Thank you to all who submitted, whether published or not.

Alphabetical list of writers selected for publication

This lists published writers, linked to text, audio, and biography.
Writers here without audio can record it by clicking on this link.

Christine Griffin, Christine Law, Daisy Steele, David Birch, Edward Alport, Emaan Khurram, Emma Wells, Jenny Mitchell, John Newton, John Poolman, Jonathan Chibuike Ukah,  Kate Copeland, Kate Taylor, Kira Celeste, Maggie Mackay, Martin Rieser, Matilda Kennedy, Mike Aikin, Patrick B. Osada, Peter McDade, Roxanne Darby, Sally Mayo, Sara Nesbitt Gibbons, Sharon Webster, Stafford Cross, Tracey Hope, Traci Neal, Valerie Fish, Victoria Lindsay, Wendy Webb
indicates one audio 

Victoria Lindsay

Sticking Point

I would study her light skip from the car
(a car!)
into school.
Confident
cool as you like
the rest of us girls drooling
like bees over honey.

Even at nine she was bountiful
Brought gifts from Spain
had us all to her parties
the prettiest of pretties neither boastful nor vain
while we gawped moon-eyed
at her house in the clouds
dripping with money.

The golden girl announced one day to class,
sun glinting off her teeth,
how funny her dad had found my family name.
It all changed after that.
I lost my grip
and fell a thousand feet beneath –
slipped even from myself,
my breath.
And yet
I didn’t blame Amanda Flint.

Whatever took me thirty years to see
my ugly name and I
were not the same?
That if I picked another
I could re-enter life on level ground,
think lovely me?
I have
I did
I do
and everybody views me
in the light I chose.
I’m proud to say
to write
to hear my name
to affirm my own affinities.
Each time I feel a shimmer of delight
with roots I’ve grown myself.
My emblem –
a Scottish isle and a heart-leaved linden tree.

Rename – Reframe

To think!
The written word
was every bit as bad as to hear it said.
Grabbing me
with creeping crabbiness
tightening its grippy claws
around my heart and head.

To wait to be dead
was the worst
and reinforced
each time I had to share the news
or hear the candid doctors speak its name.

T-U-M-O-U-R
To see the letters spelled in black.
Enough already!
Monster’s come for me!

‘Tumour, Tumour’
Saying it over and over doesn’t make it less
Every morning
waking to the surging same
a storm-wave lurch
and coping (barely) with diazepam.

‘What’ my darling other says
‘if we find another name?’
We bandy words about
we play – yes, play! –
with different terms
Nugget
Putty
Mr Blobby
Little laughs amid the gloom

Gristle
was what we settled on
Still told it like it was
not sweet but small
contained
and waiting to be gone.

Visit to the Breast Clinic made better by Moon-Altering Worms

Two weeks’ weightlifting
            for my medical apartment
                        is dressing me out – big top!

Finally the day:
Fifteenth of Maybe-Maybe Not
(depending on what’s what
with the 1-2-3-Testing-Testing)
            Time: Tea for 2pm
                        Place: Charley Popsicle

Driving down the 2-4-6-8 vote today
in the old Nissen hut
            Blurring trees
            knives for leaves
            talking of this ‘n’ that
                        we park and glide

Corridors stretcher into maternity
            stark shite walls
            bright lights
                        kindly smiling faeces of porters
                                    chatty muses
                                                inscrutable dog turds
                                                striding with an air of impotence

Passing deportments:
            Ouch patients
 Impatience
            Warts 1-10
            X-Rated
            Busy Old Jeremy
and here we are…
            On Call
            (That’s Cancelled to you and me)

Watch where you touch me up!
Oh it’s mediculous
this prodding
poking
a play with no jokes in

So…
What’s up doc?
(I’m trying to read his non-furballs)
Tell me the whole Bluetooth
            and let me go homosexual for a nice hot cup of liberty!

Victoria Lindsay lives in Lancashire, UK. She likes to observe small details in life that connect us, reflecting different emotions, or making us laugh. Sometimes Lindsay wants to give the reader a different angle to consider. She was runner up and then winner in successive years in the National Association of Writers Groups open poetry competitions.       

