This anthology showcases poetry from the leading writers in Wildfire Words Open Submissions 4 in July & August 2023
Alphabetical list of anthology poets
This lists all the leading poets who wished to have their successful competition poems published in the anthology. Each is linked to their poems, audio, and poet’s biography.
Anna Maughan
, David Ashbee, David Birch, David Dixon*, Declan McCarthy, Emily Freeborn, Gerald Seniuk, Hannah Fielden, Ian Parker-Dodd, Iris Anne Lewis, Ivor Frankell, John Kucera, John Warford, Jonathan Chibuike Ukah, Jorge Lopez Llorente, Julie Wiltshire, K.A. Watters, Kate Copeland, Martin Ferguson*,Melissa Vardy, Minoru Soma, Nicola Thomas, Nigel Hastilow, Paul Coldwell, Phil Wood*, Philip Rösel Baker, Rebecca Topham-Roche*, Rodger Holden, Sandra Howell, Simone Mansell Broome, Tricia Lloyd Waller, Valerie Maria Anthony, Valerie Valente, Vyarka Kozareva*, Wendy Webb
indicates one audio of a poem. * the poet prefers not to have an audio
Beastly Hitchcock
Mortality is a strangely playful beast,
waking at 1 am, turning topsy turvy to the bathroom
in blindly drunken lurches, vomit-worthy
of an Oscar. Yellow bile my golden prize.
Except, stress incontinence reaches the parts
your partner prefers not to go. Help me, now.
Thank Odin, no emptying of bowels at death,
too much richness dumped (Eve of an Anniversary).
Staggering like a Whirling Dervish,
both extremities meeting their Waterloo in sequence,
precision-primed for, Bowl, now! Loo, now!
Water. Nor any drop to drink without vomiting
for England. What have we become?
Byron’s volcanic darkness: all night long.
By morning, 111. Please. He shaves, dresses, eats,
ready to face the world: three strapping paramedics
in the bedroom, discussing hidden agendas of:
heart attack? stroke? or, …
Who says, Ambulances don’t arrive post-Brexit?
Who says, A&E queuing along corridors, post-Covid?
Strapped to bed, the world passed as a seasick Navvy.
No expense spared: Nurse? Given a Doctor
and her many minions. Tests, meds, records.
But first, like Mary Shelley: Blood. No blood.
Seven times they coaxed each artery (vein?),
arms/hand/leg bruised black; but, later.
Dehydration is a wondrous magical beast
That flits and flickers, deeply searching nectar.
Finally, Diagnosis: Benign Paroxysmal Positional
Vertigo. Ooh, ‘eck. Hitchcock.
Never again, pretty please.
No head injury; dental treatment; fall; nor reason.
What prevents an Encore?
From prem to crem, for Grandma*disconjointed = discontent/conjoined/disjointed (new word)
It’s Maundy now, the dark has set too soon,
we’ve toasted port and finished wine, so near
the night is wrapping up tonight in dreams.
Please leave a light on, open windows; strike
the future with a match of flickered candle.
Whisper not of morning; nor Good Friday,
to wake late Saturday cleaners of corridors.
Ward off nightmares, then serve me endless tea,
my last time – in this city (on a different floor) –
was breathing new life; birth, delightful SCBU.
Not now, nor ever, far too old. Deliver
my past, wrapped in a blanket, to kick and suck.
The News informs of Doctors’ strikes next week;
pray that their morgue’s reserved for higher powers.
Cast a spell, to guarantee a plot…
of wizardry, to book professional ease.
No hope on Sunday’s banked sabbaticals,
though time slows fast to bedside hours of Vespers.
Crows of nuns – just us – to wake for Matins,
surprised and disconjointed*; stolen years
our loved one could have lived and breathed and walked.
Their grandchild’s now an adult, waits at home;
her husband’s age a precipice of pain,
for Grandma will not come back home again.
Last kiss
He did not sleep all night
and took the morning slowly,
dressing, with respect for his beloved.
They’d chance-met at the dance:
the next village, long ago,
sparks of glancing love were all around.
He stumbled over grass,
looked lost among those gathered;
kissed the box of ashes laid to earth.
Wendy Webb, widely-published UK poet, born in the Midlands, family life in Norfolk, poems sparked by nature, the stars and too many tragedies. A medical emergency and death of both grandparents too closely together, sparked poems that needed to be written. Peace, back in the garden, or in photographs.
Sky dive (for C)
When I fell for you
I fell fast from a great height.
falling free form
like some foolish skydiver
struggling for breath.
Waiting for your arms to open
to catch
and
bring me safely
to ground
unharmed but changed
now forever caught in your net.
Now
falling into bed,
we twist and take turns
finding our way in the dark
through touch and senses
under familiar sheets in cavernous spaces
as big as any sky
and retracing flights
made together a thousand times
with each re-affirming sigh.
This much I know
The world turns
This much I know
I must avoid long shadows of the late afternoon
and involuntary actions made too soon
as suitcases on inadequate wheels, rattle their way,
pulled and pushed
growling towards the gate.
Standing in line, we patiently wait
to hear our name called,
shuffling like a sentence towards a final full stop.
A slow recall,
I whisper. So much learnt
but this much I know.
Life is fast, dying slow.
Eyes, ears, back, all now in decline.
We outlive our hips.
Cartilage compress and joints show increasing signs of stress
I chew with teeth installed on a monthly plan,
Eat as I go.
I’m told I need a bucket list!
Should I paraglide in the Alps?
Become a silhouette dark against the snow
or abseil down K2, to be left hung and dangling on spiders’ ropes
above the distant valley below.
Or breathe a deep intake of foam
from white water canoeing in a wet suit alone?
Hot days and warmer nights,
thoughts struggling to find their place,
family photos gather dust
and Durer’s horsemen keep up the chase.
This much I know.
Our shadows become our silhouette
while evening draws like a resigned sigh and
sleeping dogs are left to lie
Paul Coldwell is an artist, academic and writer. His artwork is in the collection of the British Museum, Tate, and MoMA New York and exhibited at Freud Museum, Kettles Yard, and Sir John Soane Museum. Paul was co-editor of an essay collection, Picturing the Invisible, (UCL Press). A Still Life is a boxed set of his sculptures and poems (Estorick Collection, 2021). https://paulcoldwell.org
Blown away
I have decided to live again,
after death tasted and spooked me out,
for walking through the field of dews
and covered in the light of dawn;
love has nothing to do with it,
it’s not yet my time to hit the post.
Sometimes I navigate the brownish highway
to watch how seagulls peck at the wind
or smell the air amid screeching wheels,
with the sun blazing and the moon gazing.
When days fold up like an unused umbrella
silence hangs in the air like a mass of hair.
It’s funny that I can now laugh again
afterlife sends me a garden of marshmallows,
but those nights of tenderness and kindness
count for me the last gifted stars of my life,
from where I draw the strength to endure
the elusive leniency of departing.
Though I know that I will die alone
when the sea splashes its hard water on me;
at least I see the moon dance once again,
or the forest shift towards the evening tree;
and when death shows up at my rickety door
I shall sing that I’m simply blown away.
Broken angel
Go, tell it to the bushes
that I have gone past my use
and there is no diamond lining
on the edges of my clouds;
Before now, I was the cosmos
and you spent days praising
my lips, eyes, my hands and hair,
that I am a breathing planet, a fresh garden.
You visited my parents in the sky
with a keg of palm wine and a lobe
of kola nut in seven cotyledons,
your lips floated over rain and thunder.
After waiting for you to return from Hades,
you told me I have dark clouds in my eyes,
that my stomach glides towards the grave,
and I am past the age of blowing you away.
But you can make me a sniping bullet,
sharpen me on your secret whetstone,
scrape my edges on the timeless rock,
raise me to your eyes, a blazing sword.
I have practised the tender art of cuteness,
to read through the acres of your words,
and not to take things to their second level,
whole, but not to be broken by thunderstorms.
Yet do I desire to be broken by ice storms
shredded like paper, torn apart and away,
that I may become new and stronger,
ready to walk the mile and fight the fight.
Jonathan Chibuike Ukah lives in London with his family and writes poetry. His poems have been featured and will soon be featured in Atticus Review, Skylight 47 Literary Magazine, Strange Horizons, The Pierian, Last Leaves Magazine, and elsewhere. He is the winner of the Voices of Lincoln Poetry Contest 2022.
Dear New York, my dream city
One evening, when stars awake,
my babies’ eyes I have never borne,
New York sings a chanson like Edith Piaf
from millions of kilometers
away.
New York begs me not to dream
any other city in the world, warning me that
there is surely no one,
not a man who loves
me to the moon and back.
I know the city’s deception; it is good at lying.
New York is a kaleidoscope of the globe,
where millions of colors create some fusions
to envision their vision, even if impossible.
I write, I keep writing
like a handmaid is engrossed in
some needlework.
Then I paste the text on the online translator
as you put a stamp on an envelope
with a love letter sealed
as the handmaid spreads her handmade pantalon
to gift a man she in love with.
O magic! Magic comes with nothing special
So, be aware, be aware.
The love is formed into something visible
like an invisible man shows up in the smoke, in the glob
of air she speaks to breathe into the balloon
not to burst, but to disappear like bubbles in unknown lagoon.
New York, my dream city
comes and shows up like that kind of man
I never invite,
powerful enough to steer the boat I’m on
under the dark sea full of stars.
Minoru Soma has been teaching English at public high school since 2020, after graduating from college. At the age of 20, Minoru started writing poetry in English, inspired by American folk or rock songs.
