feet have touched the ground.
Poem explains the
mechanics of dry drowning
Someone sits next to me on the bus.
I turn to look.
She has long red hair and her eyes
are wider than radar dishes.
She rolls a sweet around her mouth
like a roulette ball. A radiation blast
of cherryade and Mademoiselle.
It is Poem.
Her arm presses tightly to mine.
She is uncomfortably warm,
as though she has run here quickly
but she isn’t out of breath.
She’s never cared about personal space
and as she leans across to wipe
the condensation from the window
her hair covers my face like a spider’s web,
like when Indiana Jones entered that cave
in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
She bangs on the window and swears
at someone down on the street.
As she moves back, she runs her hand
across my cheeks, her fingers moist and cold.
What are you writing about now saddo?
She asks reaching for the notebook
I have tried to fold into my lap.
I push it down the side of the seat.
She cackles loudly, like a magpie.
I bet it’s the rain again, isn’t it?
You and the fucking rain.
It’s only water you know.
Tell me how many poems have you written
about car washes or sponge baths?
She gobs on the window and we watch it run down.
Why don’t you write about that?
Did you know that 73% of the brain
and heart are made of water?
Now she is wearing glasses.
Her hair tied tightly in a bun. She does this often.
That’s about the same as the water/land ratio on this planet.
I wonder what part of my body is planet
and what part is rain she says
holding her hand up to the strip light
on the roof like an X-ray.
Suddenly she stands up, presses the bell.
I watch her sway down the aisle,
her movements fluid in the shudder jerk
motion of the bus.
The rain comes down harder,
maybe because we have stopped,
and I think for a moment
we are in a life boat far out at sea.
Just a word to the wise, she says,
as she turns at the top of the stairs,
her mascara streaking down her face
like corpse paint: you can drown
in just a millilitre of fluid for every pound
that you weigh, so you better make sure
that the tears you cry don’t kill you.
Publishing credits
Hermes gives a statement about why he agreed
to abandon Dionysus / Poem explains the mechanics
of dry drowning: exclusive first publication by iamb
How a Guide to winning the Royal Rumble
is a Guide for Life: Kayfabe (Broken Sleep Books)