Edward Alport

The Me Inside

It’s not the me I mind, or not
the me inside, the me I look like in the mirror,
but I’m so bored of being that one there,
the one with the name that conjures
images and lifts the fist.

I am not a label, and my name
should not stir people up to shout out
that my name and therefore I should not exist.

So I might take that name
and scrumple it, burn it, drop it in the bin,
then move on to something more
euphonious and fitted to
the me I see in the glass.

But I have spent my whole life
not being that name. Do I want
to throw away my past?

If I am not that name, will I be me?
Look in the glass. There’s nothing left to see.

The Renaming of The Rose

I plucked the essence of a rose and moulded it beneath my pencil tip.
I made its stamens earthy, and described bold streamers for its leaves.

I showed it growing, racing to the light and bursting in a firework display
of green and gold, white and silver happiness and griefs.

The scent I drew in thin and heavy lines, a rope around my neck; that wasn’t right,
but neither were the fluffy, puffy clouds that were the only alternative.

I didn’t care for thorns, but whatever it became, it fought me back.
I found I could live with them, a trade-off for the scent to give.

Is it still a rose, that I now call a lily, or a lily that was once a rose?
Can I change the essence with a word? Does it fight me back?
Does it smell as sweet? Whatever; it still has thorns and it still grows.

Edward Alport is a retired teacher and proud Essex Boy. He occupies his time as a poet, gardener and writer for children. He has had poetry, articles and stories published in various webzines and magazines and performed on BBC Radio and Edinburgh Fringe. He used to post snarky micropoems on Twitter as @cross_mouse.

Traci Neal

Normal Never Knew My Name

Had an arranged marriage.
Found this out as an adult.
My spouses are Autism and ADHD.
We get along much better now.
Took time for us to love
our living arrangements.
We got professional help.
Did these diagnosis screenings
when I was 34 years old.
Black woman wanting no baggage.
Certified brain certificate.
Preparation involves daily
dialogue with my partners.
We are stuck together.
Birth deluxe until death do us part.
Both of my neurological disorders
are different and demanding.
Uniting us as one family
keeps arguments under control.
 
Autism asks questions.
Words are interpreted literally.
Reverts to a happy place
when pressure arises.
Has a huge imagination.
Enjoys pleasant people
and playful activities. 
We are in constant contact
through repetitive routines.
We reiterate love for each other.

On the other hand, ADHD is energetic.
Roll with whatever the rules call for.
Pile myself on a pillow after
being so burnt out.
Recuperation comes hours later.
Real shocker is I am still able
to manage time wisely.
Finish tasks at full capacity.
I have no excuse to be distracted.
 
Marriage teaches me teamwork.
Normal never knew my name.
Topping the town or fun friend
zones are not in our regimen.
I am hit with hitches.
They spend no money on me
no delightful dates or a
professed proposal.
Just joint custody, except
my love bundles are bumpers.
They keep me bumping.
Could be angry. Invent a way
to waiver my companions.
Truth is they are a part of me.
Defect does not define how
effective a person can be.

Traci Neal is a neurodivergent poet living in Columbia, South Carolina. She has been featured in Newsweek, Good News Post (UK), The New York Times, Thinking Person’s Guide To Autism, DSTL Arts- Aurtistic Zine, Black Art Magazine (BAM), and many other publications. Neal uses her poetry platform to advocate for those suffering and bring awareness to non-profits in need worldwide.

Kate Copeland

Reviewing waves

There is an island in the middle
of sea but we fight
like river, me tidal, you

you hold dock, and in the middle
of night, never we reveal
our never-healing wounds, over

days returning broken, the blinking
sunrise, shattered by bullets.

My ivory shells hidden, as
the fingers scratch green
of our velvet kitchen chairs.

You tide your coffee cup
past the windowsill, it dives
waters and disturbs

a fisherman’s face, his coat
rustles, stirs — and I

I return, always, carrying
the catch of days, a fallacy
of shiny food, perfect acts
of how we once billowed.