On International Women’s Day
I think of my mother
The unquenchable, uncontrollable fire within her
I think of how she married a man
who for 17 years doused those flames
and extinguished the spark with in her
leaving barely an ember behind
How somehow she came roaring back to life
How that fire keeps me warm every single day
On International Women’s Day
I think of my grandmother, so down to earth
Solid and immoveable, always there
She bears the weight of everyone in her life
I think about her green thumbs, her hands in the soil
How often these hands give us food and water
How she’ll absorb the sunlight only
to give it to others
to ensure they will bloom
A true embodiment of Mother Nature
I think about how in another lifetime
she could have been the one to bloom
How maybe, in her own way, she did
On International Women’s Day
I think of my sister-
a breath of fresh air in any room
Light, refreshing; easy to take in
I think about how effortlessly she flows
between life’s pits, it’s peaks
How, every so often, she will become angry, blusterous
I think about how quickly she returns to her usual breezy self
How calming her presence is to me
and to everyone else
How she makes everyone breathe easy
On International Women’s Day I think of myself
too fluid for my own good
How I can never seem to settle
How I am always rushing forward, thirsty for more
I think of the dam I hold within myself
ready to burst at any moment
And what will spill out
Emotions? Fears? Secrets? Regrets?
I think I am fit to burst
my emotions ready to overflow
On International Women’s Day
I think of all women
The women who walked before us
and the women who are yet to come
I think of each of us
how we hold so much inside ourselves
Air. Earth. Fire. Water.
Critical energy forces, sustainers of life
I think about how integral we are to the universe
of how much power we can harness
if we turned our faith inward
believed in ourselves instead
How we are elemental — fundamental to all life
How we always were
even when the world discarded us
even when they deemed us unnecessary
On International Women’s Day, I celebrate
I raise a glass and sink a pint
in honour
of feminism
and I think over and over —
We are everything.
Women are everything.
Crown shyness
Branched arms reach out
over man-made paths
Twigged tips arch toward one another
straining, stretching
to feel one another’s
Touch
but unable
to go
the distance
On forest floors
across the earth
trees act as forbidden lovers
attempting to hold
their darling’s hand
but are stopped
abruptly in their tracks
just before
their palms
can touch
but…
Patterns emerge
in the absent space
created
Kaleidoscopic art
modelled by nature
is displayed across the sky
Is it Crown Shyness
like the scientists say?
Are they bashful, frightful?
Frigid, afraid?
Or is it a strict Mother Nature
drawing an invisible line?
Keeping her children apart
to make art divine?
As I gaze up at the motif
expertly crafted across the sky
I wonder why people stray from each other
and why we must distance
now
As the canopies sway above my head
I feel the answer in my gut
because
the tree’s whisper
because, because
beauty is made in the spaces between us
I’ll never forget what you did for me that night
a bad mood becomes a worse day
followed by fright and worry
I come to you
in all my anxiety
you scoop me out
rescue me from myself
come to me in love
my concerned partner
my knight
my light in the dark I create
In the car
broken and vulnerable
I share my deepest fears
you drive
I sob
You say all the right things
in a gentle voice
and my pain
my embarrassment
softens
dissolves
like Lemsip in hot water
healing medicine
You offer hot chocolate (my comfort food)
and a soothing touch
I grow warmer
my soul satiates
~
the full moon floats above
new beginnings are on the horizon
You tell me it will be okay
and I know for the first time
it will be
As my tears dry
my heart beats a steady rhythm
I love you, I love you, I love you
~
You
are perfect
for me.
K.A. Watters is a poet and policy assistant from Glasgow. She has bipolar disorder and often uses her writing to help cope with her condition. Themes in her work include mental health, feminism, familial love, Scottish pride, queer identity, love and loneliness. She has previously been published in Gutter voices and the winnow magazine.
website- basementofmybrain.co.uk twitter @dullandwicked insta @basement_of_my_brain
Weevils
The cotton-pickers laboured in the Mississippi heat
Bent frames in the haze
Amidst white fibre tufts in a drift of iceless snow
Crammed into great sacks by the handful
The cotton billowed the burlap into pillows that taunted
The croppers, all longing to rest
To sit for a spell and fan their faces
Mop their fevered brows
But the Bossman’s boot was heavy
And there were starving poor aplenty
Plucked from the bud like a scourge of thirsting weevils
Ground beneath the thumb
Those bone-weary souls sought solitude
When daylight ran aground
And the tender peace of the valley called
Their chafed and bleeding limbs back home
With an absence of bars
They were not as free as birds
The hound-dogs bray to the bayou blue moon
And a church-going boy with wriggling hips
Brings a revolution to the world
Spooning
Our Toothbrushes are spooning
In the bathroom cup, eclipsed by moonlight
Bristles to neck; leaning in close and tight
Our Toothbrushes canoodle
My hands clench the sink
and I pursue these groggy revelations
In the hush of pre-dawn, I’ve yet to burden my teeth with the chore
of chewing up my breakfast
I silently pull my brush from the cup
and watch as yours slips downward
Limply leaning to one side
I suppose you’ve never paused to contemplate
these little, pointless metaphors
but they speak to me more than the hunch of your cold shoulder
My reflection in the glass is foaming at the mouth
The paste drools past my lips
like some old granny’s oatmeal
Last night, I lay like a stone on my bed’s side
The vacancy left for your body radiated a chill
which spilled across the covers in cool ripples
eroding my endurance and stabbing icy fingers
against my tightly scrunched eyes
I could conjure your shadow from memory
the huddle and shape of your form clothed in sleep
It’s always the warmth that won’t come
Our Toothbrushes are so very often spooning
They fall against one another
in the porcelain cup upon the ledge
In that slight, white shred of moonlight
Our Toothbrushes are worn now
disposable and over-worked
The bristles are splayed and discolored
I will throw them out
Together
Valerie Valente‘s poems have appeared in publications by The Emma Press, Bluebird Word, and others. She has self-published two children’s books and actively attends her local poetry performance group. She achieved a First degree in Creative Writing and Literature from the OU in 2021 and has written a creative writing textbook.
www.kistcreative.co.uk
A local lass returns
Must have been so long ago, the kids still
all at home. Ten days on her native Irish turf
and it rained, relentlessly, while we walked,
while we shopped, while the kids pony-trekked.
The cottage was traditional, peat-fired,
too small by far for five plus one damp dog.
Perhaps we did it wrong, as clouds of smoke
inside obscured us from each other. Board games,
cards, daft made-up tales, kept boredom just in check.
We parents medicated, nightly,
and we read. All else consumed, I ploughed through
newsprint, piled high by the stove.
We’d missed the highlight of that spring, maybe
that year, the marriage of a local lass made good,
made rich, made superstar, come home to wed
the Nashville man she loved. He’d dwarfed the town lads,
had two gold teeth, long, sun-bleached hair, white Stetson,
chaps. The photo showed streets lined with fans,
well-wishers, a couple side by side.
One dove-grey mare, one tall bay, the bride pale,
pretty, side-saddle, barefoot in green velvet.
So, Glenn or Grant, that first groom, he’d hailed
from Tennessee. The bride had a pure sweet voice,
not defined by any of the usual boxes.
She too proved not to be good with being boxed.
Her gold-toothed man was soon sent packing.
I’ve been back many times but not
to peat-fired shacks. Each time, I’ve scoured the papers,
asked around. Each time, a starry homecoming
missed. Until the last.
They flew her home. An overdose.
Again, the streets were packed, her music –
that we knew so well – piped from shops and bars.
We bowed our heads, threw flowers, watched, clapped –
as two greys pulled a cart,
her small green wicker casket.
Dead cats, dead dogs
Never write about dead cats, or dead dogs.
It’s a well-known fact that dead beasts make
unappealing subject matter for a poem.
Any creature, really, unless it’s wild. Fierce
and feral works well. Nature in the raw.
Unapologetic, mindless carnage – blood, tooth,
claw. Savagery sings, often wins.
Another truth – we owners mostly outlast
long past our fur-clad friends. One human life
may rue the deaths of many pets. Never
say never. Whatever helps you bear it,
say it, write it. I dare you to.
Maybe not that rainbow bridge,
but mourn, yes! Do.
Dressing the part
There’s an art to dressing the part,
the art of looking like a proper poet,
but not too proper, not too smart,
and certainly not a smartarse upstart,
too up oneself, too full of artifice.
There’s often a hat, a scarf,
something swishy, something to contrast,
not too snappy,
too matchy-matchy,
too fashion-savvy,
brandishing brandsy,
not at all partyfancy, or trying too hard…
but there is an art
to dressing the part.
Simone Mansell Broome is Welsh-born. She’s passionate about words, about rhythm, about musicality. She believes in accessibility, is a gentle eco-warrior who finds humour in even the darkest moments. She writes poems, prose and children’s fiction.
www.simonemansellbroome.com Twitter @broomesimone – Twitter
Helianthus
Why did you come here dear boy?
Who sent you?
Never mind
I already know
Take these sunflower seeds
They’re not giant ones
from your Motherland
They’re smaller ones
from my Motherland
Put them in your pocket
My children are here too
and my grandchildren
I do hope you meet them
one day
When I find your body
and I’m sure I will
I can reach in to your uniform
and take back my seeds
To plant them on your grave
so our sunflowers can grow again
Then
we will always have seeds
to hand to the next visitor
so we can live forever
John Warford is a previously unpublished poet with a small collection of poems. At most, he writes, he has taken a couple of local poetry workshops.
