What book shall I write?

Maybe a cook book set in a sassy, SAUCY
kitchen, where a unwitting PEACH
will be, via a hand much SURER
than mine, of its skin STRIPped.

In the same book, in an anecdote, a PARER
held at the specific angle – le CLASP
de la Cuisine – will surreptitiously shear a SHARD
from a non persona grata piece of beef JERKY

Or a thriller-noir, a fairground MELEE
in driving rain where the sun once SHONE
will bring the reader to a questioned CHECK:
how did the villain manage the slippery sideways GLIDE?

Or a medical nonfiction, where the author asks for the LEAST
pain, please, agonised as he sees the vast ARRAY
of surgical equipment, the X-ray of his BOWELs,
the professor asking, ‘How are we doing, MATEY?’

The romance: she slurping bowls of GUAVA;
he leaping from surrounding FLORA;
she a secretary of the genus LEGAL;
he a farmer, earthy, smelling of ONIONs.

The DIY handbook for the Everyman, whose QUALMs
have brought him desperate to its pages, where, shouting VOILA!
he sees the answer to his boat’s perpetual leaking: ‘CAULK
it!’ shouts the author, ‘You’ll soon be GOING!!’

Finally the YA fantasy, the frequent WHIFF
of stinky beasts, the loathsome snakes that CREEP
through every scene, the use of the BLUNTed
sword to conquer – which works better than the half-learned SPELL.

Louise Arnold – children’s writer – photo madcatmadam

Sinusitis

SWORD in my forehead–it
REFERs me to Romans and creation’s groans, the
GUILD of sinus sufferers and I joining in. In the new heavens,
NASAL passages will not block.