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CONTENTS
HEMINGWAY - Aubrey Malone

POEMS – Alexis Lykiard

FEEL GOOD POET – Alexis Lykiard

MAXWELL BODEBHEIM – Jim Burns

THE MAN IN THE CORNER – Tom Kelly

THE OTHER DOOR – Katherine Banner

FURIOUS MINDS – Alan Dent

THE MENACE OF OUR TIME – Jim Burns

BUKO AND CALLOW – Ken Clay

GAWAIN – Keith Howden

ATKINSON GRIMSHAW – Jim Burns

LETTERS FROM LAURETTE – Mary Mannion

POEMS – & STATISTICALLY SPEAKING -Mark Ward

KEEFIE CHAPTER 3 (1) Ken Champion

DOES EVERYONE REMEMBER WHERE THEY WERE – Tanner

THE TALE OF MR MCGREGOR – Arthur Wild

GETTING MY OWN BACK – Bob Wild

LIVING WITH DEFEAT – Ken Clay

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EDITORIAL

NOT THERE YET BUT MOVING IN THAT DIRECTION

Something of an American slant to this issue. We kick off with an extract from Aubrey Malone’s recently published biography of Hemingway. Then we get Alexis Lykiard’s review of Frank O’Hara’s poetry followed by Jim Burns on Maxwell Bodenheim. Politics feature with Alan Dent on MAGA followed by Jim Burn’s review of the Communist Party of America. Let’s hope this doesn’t affect our Kansas subscriber Fred Whitehead.

Back in the real world of Oik UK we continue with a comparison of Bukowski and Philip Callow, a gritty account of London post war childhood in Ken Champion’s Keefie and the irrepressible Tanner on memories of a Scouse dolite. Tanner shipped out to Canada some time ago and may be looking apprehensively at Trump’s plan for the 51^st state. He’s now doing cartoons for the Morning Star. Some years back I tried to walk across the bridge at Niagara Falls only to get stopped by a gun-toting lady cop who told me to get back to Toronto.

So it’s perhaps with some relief we return to our usual Francophilia with a review of Living With Defeat by Philippe Burrin. This account of life under occupation was published in English in 1996. Then we probably though it a moderately disquieting period piece. Now it seems more relevant.

TANNER

DOES EVERYONE REMEMBER WHERE THEY WERE?

Used up all me holidays this year.

Thanks to that lovely bout of tonsillitis.

Yeah, see

they don’t like to use sick pay

because that has to actually come from somewhere

oh hell no

they’d rather dip into

what piffling holiday pay you’ve got left

and since you’re a part timer

or a zero hourer

they can dump

every shitty minute you’re entitled to

into the shitty week

they let you have off

to recover

so here I am

back on the floor

with no end in sight

and to think of all those years

on dole

dole broke

gagging for work

I mean

where’s the balance?

So here’s the plan:

when you workers want a holiday

you call up the jobby

and they send a doley in

to work in your place

for a week or two

you get their dole

which given your contract

given their disdain for sickness

is about the same

as sick and/or holiday pay

and they get a wage for a bit –

what’s wrong with that?

Let me guess:

people need training?

Fuck off.

Most work is monkey work

sometimes you pull a lever

sometimes you type numbers

sometimes you stack a shelf

cards on the table or office desk or shop counter:

monkeys can learn all our crap

very fast, OK?

no

what you naysayers mean is

people need to know their place

the whip-cracked

must be so conditioned

to the whip of work despair

that the only way out

is to maybe one day

be the whip-cracker

of other worker’s despair

and dolies

must remain dolies

for all time

scratch card scratching

fast food devouring

alcohol and tobacco tax payers

paying it all back

in dolie despair

that is how it is done

because people need to know their place

and anything else

no matter how

voluntary

or unanimous

is called communism

or social engineering