The sparrow
It flies across the seas alone
Above the waves and snow white foam
For miles without a stretch of land
No trees or rocks or silver sand
As fragile as a dancing moth
Between a flame and surging froth
A flight path under constant threat
As nature’s wrath casts out its net
Its tiny form darts too and fro
Careful not to fly too low
For fear its feathers drenched with spray
Will meet Poseidon’s hideaway
Careful not to fly too high
And plummet from the clear blue sky
Like Icarus who failed to shun
The deadly burning red hot sun
It disappears within the swell
Then rises as its wings propel
Arrow like pin-point precision
Navigates each swift decision
Its strength astounds for one so small
Yet David made Goliath fall
Bestowed with courage from the Gods
The sparrow flies against all odds
Ode to my garage
Once just a boring empty space
Now neighbours moan it’s a disgrace
Tool bags full of drills and screws
Pilfered parts from disused loos
Ovens fridges stored for years
Rusting saws and blunted sheers
Paint pots lining all the shelves
Slowly breed amongst themselves
Basins hoses mixer taps
Dried up glues with missing caps
Sockets switches copper wire
Door seals from a tumble drier
Varnish lacquers coloured sprays
Useless bulbs from bygone days
Irons, toasters, kitchen kettles
Bags of sorted different metals
Smoke alarms and heat detectors
Dust sheets, masks and eye protectors
Bits and bobs fill rows of jars
Barely space to park the cars
Bathtubs, trays and shower screens
A mortuary to dead machines
Disgrace to those who aren’t impressed
To me it’s my own treasure chest
Nicola Thomas enjoys trying to write with a sense of rhythm and rhyme. She plays the piano and musical beat and pattern feature strongly in her poetry. Nicola likes to mix traditional language with modern while trying to retain a strict discipline within the framework of each poem.
Tony: the resident pianist at the care home
After supper – at the care home, almost blind,
Tony raises cold-tipped hands to the piano and hesitates
in his Arctic weather, might not remember,
then plunges from the quayside
into the icy water, and stretches fingers
nimbly into chords to stir his blood.
Soon he finds strong limbs to limber strokes
into gentle moonlight, more confident, flips onto his back
into a marching staccato, full-swings a rag-time crawl
to free-style. The icy stretch melts to the touch of flesh,
carries waves into the corridor –
slow turns Zimmer frames, walking sticks, to come back and join him.
Tap – tap – tap, they unplug their feet
supporting this beautiful swimmer
mumbling words of encouragement and – please, don’t overdo it.
Sometimes he stops to catch his breath but he’s off again.
I watch him swim effortlessly beyond the dining-room, beyond the care home –
towards the sea itself.
Lost potential
The Fire Service wants to show me
the coastal town where the arsonists live.
In the car’s back seat, I see no-one
on the streets, the buses, in the shops –
places of worship, cinemas, or people
milling around doing all the small things in life.
The colliery has sunk beneath the hilly grass.
There’s nothing more to believe in.
There are two types of arsonists, the Fire Service tells me:
the Daddy’s burn out cars and melt down all the evidence.
The juniors learn their trade igniting trash and leaves
in bins and skips on faceless rows of streets.
Hidden behind brown curtains –
we pass all those boys and girls,
the poets, artists, nurses, scientists, plumbers,
bakers, geologists, and astronauts – that have no such dreams.
The sea-front houses almost touch the empty beach,
stripped to dunes and sand. The coarse grass whistles –
and the cold grey channel laps up the sun.
Rodger Holden has worked in the charity sector for the past twenty-five years. At a cross-roads in his life, he’s approaching retirement with time to consider the past, present and future.
Host
From early nineteenth century
landlocked bed, the sunken bulk,
a hauled up husk of a ship’s hull,
grange de la craie, my skyward timbers.
Haggard old chalk anchor, I’m home
to a thousand carpenter bees,
a squall of horse shoe bats,
colonies of shrew, lizards mice and rats–
chipped bones glint in morning sun,
flashes whiter than sea foam;
than the day I was first gouged from the earth–
grain, barley and wheat, then horses,
cattle, some sheep. I kissed the dawn
and dusk, the brittle arctic air,
I’ve seen a thousand rain strorms ravage
my tiles, summer hail pepper my crown–
I know Sirocco’s whirling kiln,
clouded in its fine red film,
I am magnet to the hornet,
castle to warbler and wren–
time has flung far from my horizon,
and left me standing static,
a defunct anachronist
still wearing the same clothes.
Scratched with serpette on my scales,
my history book – the girl’s name;
a fugitive pilot’s vanished flame.
Nature has reclaimed me, soul curator
of my own contingent museum.
‘Characterization of the morning transition
over the gentle slope of a semi-isolated massif’
after Doctor Silvana Di Sabatino
Or, the intricate mystification
of atmospheric physics research.
Some measurable patterns
of turbulance analysis
transport and exchange processes,
intensive field measurements, transitions
from katabatic to anabatic winds.
Such scientific terminology veils
the misdemeanor of parlance,
the paradigm excuse
on a favoured mission,
to spend days at the Matterhorn–
In the name of saving the human race,
we attempt Gaia’s welcome to outstay.
The sensitivity of surface properties,
should be further investigated–
Conceived; her constructed,
ipotesi estrapolate.
Voiture rondeau
Packed and shrunken and on display,
cars skim briskly over the glade,
hovering over land in seed,
from which we are severed by our greed,
the post capital modern age.
Like the land was there to be paid,
the land of mythology laid
out, obstacles to our needs are
packed and shrunken.
We change the land to suit our ways,
the land where music once was played,
the woodland road we wish must lead
endless, from this desire we feed,
and shall not sleep, though we are greyed.
packed and shrunken
Martin Ferguson’s poems have appeared in Stand, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Honest Ulsterman, The Poetry Village, The High Window, The Journal, International Times Runcible Spoon, Klecksograph and Lothlorien Poetry Journal, The Alchemy Spoon (French Literary Review & Dreich, forthcoming). His first pamphlet was published in 2019 by Original Plus.
No laughing matter
God is hiding from us,
trying to conceal her laughter
as we search in all the wrong places.
Like in old buildings
where the dead alive paw
at beams of light,
and the communal hand
carves desperate art.
Giggling,
she throws clues at us,
like a bold little sparrow
intent on entering our house,
or poppy seeds which germinate
in concrete.
And when we laugh,
we join her, in
her mischievous ways.
In a field
Colours conjured
from infinite breath,
drawn from the lungs of time
and blown out
across field and meadow,
across generations.
In airless space
set deep,
seeds imagine
and tendrils speak
of their visions,
where the dying are held,
to know they will come again
and whisper to us in a language of flowers:
‘there are many ways to live and die’
The way
A mystical logic of paths,
laughter lines carved
into the earth,
from a hard-wired
desire to find,
to become lost,
to flow,
like holy water.
Emily Freeborn lives, works and writes in the New Forest in Hampshire, England. Her poetry explores the wilderness in all its forms, peeling open the everyday, the overseen, to reveal something more brutal, more beautiful, more eternal. Emily was recently published in Out There Literary Magazine and long-listed for this years’ Cinnamon Press pamphlet awards. She is currently working on a collection of poetry which explores the surviving aspects of witchcraft in local horse husbandry.
Summer, 1993
I remember watching my father stop
halfway up the driveway because my bicycle
was blocking the way to the garage,
and how he solved the problem
by picking up the bicycle by the handlebars
and smashing it through the windshield
of our brand new Chrysler station wagon,
his face red with scotch, his black tie
and jacket flapping with effort, the bicycle
making its way a little farther with each blow
into the roomy interior of the 1984 model
as the safety glass relented, the bicycle
and the windshield both praiseworthy
in their toughness, the struggle between them
somehow making perfect sense
in midday on our quiet suburban street,
the windshield the anvil, the BMX bicycle the hammer,
the marriage the forge, and failure
glowing in the heat, beaten
and tempered, slowly taking shape.
Currents
Three years now since I took the rough shards,
the broken handfuls of my aunt,
and threw them from Westinghouse Bridge.
With her usual grace she descended.
She spread in the currents and disappeared.
I was afraid someone would turn me in
for throwing her ashes into the Ohio River,
so close to the houses
and old poets sleeping in the distance.
But no one saw her enter the water,
taking her love of Keats and Shakespeare,
and miserably cold English winters,
and Wordsworth’s Upon Westminster Bridge,
into the dark river, out to the sea.
John Kucera was educated at Carlow University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in New Reader Magazine, The Sandy River Review, Connections Magazine and Friends Journal. He lives in Arizona, where he writes and teaches.
Lashes
Her eyelashes had snowed on the bedsheets:
white nights
accumulated and frozen in place.
Eyelashes to wish on, blown into desires’
secrets, while the mist outside
is stuck amid slush.
To say it is to lose it,
to breathe near it is to blow it away.
So your eyes are closed, your mouth shut,
and at the edge of your lips, blindly, there crawls
the mere four-letter word,
not skin-deep, no, deeper,
more deeply unspeakably misunderstood or misspoken
so often, not so secret – blown
away into the sweet nothings
of the frozen eyelashes, blank
at the misted window,
miles away.