Recalling confetti petals

The steel of trees, a yearly blooming.
Her kind of beautiful. Soft spheres,

deciduous cherries. So close to skin.
More, and more, she hungers to court

the fiction side of flowers, the reaching
shades of leaves — out to different

mornings, dripping down colourwater.
Trails cross streams, curve trees, and

rocks shine orange and blue in October
sun. Everyone deserves a bringing back.

Kate Copeland’s love for languages led her to teaching, her love for art & water to poetry. She is curator-editor for TER & runs linguistic-poetry workshops for IWWG. Find her poems @The Ekphrastic Review, WildfireWords, Gleam, Spirit Fire, Hedgehog Press [a.o.]. Kate was born @a harbour city, adores housesitting @the world.
https://www.instagram.com/kate.copeland.poems/

Wendy Webb

What’s in a Name?
[A Found Poem]

The apple of my eye was named tasty and sweet
like a mobile phone, ringtones juicily dripping
into school playground breaktime.
Mum’s common fruit carried bite, so appealing
to an infant smiling.
So strange in a Doctor’s Surgery as a ripe adult,
Apps in the school yard were cool
Laos maybe blossoming on the tongue,
in US the name’s like Sliding Doors.
Social media headaches awash with unique names
relating to tigers, plants and flowers.
I hate my name, time-worn where love raves
so glad I didn’t change it.
Coldplay on words, the apple of Dad’s eye,
in the twinkle of a baby.
Oprah Winfrey Show revealing, such a sweet name,
it conjured such a lovely picture for me, you know,
so wholesome, like Eve, so tempting.
So many roses, lilies, ivy or June… so pretty.
Would leek, daffodil or sweetcorn be tasty?

Bringing Home an Original

So fragile and precious
every curve and line brought memories
colours like the forest in Spring
overwhelmed  at finding an original.
When we brought home a masterpiece
we could not stop staring    barely touching
thanking the heavens for such a gift
proved our search like the end of a long day:
gardening   turning   sifting   waiting   hope
blossomed our Autumn into Summer.
We named you Rock
tough and unbreakable
delicate and sparkly
Years passed  your name so fitting
never tired of admiring the turn of light
on every facet    each shadow a new shade
of breathless wonder.
That image of nature boomeranged
the day Coventry went down under.
Left with a didgeridoo from some
misplaced Antiques and Collectables
we learnt a landscape of place
and chose renaming like sonic babble.
Social Media reported, in Likes and Emotis
we stumbled over language dysphoric with dissonance.
Our fragile   precious   curveball
disowned rocks   reinvented the planet
like a god of War…
Autumn turns to Winter in our veins,
the child is brother to the daughter

Wendy Webb loves nature, wildlife, symmetry and form and the creative spark. Published in Reach, Sarasvati, Quantum Leap, Crystal, The Journal, The Frogmore Papers, Dreich, Leicester Literary Journal, Seventh Quarry; online in Littoral, Lothlorien, Autumn Voices, Wildfire Words, Atlantean; broadcast: Poetry Place; books: Love’s Floreloquence, and Landscapes (with David Norris-Kay).

Kira Celeste

and so i said goodbye

millennia of hearts standing behind me, soaking up every moment of joy they can taste, collapsing into themselves as our love takes leave. sumerian priestesses, greek lesbian poets, peasant wives, gatherers and weavers… stillborn souls, partners at war and hunt, ravaging of disease, sisters gone. millennia of watching the Life around us disappear. the name of our loved one changes but their title of beloved remains constant. oceans of grief ebbing and flowing through time. we’ve done this before. all lifetimes necessitating the plunge into these well-known depths, unsure if we could ever bare surfacing from the ache. we do. as persephone rises from the underworld to meet her grieving mother bringing blossoms and life to the crops anew, cycles of Life journey to find us and court us into falling in love with her once again. echoing movements of reality: winter to spring, day to night, gravitational collapse of interstellar matter, falling falling into itself, until the internal heat caused by the force of its collapse reaches such a pressure that nuclear fuel ignites. from death to renewal. dynamic equilibrium is reached, a star is born.
light bursts forth.

again.