Just the sky
The sky just
pounces upon my stare and guzzles me whole,
until eyes are lost to the horizon’s hazes,
stolen in a desert of blue, without oasis,
undead, undying, to bask in luminous blankness,
a lull without place or time,
mind-
less, upside
down in inverse gravity towards nothing,
vacant space,
no, towards anything, the thirst of wide, supple blue,
vagrant space –
suppose there was a drop of moon, a star blink, but firm,
life and light set in sapphire;
suppose whirlpools or quicksand is what it forms;
suppose it doesn’t matter,
it just is. The shutters close. Eyes close.
One could suppose it’s all a dream from some body
with any shade of reality
left in near-invisibility only
to the naked eye…
Just the sky.
Plant machete
after David Bowen’s visual art installation
Subconscious violence.
Nature’s revenge on itself
is what we half-wish on ourselves.
But the plants do not, cannot want
anything like this. Unless we make them.
Observe this experiment:
electrical signals flow through an indoor plant
into an attached mechanical arm, set up to wield an unwieldy machete, on camera,
as if it were a natural
videogame.
The leaves slash the air,
rustled
not by a wind gust’s bite,
but by their own
snicker-snack.
Unreal shock at unconscious violence.
Violent conscience:
we’re wielding such weapons—it’s just because;
our swashbuckling blows leave nothing behind—they vanish into thin air.
But the plant stops
and waits to perhaps strike again
at us, when nobody is looking,
even when it does not want to.
Just because.
Jorge Lopez Llorente is a bilingual writer from Madrid (Spain), who studied English Literature at Oxford University. His debut poetry collection Los ojos desdibujados is out with Cuadranta. His other poetry and fiction have been published internationally in magazines such as Under the Radar, New Critique, -Algia and Mordedor.
Like trees in a tray
Contained within a tray, two old olive trees,
have gnarled and pitted bark. Exiled from their clan
they’ve lost their ancient land, can no longer cope
with flood and drought, outface the fire and wind.
Pruned to other’s whims and passed
from hand to hand they bear no fruit,
and bring no bird song to their boughs.
Uprooted from our families we’d tried
to fly with others’ fancies, swarmed and swooped
in murmurating flocks – until we met.
We stayed apart until contained within
a grounding space and slowly roots entwined.
A first time of peace that felt like victory.
Beauty and the Beast
after ‘On viewing Perseus with the head of Medusa’
Benvenuto Cellini
In bronzed beauty, capped, armed and shod by gods he elevates
her blood tressed head.
She lies crumpled, stamped on.
Raped, blamed and banished to live with sisters, violation masked her, froze her eyes to death, writhed her skull with sloughed off skins.
Then he came and, whilst she slept, killed her.
Sacker of cities by name, this pretty side blow of a priapic god, clothed in privilege,
was fearful his mother might marry a man
and will not meet your eye.
Her lids do not open.
If you touched his eyes, no tear would flow.
Ian Parker Dodd performs at open mics and has read at the Cheltenham and Ledbury festivals. He has appeared in several anthologies, the Herefordshire Stanza Group being the latest in 2023. His collection ‘All they will call you’ was published in 2021.
Well here am I now safe and sound
Perchance you have erased me
from your memory bank?
That voiceless patchwork toy
stitched together with tarred twine
who never dared look you
in your iced egret eye.
Well here am I now safe and sound
in my grey stone turreted tower.
Delicate in dusky musk wisteria.
Sweetly scented violet blooms
adorn the silky spherical walls
that silently surround me.
I while away sublime seasons bathed
In honeycombed sunlight and dine upon
melted white chocolate star bursts and
peppermint moon mints washed down
with vintage celestial claret sipped from
a crystal goblet through a rolled gold straw.
A brown velvet-nosed vole keeps me company
on days that end in a ‘y’ and a rare breed
mountain goat plays angelic music upon
an antique harpsichord which he purchased
from the nearby flea market when he was
shopping for French onions to make soup.
And you?
Still in your darkened den of desperation?
Bickering with your clan of clip-on clowns
and chewing gum chums the piquant perfume
of almond arsenic bouncing off the beams
whilst you waste the weeks upon trivial pursuit?
I wonder did you ever stop to consider my fate
after you had used and abused me?
Or did you merely admire your handiwork?
The royal purple and egg yolk yellow
clouds drifting across the sky of my soul after
your mythical Dragon had left the building!
So now you are well past your prime
and at long last it’s my time to shine
I walk away. Would you really expect
me to stay? I walk away but never forget
Tricia Lloyd Waller has always been fascinated by the magic of words and how they might be magically rearranged and woven into brand new stories. She has recently had work accepted by Wishbone Words and The World of Myth. Last month she was a part of The Baton of Hope Tour and read two of her poems at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre.
Sand martins
It’s April and the sand martins are back on our riverbank,
wheeling over the water like noisy children at the beach:
watch them feint and dodge in their ecstatic, erratic frenzy,
all angles and forked tails and flashes of white underside.
Their frantic flight and rattling idiot chatter is all for show:
they are engineers, industrious, tunnelling feet deep
into the shifting sandstone banks, deconstructing
quartz, feldspar and silt to hollow out a place to nest.
When they return next spring from Mali and Senegal,
flying a hundred miles a day, to find the banks collapsed
and their secret tunnels destroyed in winter floods,
they start again. They persist, undeterred.
Blackberry picking with the poets
Of course, we always think of Heaney
and his Blackbeard palms,
when we walk along the coast-path
and lean into the hedgerow
seeking out our glossy black rewards.
And then there’s Plath, alone
in her blackberry alley and troubled
by the heaving of the elusive sea,
which is the back drop to our search
rather than a haunting empty space.
Turning from the sea, we settle
for the easy gains, the lowest-hanging
but blandest fruit, and avoid
the scratches and chance of falling
that comes with stretching for the richest prize.
And then old Browning comes along
and resolution stirs with his mild reproach:
“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
or what’s a heaven for?”
Seeing Cymbeline on Coronation Day
Golden lads and girls all must
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
We had it all laid out before us:
a grumpy king with a second wife,
a child who married outside the tribe,
dysfunction, drugs and discontent.
We had a kingdom ill at ease,
caught between its stubborn isolation
and paying Rome its tribute.
We had the grotesque and glorious side by side:
on a Welsh mountain a headless corpse was strewn with flowers.
The descent of Jupiter to the stage
reconciled a wife to low-born husband,
recovered princes lost to the wild,
restored the kingdom to its place at Europe’s table.
And what of our grumpy king,
delayed in his golden coach,
with stolen jewels around his uneasy crown?
We are a nation ill at ease,
caught between the waving of a flag
and the grip of metal round our wrists.
For all the pomp and prayers,
no gods with promise of peace and plenty
descend today in London;
and the younger son flies away, alone.
David Birch’s poems frequently explore the relationship of people and their landscape. He is fascinated by what is handed down within our families and community.
The hall clock strikes one
Julie prefers not to have audio
A lonely emptiness yawns and glues itself to my troubled walls,
In the silent vacancy of the stretched-out dimness of day.
Again, the hall clock strikes one, and smashes against the shores of my mind,
And echoes trample with weighted feet upon my iced weathered lanes of woes.
In the silent vacancy of the stretched-out dimness of day,
The brittle force of another amplified hour snaps within my empty room,
And echoes trample with weighted feet upon my iced weathered lanes of woes.
In the bleakness of my solitude, I grow weary of my own company.
The brittle force of another amplified hour snaps within my empty room,
Whilst sour shadows keep pace upon my tortured mind’s imperfections.
In the bleakness of my solitude, I grow weary of my own company.
The ticking hours arrive late and brutal, marching their way towards death.
Whilst sour shadows keep pace upon my tortured mind’s imperfections,
A lonely emptiness yawns and glues itself to my troubled walls.
The ticking hours arrive late and brutal, marching their way towards death
Again, the hall clock strikes one, and smashes against the shores of my mind.
Julie Wiltshire launched her poetry book Brocading the Verse in July 2023, published by Crumps Barn Studio and available from Amazon or Waterstones. Julie has had many poems and short stories published in different anthologies. In 2022, she graduated with a BA (Hons) specializing in English Literature.
And so
Better to end it here,
As the quelling tide heaves in.
Teetering in the shoreline breeze,
You note my eyes are glazed with
Some sort of wretchedness.
You ask about the chasm,
The empty space I harrowed into sand.
I tell you I didn’t get much sleep in the night,
That my pillow sank so far beneath my weight
I felt as though I was falling
And my life dimmed to a sequence of still frames.
You wonder will I ever have room?
The waves thrash against our shins.
Hannah Fielden writes poems exploring the chronic symptoms of grief and love. She taps into her experience working as a carer, unearthing the intricacies of human life and death. Hannah hopes to continue writing, to act as personal miniature time capsules, while now working as a Nursing Associate.
Umbrella
I walk, down frozen rivers, the air alive with broken vowels, my soul a side effect of self-deceit.
Water should be free-setting.
But, when clouds of wet drop down the metal sky, my words just spill-spell, my worth just winds
for miles, along the straits.
A chain without constraint.
And when the wind takes umbrage, my umbrella covers the cracks of one of the selves, and by
the time it breaks ribs, the time cries.
The writing begins.
Like Fiona, I summon lines along the downfalls, the rainbow in a wine glass, my red lipstick.
My edge a symmetry of skirts.
And in the wake of wet fields, I walk, down frozen feelings, a belief the fuse to broken pools.
Water should be a buoy word.
But when you drop by, every Sunday, early and late, I shall even my hair, the needs swim-swell,
my love just furls for miles, along the custom calmth of a man.
He will never chain my sunlight away.
He just watches without waver.
And safe in an umbrella shade, I am unafraid, and hold his gaze.
The lake, last winter,
when he asked: do you know how I have been living,
now that sun and moon keep hiding?
And then he said: you know what water means,
the version that leads to silver.
I thought: why fire your clouds at me – and also:
has the current not done her job blazingly?
Each winter, he expects me to return.
Each time, the moisty cold hoists him, leads me,
to sail stark waves at first light,
right when I count on coffee and lust.
I zigzag on freedom.
The lake, last winter,
when he said: you know to feel the tides,
that sun and moon – though he misunderstands:
I hardly remember how pretty the girls looked down the jetty,
flowing skirts, hesitant legs.
I thought: why do young rovers
long to impress a surface so much?
That spring, he built a boat, another speed of life, you see,
more creative, independent. Clearly,
it must have hurt to await a lake, while a voyage
blooms in veins, while having your heart ripped out,
again, and again.
I doze off, despite the cold and light, the happiness for free.
It might be the sense of blue sky, or maybe it is just
the raw wind of future. I hardly ask –
I think:
has the current not done her job heartedly?
Kate Copeland’s love for language led her to teaching & translating; her love for art & water to poetry. Find her pieces @Ekphrastic Review, Wildfire Words, Metaworker, AltPoetryPrompts & https://www.instagram.com/kate.copeland.poems (a.o.) Kate is guest-editor for TER & runs workshops for IWWG. She was born@harbour-city and adores housesitting@the world.
The square and the compass
(Rebecca prefers not to have audio)
Long before the Roman Empire, when Egypt ruled the East,
Great strides were made in knowledge by the Persians and the Greeks,
The Egyptians made the desert bloom with crops of corn and wheat,
Built pyramids and temples, raised Alexandria and Thebes.
The Phoenicians launched great merchant ships to navigate the seas,
Reached these Noble Islands, traded goods for Cornish Tin.
Mixed with the local people, shared customs and beliefs,
Were trusted and respected were feted by our local chiefs,
Merged with the common people, shared skills and expertise,
Intermarried with our daughters, brought prosperity and peace.
A bond was forged between us, blood ties of kith and kin,
Creating strong relations with West Britain and the East.
When Jesus died upon the cross he was perfumed, oiled and dressed.
Then laid inside a rich man’s tomb in the Garden of the Dead,
That night they moved him to a ship bound for the Isles of the West,
Submerged within a cask of wine lashed to the vessels deck.
Through the Pillars of Hercules, to the brooding mists of Lyonesse
By the Pharos of Finnistere, to these Islands of the Blessed.
A dew laden breeze brushed the sea, low drizzle hugged the vale,
A great bell tolled a solemn note, a distant horn was heard.
At journeys end they reached the shore of this most holy place
The sacred ‘Isle of Avalon’ where fact meets myth and faith.
In the seven rings of the Crystal Mount sealed in a sorcerer’s cave
Lie the bones of the Redeemer; the one who died, that he might save.
The Crown of Thorns, the Holy Shroud, the cup from which he sipped,
The fragments of the one true cross, the relics of the crypt.
Down through the generations a solemn oath was kept,
A sacred vow of silence as to where the Saviour slept.
The first keeper of this secret, the first ‘Fisher King elect,’
Wore the signet ring of ‘Jesus’ to claim obedience and respect.
Armies came and armies fought, the land was sacked and torched,
Come turbulence and tyranny despot kings and Saxon hordes.
Famine and pestilence, great dangers stalked the land,
Till the rightful king of Camelot brought peace unto the realm.
On the sword, King Arthur learned, the secrets of the faith
Then swore a Pentecostal Oath to seek the Holy Grail.
King Arthur never found the Grail he died upon the field,
The last keeper of the covenant, the last Fisher King.
Guinevere, Lancelot, the Water Fairies of the Mere
Bore Arthur o’er to Avalon on the barge of ‘Grief and Tears.’
There to sleep with ancient Kings, Druid bards and seers,
Ready to arise again in Britons’ time of need.
The latter knights of Camelot the Round Table and the Veil
Came together at Old King Arthurs Court to quest the Holy Grail,
They made a vow of poverty that they and future heirs
Would wear a cross upon their breast to show humility and faith.
The first Knights of this Order, forged by hunger, war and plague,
Formed the ‘Poor Knights of the Temple,’ the ‘Knights Templar.’
The Phoenicians built the Temple, the ‘Temple on the Mount,’
They made the treasure chambers, secret rooms and hidden vaults.
In the Templar’s possession were many diagrams and maps,
Depicting Solomon’s tunnels, connecting caves and spiral steps.
At the foot of ‘Abrahams Altar,’ carved upon a marble sett,
Was the sign of the Phoenicians; the ‘Compass and Straight Edge.’
When the Crusaders seized Jerusalem and the ‘Temple of the Rock,’
The Templar’s made their quarters in the disused stable block,
They excavated in the Temple in accordance with their charts,
Gaining entry to the lower layers by the mark of the ‘Square and Arc.’
Via cavity and culvert, walkway and aqueduct,
They reached the inner sanctum and the shrine of the Hebrew God.
It’s claimed the Order found the Ark and with it many treasures,
The scriptures of Judaic sect’s, books of secret knowledge.
Volumes on geometry, astronomy and science,
Major works on alchemy, medicine and physics,
The wonders of the ancient world, the secrets of mathematics,
The lost cities of Atlantis, great generals and their battles.
So here they lie within three worlds of earth, sea and heaven,
Arthur and the Celtic Kings and the one they call Messiah,
Here they lie shielded by the Quantocks and the Mendips,
On the mystic Isle of Avalon, so may it be forever.
I sang for the morning
I sang for the morning, I danced for the rain, gave thanks for this ‘Eden’ then the Whiteman came.
We welcomed you with open arms; you raised a ‘Statue of ‘Liberty’ over our bones,
Tricked our people, bullied our chiefs, brought plague and fever; broke the pipe of peace.
Poisoned the waters, dug up the land, put down roots on our burial grounds.
Cut down the forests, killed all the game, sold off the prairie, fenced off the plains.
Then came the ‘Iron Horse’ and the ‘pale skinned ghosts,’ then the ‘Talking Wires’ down the Telegraph
Road
Then came the missions; the schools and the rules, the lawyers; the stage coach; the bar girl whores,
Then the ‘Sunday Doctors’ with prayers and psalms, sent amongst us with honeyed tongues,
Armed with a book about a pale faced God, on their chest was a man nailed to a cross.
Jesuit Fathers; ‘Black Robed Chiefs,’ baptising our people, making us weak.
D’you think your God’s in human form looking down from a golden throne?
Presiding o’er some ‘Grand Design,’ what is yours and what is mine,
Conversing with a chosen few, ‘I am the way, I am the truth,’ convert the savage it is my will.
No! God is an infinite unstoppable force; that breathes life throughout the universe,
A boundless energy beyond space and time, a pulsing river shot through with life.
He’s rolling thunder cross prairie grass, the roaring wind through a mountain pass,
The rustling leaves in the high treetops, a fleeting rainbow in the last raindrops. .
Give me buckskins and feathers not these Whiteman clothes, my sisters are the flowers;
my brothers the wolves.
I’m connected to the Earth, the waters; the air, my kin is the eagle, the beaver; the bear,
The trees are my shelter, the streams are my roads, the breeze is my counsel, through grasslands I roam,
I rise with the daylight, count time by sunshade, know night by the star shift, mark months by moon phase
We are who we are, born equal and free, you can’t sell the ground from under our feet!
Where is our proud nation our Indian braves, like the tracks of the buffalo gone from the range.
We are his ‘Red Children,’ we care for the land, all that swims in the rivers, the four legged of the ground
All that grows from the Earth, and the winged of the sky, we are part of creation in the ‘circle of life.’
An ode to the stars
I have just one question to ask of you,
How come my horoscope never came true?
You gave me cause to understand,
That my fate was written, right here in my hand.
You spoke of stars and planets in my house,
Of fame and fortune that I would arouse,
My ascending star rising in the east,
The crescent moon, you had all of my belief.
How then, if it is written in the stars,
Have I not blazed a trail, like a rocket to Mars?
Blessed by Taurus in a ‘Grand Fire Trine,’
Plotted on my chart and in my destiny line,
Powers of perseverance, initiative and drive,
Creative inspiration, all feature in my sign.
Got a tarot card reading, bought a white rabbit’s foot,
Did some tealeaf gazing, still no luck.
Y’know I’m double jointed, gotta shiny horseshoe,
Gotta shamrock in my collar, gotta double crown too.
Saw the psychic reader, paid the oracle a fee,
She said, “I’ll look your bumps over but it’s all Greek to me.”
The gold toothed gypsy got out her crystal ball,
I crossed her palm with silver, she said, ”Boy you got it all.”She pulled my hand towards her, studied the lines,
Black cat on her shoulder made a magic sign.
Now I don’t wanna cast aspersions on a Romany Gipsy Queen,
For fortune can turn on a word or a whim,
But above her door these words were etched,
‘Don’t count no chickens before they get hatched.’
Earth – Air – Fire – Rain,
Traverse the Mount of Venus on the astral plain.
Venus is my ruler, in the ‘House of the Ram’,
I got the ‘Dragons Head’ rising, (I’m a real lucky man.)
Transit of Saturn; track the eclipse of the moon,
Jupiter’s descending, crossing Neptune.