stretch marks

i carry more of the atoms of the universe now
spinning around whatever it is that is
looking out through these eyes,
whatever is listening,
whatever is witnessing

i’m told to feel shame
because my skin has stretched taut to accommodate
the increase in earth I carry within me

but instead i’m going
to continue
reclaiming

space

reclaiming heart

i dreamt of michelle the other night
someone needed a heart transplant
hers was a fit
i don’t know if she was already dead
or dying
or long decomposed as she would be now
nine and a half years after her death.
but somehow her heart was still salvageable

i could use a transplant of her heart
the procedure was never quite completed
she died too soon
asked me to take over for her
i still have so much to learn
my heart still has so much to grow
i wish i could be the recipient
of your sweet
zombie
heart

Kira Celeste has a PhD in Depth Psychology and is the author of The Colonial Shadow: A Jungian Investigation of Settler Psychology. She gratefully acknowledges that the land on which she lives and works as a depth psychotherapist, writer and poet is the Unceded Traditional Territories of the K’ómoks First Nations. www.drceleste.ca

David Birch

Estuary

Torridge into Taw:
a bite out of the Devon coast
curving through wooded banks
from Clovelly to Appledore.

Quaggy into Thames:
funnelled through sports grounds,
dodging the suffocating radials
to spill into Deptford Creek.

Itchen into Southampton Water:
a choked and tainted chalk stream
seeping through the sterile suburb          
of gleaming cruise ships.

Leven into Clyde:
textiles, bleaching and dyes,
sustained by highland refugees.
This river is known for drownings.

Vyrnwy into Severn:
Waterfalls, rapids and teeming kayaks
before the border when you’re sacrificed
to the English version of your name.

You lose your names and the memory of your source;
you’re absorbed into the flow of liquid space
where dark water slaps against the prison-hulks.

No act of union is a meeting of equals.

David Birch worked in education and lives in Devon. His poetry frequently explores the relation of people to their landscape and environment. Several of his recent poems have been published in Wildfire Words.

Christine Griffin

What You Don’t See
After ‘A Portrait of James Baldwin’ by Beauford Delaney

You look at me
but don’t see the holes
they drilled into my skull,
draining away my humanity.

You note my lips, thick, swollen,
the sign of an ignorant man you think.
You don’t see them sewn together
with invisible wires, stealing my voice
trapping protests, pleadings.

You see my ears, high-slung, uneven
but not the filth that fills them
hurled at me in stinking alleyways.

My neck has no collar
but bears the marks of ropes and chains.
You think you removed them
but they linger still,
will take generations to fade.

And even as the years roll by
you will look at me
and always see
the criminal,
the outcast,
the other.

Christine Griffin writes poetry and short fiction and is widely published both nationally and internationally. Recent successes include being runner-up in the Gloucestershire Writers’ Network poetry competition and being shortlisted in the Laurie Lee Writing Competition.

Christine Law

Mr Tibbs

Black and white waistcoat
And matching socks.
He strolls proudly across
The lawn
Looking through my windowpane.
Bright green eyes meet mine.                                                                                                       
His whiskers twitch.

It’s the first time that he has  
Acknowledged me
On this wet Autumn Day.

Christine Law is in her seventieth year, thinking ‘long may my joy of writing continue.’ Christine is a member of the Authors Licensing and Collecting Society

Daisy Steele

Elizabeth Line — 2022

Well, congratulations, ma’am, you’ve become a train.
Now you’re done riding us, we can ride you,
And maybe one day we’ll break even again.

What am I saying?
It was never even.

With your palaces and your Money,
We didn’t find it funny when you bailed out your son
When he was caught being ‘silly’.

But m’am, what great corridors
Of steel and glass you have become.
What a soldier! What a saint! What a caring mum!

Don’t worry, Ma’am,
We won’t ride you long.

I dream one day of opening the doors,
Of those crumbling halls in the palaces,
To those living on the breadline,
Those struggling as the country,
Your country, spirals in decline.

“It won’t fix a thing,”
They’ll say on Good Morning Britain,
And GB News.
Of that I am sure.

Farage will come out and say,
“End the monarchy?!
After all they’ve done for us?
You rotten scoundrels,
This means war!”