From the rings of Saturn to the edge of Scorpio,
From the belt of Orion, to the bounds of Leo,
In ominous opposition to the orbit of the Sun,
Intersecting the conjunction at the ring of Solomon,
Just on the cusp; of the lunar lip,
Where aspects of Pluto cross my cosmic trip,
In the temple of Uranus at the zenith of my star,
There’s a minor attendant a-groovin at the bar.
Consulted the pages of ‘Old Moore’s’ Almanac,
Told me the following aspects might have an effect.
Sunspot interference, the pull of the moon,
Gamma emissions from a solar plume,
A wandering bruiser from the icy wastes,
Shooting star showers from a comets wake,
Storms on Juno, X-Ray flares,
Magnetic variations in the ‘Crystal Maze,’
Latitude, longitude, hour of the day,
All make a difference to success or delay,
Gravitational deviations on the galactic tides,
Can do a ‘Uri Geller’ on the ‘hands of time.’
Sooner or later, retard or advance,
It all has a bearing on the ‘Wheel of Chance.’
Wo’oh, astro scholars; answer me this,
If it’s written in the stars then how can I miss?
These mystic snakes and ladders are a mystery to me,
So say soothsayers let my lucky stars be!
David Dixon has been writing for about 12 years. He has never won a competition but have been mentioned on quite a few occasions. David’s subject matter is always a story.
Elul is here
(Elul, the month prior to the Jewish New Year, is a time for personal reflection and taking stock)
The sound of the Hebrew word Elul
is one like water moving in a pool,
a sound like light rain
meeting the surface of a lake,
a liquid body that can take
one drop
and make an infinity of ripples,
sending my mind to memories
of a little boating lake
where every year in late September,
maples
drop their yellow leaves
into a water
turned dark by a moody sky.
Black headed gulls fly in
to gather there
and don white plumage
in honour of the coming cold,
gliding round one another
as if paying homage to the wind
that rakes great sighs through
the dry leaves
of horse chestnut trees
and oaks
carrying with it a myrrhic scent
– delight mingled with sorrow.
Even my dog takes note
parsing the meaning with damp nostrils
before
obedient to his species
rolling on the grass, carefree.
Something is leaving
and something is coming
the dying summer
makes the bees and wasps
rest and stop buzzing.
Elul is here,
listen!
Valerie Maria Anthony is a London-based artist and poet who has published In Oremus Magazine and Amethyst Review. She believes poetry can be an instrument of grace and takes joy seriously enough to look for it everywhere. She has years of experience facilitating creative writing workshops in social care settings.
Uncle Vena
You taught me chess and German numbers
as we travelled in the Sunbeam Alpine
gave me a Russian radio and Russian stamps
celebrating Uri Gagarin and other Soviet heroes
you brought back caviar from trips to Russia
and in your basement kept a multilingual library
filled with chemistry books and Russian classics
from Pushkin and Dostoevsky to Zoshchenko.
You treated me to football at the Chelsea ground
when Peter Osgood and Bonetti had us roaring
and introduced me to Zhenia and her family,
relatives who lived in liberated France.
You had a decrepit five floor Chelsea mansion
leased when prices were low in the war
with an antiquated water heater
perfectly polished wooden floors
and a nightowl croupier lodger in the attic.
To get there you walked down cool Kings Road
from Sloane Square tube to Carlyle Square
which had a private park for residents
with elegant lawns and flower beds
and paths to walk my Irish aunt’s Red Setter –
when I rang the doorbell it leapt up
bounding and sliding along the floor
colliding with the door and jumping out
as Vena welcomed me with a Russian kiss.
I was working as a translator in Switzerland
when I learnt you had died of a heart attack
in Moscow back in your country of birth
and were buried there – you had gone home.
Mentioned in despatches
You never said you were mentioned in despatches –
maybe no one knew – but a hundred years later
I read that at Ypres your bravery was recognised
and I saw a different man from the withdrawn,
taciturn figure of your later years,
a strong and energetic soldier saving his comrades
a hero who survived but was lost within himself
struggling to recover from the trauma of war.
You did your duty, you served your country, you were proud
and determined, yet it was all about a single moment
when your courage came through. In six months in 1917
you were promoted from Captain to Acting Lieutenant
and then were married. When I visited your Surrey bunker,
you were the granddad who hid in his masculine den
smoking in the twilight, dreaming of lost times;
what memories moved you as you sat alone in the dark?
Jacques’ story
“I can suck melancholy out of a song
as a weasel sucks eggs” – As You Like It
I grew up in a manor house, a spoilt nobleman
Fussed over and petted in my mother’s mansion,
My father having died before I was nine.
I was precocious and studied languages,
Knowing more Latin and Greek at thirteen
Than many a learned professor.
But once I started to become a man
I lost my interest in serious things,
And wasted time and money on gambling,
Frivolous affairs and courtesans,
Burning up my talents and my fortune
And nearly ruining my doting mother.
But now in exile with the banished Duke
I mend other people’s folly with wisdom.
I love to reflect on the absurdities of power,
And courtiers preening for advancement.
I see there is no more noble calling
Than to preach morality through witty jests.
My satire is a negative commentary,
Not the hired fool’s attempt to entertain,
With sweet love songs and consolation.
My wit is more abrasive, correcting faults
By sarcastic observation of the social world
Throwing people’s errors in their faces.
I am content to be a leisured aristocrat
Observing humanity with a jaundiced eye.
Perhaps you’d like to hear my speech
About the seven parts each person plays?
“…and thereby hangs a tale”
Ivor Frankell is a lifelong student of poetry, who enjoys drawing on my mixed cultural background and knowledge of different languages, I have had work published online with Wildfire Words and in Cornish in two books of Cornish poetry, Modern Cornish Poetries and Dewhelans.
Space junk
In 2018, Elon Musk launched his Tesla Roadster car into heliocentric orbit in a rocket test flight.
We all sometimes ruminate, about what might differentiate
human beings from primates and animals in general.
Advanced communication? Clever tool manipulation?
Arithmetic both paper-based and mental?
But one thing makes it clearer that we probably are superior
and ahead of all the others in the race,
conclusively to feature as number one creature:
we’ve sent a cherry red roadster into space.
We happen to be the species leaving so much more than faeces
as a by-product of living on this planet.
Other creatures like to scatter mainly waste organic matter,
whether elephant or porcupine or gannet.
To nourish and enrich the biosphere, they ditch their itch,
creating beneficial compost, that will rot down at a pace.
But we scatter other items that will last ad infinitum,
like a cherry red roadster in space.
You may marvel at the cleverness of spiders’ webs and never
cease to wonder at the grace and style of deer.
Maggots may be pink and wriggly but it’s wonderful how quickly
they can make a dead thing change and disappear.
The humble dung beetle is anything but feeble.
It can roll a dung ball ten times its own weight.
You may marvel at how beavers change the course of streams but we’ve, er
put a cherry-red roadster into space.
We’re really so much smaller than the average dinosaur
but make up for it with volume of detritus.
Plastic hairdryers, computers, toothpaste tubes, broadband routers,
plastic dashboards, plastic bumpers, plastic wipers.
They will never ever rust, turn to orange coloured dust,
safe in landfill, they’ll take centuries to decay.
But the all-redeeming glory of the human debris story
is the cherry-red roadster in space.
We may have gridlock in our cities but the roadster’s oh so pretty,
cruising, laid back, somewhere out near Mars.
The only car on a road without speed cameras or cones
and no need to change lanes for other cars.
It’s on a thousand year-long drive round the Space-X25.
The driver has a fixed smile on his face.
No need for breathing apparatus in his permanent hiatus,
in his cherry-red roadster in space.
We may sacrifice the night sky on the altar of free enterprise,
launch satellites in their thousands into orbit,
take egotist for philanthropist, presenting his own avarice
for power, as broadband for the poor – no, we applaud it.
Who cares if our astronomers need clear dark skies to monitor
the asteroids that might, one day, wipe out the human race?
Or find stars with exo-planets that we might one day inhabit?
Just think: cherry-red roadster in space.
There’s a beacon of hope, friends, in each focussed telescope lens:
the cherry red roadster in space.
Philip Rösel Baker lives under dark skies in a remote hamlet in East Anglia.
Changing world
A hot Portugal afternoon.
We lie by the pool and watch the sky
Every twenty minutes
The helicopters fly overhead,
Regular, like a heartbeat.
Dangling on a rope underneath them, a bucket of water
Of mammoth proportions
It’s day four now, and the fires are still burning.
But still, the sun is shining
And the sea is blue
And the food is cheap
It feels almost too good to be true.
As we lie there rubbing ultra-smooth bronzing lotion into our skin
We ask each other where we will go next year
While in our heads, behind nervous smiles
More pressing questions circle.
Must I have strawberries in March
Must I insist on a bath each evening
And a takeout Cappuccino each morning
Must I insist on flying each year to
somewhere nice,
somewhere hot
somewhere…..cheap.
How much blood is on my hands?
How much blood is on yours too?
There is no more time, the moment is now,
Be careful, be thoughtful, be …. frugal
But also, do not be fooled,
This guilt, this responsibility
Comes big and comes small
For above us there are larger hands
More powerful hands, money grabbing hands,
Hands that wring out the earth
Steal all it possesses, and still come back for more.
But this abuse, this destruction, this taking and taking.
Who will suffer in the end, and what price will we pay for it all?
Melissa Vardy is a writer who is currently working on a first novel and has had writing published on several websites including The Deserter, Frazzled and Robot Butt. Melissa, who also performs stand up comedy, poetry and spoken word, is openly bisexual, desperately dyslexic, fiercely left wing and proudly South London.
Sonic sonnet
There’s no-one better to write this sonnet
iambic pentameter, don’t sweat I’m on it.
I’m not a quitter no running from it
not to the letter life’s sonic sonnet
injected metaphor, half-rhymes all on it
I’m getting meta for this is ironic.
Like a bowl of cherries getting stoned
like a rolling stone returning home
it’s time, I decided, to cannibalise
my leftover poems I self-plagiarise
stale ingredients in a new recipe
a rapid descent to mixed metaphor-icaly.
Tried flying this kite, failed to reach the heights
So does it delight? Dunno it just might.
Landing on the limits
Wandering the chambers of minds
Search parties seek the summit of memory
Conjuring the magic of imagination
Plunging into the depths of the seas
Stars spark chains of brain activity
Trekking through galaxies’ black holes in my skull
Landing on the limits of intelligence and language
Makes the whole world seem less credible
Multiverses of poetry and verses
Can’t reverse human greed and fallibility
What is even worse is we are running out of choices
Gather all our voices to save our humanity
Sandra Howell’s poetry has been published by ‘Hidden Literature,’ and Collage Arts’ (now Writing Room). In 2022 she was shortlisted for the Lascaux Poetry Prize. Since January 2023 she has performed at London poetry open mic events, featuring at 2. Her poetry is displayed at City Lit’s ‘The Colour of Language’ exhibition until 22 September 2023.
Instagram and Facebook @SandraHowellPoetry
Pretend
For my lovely late twin, Debs.
(Rebecca prefers not to have audio)
Pretend that you didn’t have a twin sister
Who lived in a little flat
Pretend there weren’t bright flower pots outside
Where in summertime, she sat
Pretend that she didn’t have two tiny dogs
Who accompanied her everywhere
Pretend that she didn’t bask in the sun
Atop that beautiful field over there
Pretend that there wasn’t a little shop
Where she liked to buy sweet candles
Pretend she didn’t suffer from an illness
That even you could not handle
Pretend that you didn’t lose her forever
And that in the woods you walk
Pretend that you sit on your bench together
Laugh gregariously and talk
Pretend that you could have saved her
That you had visited her that day
Pretend that you had helped her
And that she would still be here today
Yin and yang
My twin arrived head first-
Me feet first, last.
Thirty two minutes apart
Not so very fast.
Through DNA’s dictation
Exact voice, hair, eyes
My very first love
My very first disguise
We see the other’s insides
As we know our very own
We are each the other’s self
Biological clones.
Contrasting inclinations
Myself, I love my men
She loves her women
Not so alike there, then.
We are a shifting breeze
Without her, no me
Without me, no her
Is this how it’s meant to be?
She is my backbone
When mine’s all chalk
I am her voice
When she’s afraid to talk.
We are yin and yang,
Ferocious friends
Even worse enemies
But each and all mends.
Fate was generous.
A world together
A face as a mirror.
And love forever.
What she taught me
I once had a twin sister
Whose face I touched each day
Who made my hours count,
But then she went away
I once had a twin sister
Who taught me how to run
To be the best I could be
And then our time was done
I once had a twin sister
Who taught me how to be strong
How to believe in myself
Now I only have ‘our song’
I once had a twin sister
Who taught me not to be afraid
To hold my head up high
Now it is bent where she is laid
I once had a twin sister
Who I loved for forty-one years
Never once did I feel alone
Now time taunts and leers
I once had a twin sister
Who didn’t think she belonged
My beautiful pink-cheeked sister!
I cannot accept you are gone!
Rebecca Topham-Roche lost her identical twin sister, Debs, to suicide in 2021, aged 41. Rebecca hopes to illustrate that the act of suicide is not reflective of the person and that we must never forget who loved ones were, despite how they left the world.
Oenone whatsapps Paris
Are you scrolling through my whatsapps
Or does your new wife forbid it
08.55 √√
Read them! They come, not from the fingers
of faithless Helen, Queen of Sparta
08.57 √√
but from Oenone, the fountain nymph
sprung from the mighty River Cebren
08.58 √√
I guided you, tended you, loved you
when you were no son of Priam
08.59 √√
no Prince of Troy, just a lowly shepherd,
a slave. And I, daughter of a river god
9.00 √√
loved you, love you
09.01 √√
Not even a blue tick 💔
Paris, why don’t you read them
10.06 √√
The sun dazzles, heat rains down,
volcano-hot as thwarted passion
11.35 √√
Do you remember that day when,
scorched with lust, we sought shade
11.44 √√
under beech trees. You fed me grapes,
fat and luscious, a dark bloom on their skin
11.45 √√
as they dangled above my mouth.
I took them, crushed them to pulp
11.46 √√
Do you offer her grapes? Do her
pretty white teeth rip them to shreds
11.47 √√
Paris, answer
11.48 √√
Remember Mount Ida –
the swift hounds I led on the chase
14.11 √√
through the glades and rocks
where wild beasts hid their cubs.
14.12 √√
Who set the nets to capture the quarry
Who taught you to hunt
14.13 √√
I’m resting now by the cool stream
my back against the poplar tree
15.42 √√
where once you carved our names
our love sealed for ever in its bark
15.43 √√
As the trunk grows, so do our names
so does our love, you said
15.44 √√
Beware the Greek heifer, your sister
Cassandra warned. She trails blood in her wake
17.15 √√
That night I dreamt of a cow with gold
filigree horns, hooves of lapis lazuli
17.16 √√
But still an old cow
17.17 √√
🐄 🐄 🐄
17.18 √√
May her udders drip poison!
17.19 √√
Helios drives his fiery chariot
over the west. Still no answer
20.20 √√
I am moon-chilled and crazy. My eyes
flood with cold light
20.46 √√
But not as cold as your silence
20.47 √√
Will you leave me like this
20.48 √√
Ghosted
20.49
Iris Anne Lewis is featured in Black Bough’s Silver Branch series. Winner of the Gloucestershire Poetry Society competition and the Graffiti competition. A runner-up in this year’s GWN competition. Highly commended in the Wales Poetry Award. She will be reading at the Cheltenham Literary Festival this year for the seventh time.
Twitter: @IrisAnneLewis
Paradise up the Qurantul
Don’t pause there
where the slopes cut slowly into steps,
as gravelly deposits shuffle-rank
into the section-lines of pilgrims
and gather into marbles sharp and smooth;
go to the view from up the highest flight,
from behind the open gate,
where now it has been herded into
a narrow, shaded stair –
whence the Jordan valley opens
from the cavern’s exonarthex –
where the shoeless pilgrims shuffle
out the sun and baking plain.
These are not the gates of wisdom
where brazen guards defenceless
stand in the shadows of their crosses
which the Sultan’s call dismembered;
at his beckoning they were buried
beneath the Western walls –
through them the pilgrims stagger
to glimpse her through the sheets,
from right-to-left sock-sliding
to see her left-to-right –
the virgin’s honour guarded
at the Caliph’s new command
from where the shoeless pilgrims shuffle
to pray their day’s divisions
in sections new re-drawn
and somewhere in the East is covered up
the long-forgotten pools of bread and wine
and water in the stoney gravel cisterns
with the broken arms of crosses,
and the dust from whence they came.
But the Sultan’s words have echoed in the cave,
and everywhere the crosses have been sheltered –
gold only recently refreshed
in newer city Temples
while the wormy wood of distant towers
of angels carved into pew-ends and
lofty roods abandoned
nonetheless win shade from sunlight
and the prying eyes of pilgrims
shuffling, shoeless, on the flagstones
where soon they’ll be creeping to the cross.
But here is my forty cubits
my walled kitchen-garden
my little paradise,
where I can skate, and sing his praises,
with surface for re-echo,
and water once stagnating in the fenland,
now looping round the flowers
and spattering the gravel
where my shod steps have scattered
in the seeds of future fruit, and
The holy water pools will run
when the forty days are done.
Sunset, 4th September (476)
Romulus has gone to bed;
the emperor will not wake again,
and with him sleeps his Latin tongue
in silent stones and rolls now resting
in dovecote holes with Scipios –
pharoahs lie in catacombs wrapped in Gallus’s linen;
elegies composed for Etruscan gods,
all Greek of Aristotle—
Homer’s heroes all chewed up,
Herodotus now digested by Frankish papermites,
till cellulose excretions stir them
with tales of Alexander.
And in the nightly frosts which come
the stones of Saturn freeze and crack
and fall to find the shadows
which hide by the new moon’s back.
Who would ever raise them?
if not to build the Lateran,
or else the stones of Venice?
Who will add Gawain, or Charles
or reinforce poor Roland?
From where will come a novel way
to write, or sing, or plot, conspire,
pray or philosophise?
What ever could be Italian,
or speak a Prince’s tongue?
Surely in a thousand years none will ever come
whose battles will be fought or won
and worthy to be sung or some
to greet the morning Sun?
Hymn before Vespers
Ampleforth Abbey
Contained!
Is all the world in an apple?
What costs the wormhole of a promising pair
if in its very incompletion it can hold the fulness of the gift?
Freely given, so scarcely claimed
and scarcely saved from ruin;
the unity in the curtained box,
world in words of song;
creation in the body in the bodies on the pews;–
pews named for mercy
on which our every rests.
Declan McCarthy has been writing poetry since he was in his school’s creative writing group. Declan continued to write through university, mostly on incidental subjects from his personal life, but often reflecting finding faith and growing into it, and how history interacts with the present.
Hierarchy
(Rebecca prefers not to have audio)
The speculating drone has found a way
into my hive. I let him be. No one
cares more than I about what should or who
should die. The hexagons are sleepy bees.
The workers idle hums for meadowsweet
or royal jelly and new queens. A pleasing buzz
to lace my wings, a pollen dawn must soon
beguile. The virgins slaughter virgins. I
lay eggs that plot and give life to death. And now
the honeyed story spreads along my lips
and teases my tongue. I feel a queen, the hive
heartbeat of drones. The thrum of hexagons
grows loud, a virgin pipes a battle cry
and I am old. Too old for eggs. The hive swarms,
all nectar happy, beeswax walls must crumble,
the song is flight. I sting a virgin dead
and mate again with workers that consume my life.
The ghost train is late
I didn’t mind the delay.
School study was a breath
that bedded time in pages,
a portal to other places.
I didn’t mind the delay.
My lover gave me warmth
with cups of tea and chat,
of timeless this and that.
With walks I found my strength
to bury clocks and meander
this track along the border.
I didn’t mind the delay.
And so the fraying length
of life has come with time,
though there wasn’t much depth.
I say, I don’t mind a delay.
A never-ending want for sky
The gear in first, climbing this hill
as if the bike was weighted in
reverse. Where is the clear sky?
The gear in third, around the bend
a gloom of pine; the Roman road
for those who clutch to maps and time.
The gear in fifth. Ahead, the roam
of moor, the breath of past beneath
the peat, so much to mist a mind.
There are no gears from blind to seer.
Let potholes cloud. My sky stays clear.
Phil Wood studied at Aberystwyth University. He has worked in statistics, education, ship and a biscuit factory. His writing can be found in such publications as Fragmented Voices, Gwyllion, Black Nore Review, and Green Ink Poetry.
Holding hands
Let us grow old together holding hands,
not quite as young lovers do
but not so different either.
The flutter is gone,
but the rest is very like.
Eventually, we might hold hands
to steady us as we walk, but mostly
it will be for support of a deeper sort,
like that when we were younger lovers,
but not quite that again.
Our hands grip the same as then,
singing to the other the way
only held hands can, but now
they play a different tune,
though still a duet,
sung by me and you.
Go gently
Yes, please, go gently
into that good night,
with a vision of goodness
filling your failing eyes,
and with loved ones beside you,
humming a song or a hymn as they
caress your withered, wrinkled arm.
Do not go in the rage of hospital alarms
that bring code red machines and strangers
who push the grieving out of the room,
pound your chest, and poke holes in you.
Only go gently,
no code red, no war or violence,
no conflagration or wild water.
When you go, go gently — but not early.
Wait, and keep waiting,
until you come
to the road’s end,
and you surrender
into the peace of
that good night,
where a figure
shrouded in the mist
walks toward you
through a lush
and cool valley.
Prayer
I used to pray and meditate,
then later I began contemplating.
Hard to tell if prayers are answered.
Life is so kind and generous anyway,
at least where I live,
except for the black swans that disrupt,
wound, and bring disarray.
Prayer can be like a relaxation meditation,
helping put you to sleep.
Contemplation is different. It changes the
world around you as much as it changes you.
But I gave all that up, and now
read poetry instead.
Gerald Seniuk is Canadian, retired, and resides in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. His professional career has been in law and journalism. His published writing portfolio includes poems and academic legal articles. He has privately published a book “Maria – A Reminiscence” as a family history.
River hands
(in memoriam Roger Prowse and Patricia Eades)
Two riverhands called Percy Palmer.
One a ferryman, the other a keeper of the lights.
Such mythic synchronicity.
Tides have sucked their sands away,
the ferry pier at Aust Warth
has rotted, and “The Windbound”
where the lightkeeper drank
is rubble now.
Overhead a leaping giant
quivers in the gale;
lorries thread its needle’s eye.
The Styx we can cross in a blinking
where riverlights twinkle in shoals.
Look – I say – no hands!
The Blues Room
something is about to blow,
tyres have gouged a puddle through the woods,
the Squash Club is awash
toasty reek of pizza,
shadows pool in a corner,
light slants on a high-hat
when the Blues Room springs alive
trees lay down their branches,
owls mouth-harp along
the barriers are down
between woman man and skin
when the Blues Room starts to creep
when the Blues Room starts to jump
the bandit hillsides
fire away
from the balcony I watch
the spire of Painswick
cross itself in homage
Gurney’s Vale and
hunchback haunts of Elgar
fall face down
beyond the sliding doors
perspiring hands reform
their bucket chain
and wind up tight
the muleish clockwork
kickback of The Blues
Gone
the wide-gash face with bulbous eyes
the garish grin that could gobble you up
with baby-howls
Gone
the baggy pants full of God knows what,
his seal-bark, backfire car that shakes
like a wet dog
Gone
the ostrich head-in-sand, the backside punt,
the off-hand shove that sends his buddy clawing sawdust
from his face
Gone
the hand-spring leap into your lap
at the unfenced gap where you chose to sit
fist rammed into mouth
Gone
obsolete as performing donkeys
unmourned by red-eyed children
screaming in their sleep
David Ashbee has been performing his poems since 1967 from London to Bristol, Bath, The Isle of Wight, and many times in Cheltenham festivals. He has had 3 collections published, by Enitharmon, Bluechrome, and Dempsey & Windle.
Scenes from married life
This time
In rhyme.
*****
Been far?
The Loire.
It’s the place to go
For chateaux like Chenonceaux you know.
*****
Home again and you gossip with the neighbour
While I labour
Working my arse
Off cutting grass.
You’ve lost loads of seeds
And the garden’s growing weeds
But you tell me quite precisely
The spuds are doing nicely.
*****
‘I dreamt I put lemon meringue on my head,’
You said.
Given the state of the nation
It’s a sticky situation.
*****
Listening to the Test match,
Going for a walk,
I get to talk.
I tell you about Olly and Rory and Zac.
You stand back,
Nodding sagely while I bore
About the chances of a draw.
*****
Above all,
Foxgloves are tall.
But roses, you know,
Grow
Heavy with flower and scent,
Bent
With their colours of pink and pinker.
I think, err…
What is that thing we like, thee-and-me?
Ah yes, the peony.
I also like a hollyhock
And you in a frock.
The heat of the sun
Is done.
Everything’s been said.
Let’s go to bed.
*****
When slipping out of that dress, here’s a tip:
It’s got a zip.
With your lovely body I make free.
Then tea.
*****
We are sailing up to Frogmore Creek
While the tide is high and the water’s deep.
The sky is blue, the sea is blue and in between
Green.
The wind whips and curls,
Sail furls and unfurls.
The water glistens bright
In the light.
I decide it’s time to go about
So I shout
And – it’s just the way it goes –
It soaks your clothes and chills your toes.
*****
Above, shove, dove?
The poets also approve
Prove.
Every rhyme or half-rhyme ends in love.
Nigel Hastilow is a journalist by trade but retired these days and spends his time scribbling. He’s written a few novels, the latest being Dead Groovy about the worst deal in the history of pop music, the Kray twins, the Profumo affair and a dead lawyer. He keeps writing poetry in the hope that one day something worthwhile will emerge.
Conception
(Rebecca prefers not to have audio)
When do men really die?
And is that the right time
To scrutinize their mundane existence?
What will happen with those
Slumbering waves of resentment,
Unsent untranslatable messages,
Hopes inscribed on seashells,
Precious items
On covered in dust wooden shelves—
Each one wrapped individually in worn memories,
Each one with its own philosophy.
How many tear-drops
Are supposed enough
To engulf the anchor of doubt?
Spirit shouldn’t be disloyal to its matter.
Its intrinsic might is in the choice
Between seed, spore, chrysalis, and egg
To endure
Through time.
Smelling royal matches
In oak drawers
Layered sentiments
Naturally patinated
Sedimented waste
From luxurious destinations
That the mind has traversed
Enclosed in postcards
Years ago
By an attentive hand
A kind of symbolic taxidermy of feelings and experience
In rhyme
Or with chaotically agglomerated sentences
Paper birds-heralds
Travelled across places
Through time
With distinctive slant and intensity
Of each letter
Now having their sheen lost
Not quite legible
Transformed into common pain.
Dead trees
In other wor(l)ds.
Mirage
Barefoot and cheek-tanned
Summer is daydreaming
About the absolute
Like it’s a charm bracelet
On a girl’s hand
Arranging fireflies
In a jar of honey
With hope
To keep the light forever
Surrounding her head
The flowers nod their assent
As if to the manner born
Vyarka Kozareva lives in Bulgaria. Her work has been published by, among others, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Ann Arbor Review, Triggerfish Critical Review, Sampsonia Way Magazine, The Big Windows Review, morphrog, and is forthcoming in Tipton Poetry Journal.
Fight or Flight
My heart
is a spacious room
full of tiny, frightened birds,
wings beating on windows,
desperate for escape.
They have lived there
for as long as I can remember,
quick to startle, shivering to life
in panic, swooping and circling,
going nowhere.
I try to calm the little birds
in every way I can, breathing slowly,
telling them they are safe—
still they are at the windows,
fighting their reflections.
I hope one day,
they will settle, softly.
I hope one day,
these birds will sing
again.
Anna Maughan has been writing ever since falling in love with John Donne and the Liverpool Poets at school. She writes a lot about hope, aiming to reach for it, hold it. and feel its weight, softness, warmth. She is passionate about open, honest dialogue regarding mental health, as much shame smothers the topic and so many of us struggle to stay alive.
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