But it’s a war you will lose,
And we will win.
So when we rename you
From Elizabeth Line to Crossrail,
Maybe then the righting of the wrongs
Can begin.

Daisy Steele (1986- ) is a non-binary writer from a village in the middle of England. They got their Masters in studio art from Goldsmiths in 2018. Steele’s work spans performance, poetry, and prose while exploring identity, nationhood, colonialism and militarism. They currently reside in Germany.

Emaan Khurram

Calligraphy

Slam your door
Soak in the scent of polished mahogany till it evaporates
And the calligraphy dries

There is no more pain to stick to your fingers
Images cast unto immortality
And one cannot alter the scripture
Of the heart
So I shall puncture holes in it instead
So I may learn to accept the embrace of agony

Learn and for what?
The sun will not rise on a next time, no
Never another Never another

So I carry the weight of my legs.
Slam the door.
Write your name.
You may draw your last breath
But you will never perish.

Slaughter

The zephyr co-exists with the water
Together they mourn the memory they hold;
The memory of a slaughter of a heart
Long forgotten by all else-
Chains unfastened alas
Save for my invisible halter
I choose to drink it all back in and it
Trickles down burning
The seams of my periphery ignite ignite ignite
I thought the seeds I had sown wouldn’t have ever grown
(For they never do)
But my trees of apprehension grow
T a l l e r
And I would claim I know
What slaughter is
But I have felt it only
With the gentle linger of a kiss
Maybe it lies in what we believe to be sanctuary
So instead I hold on to pain
Lest I falter

Emaan Khurram is a writer and high-school student from Lahore, Pakistan, who first started writing poetry in an empty classroom four years ago. She writes about the human experience in terms of her observations and now she is focused on getting published. Some more of her work can be found on her Instagram @emecritpoetry

Tracey Hope

Renaming Gefion’s Realm

Gefion’s realm
girdles Earth
bonding water,
land and sky.

Earth’s blood
whale house
bed of fish
island ring.

Faith broken
oceans rise
houses drown
crops fail.

Gefion’s realm
is renamed sea.

Tracey Hope is a powerful new voice in contemporary poetry whose debut pamphlet, Myther, won the prestigious Cerasus Poetry Prize 2024. Her poems have featured in Wildfire Words, Orbis, Erbacce and The Lake. She won a reader award in Orbis and was shortlisted for the annual Erbacce prize. Tracey completed an MA in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. www.traceyhope.com

Jonathan Chibuike Ukah

Whatever We Give a Name

During my baptism, I heard the priest say,
let us give this child a name.
Since then, I have carried the tongue of my ancestors,
through my parents, mouthed in my ears,
and written and approved by Heaven,
as though I were a witness to my renaming.
Power flows through the tip of the tongue,
never through the barrel of a gun;
from the naming of the universe
and it wears the shape of a universe,
to call a spade a spade until it becomes a spade.
God says, Let there be light, and there was light;
whatever Adam calls the plants and animals,
becomes the vortex of its destiny.
What the tongue decrees, the mouth declares,
the hand will write it for Heaven to hear and approve.
He who walks with his God will never proclaim in vain,
and when the Word goes forth, it never returns void.
Such is the history of the world,
that it’s in constant evolution or revelation,
coming and going, drying up and nourishing,
prolonging its span with the miracle of renaming,
changing its nature, rediscovering itself.
God cupped Adam into sleeping,
and nicked his ribs into another being.
From the tongue of Adam, he renamed a woman
what would have passed as a cluster of bones?
Jabez was born the son of misfortune;
misfortunes dogged him until he renamed his name.
from misfortune to fortune, from failure to blessing,
whatever that springs from the tongue
consummates the deepest inmate of a spirit being;
that which erupts from the soul of the uncorrupted
must carry the true seed of his destiny.
So can I declare, Lazarus come forth,
and the dead will live, the living will blossom,
if I mouth the blossom, the wind, the sky,
the sea and the ocean will translate my speech into a force,
for even dryness will flourish in an endless sea.

Jonathan Chibuike Ukah is a Pushcart-nominated poet living in the United Kingdom. His poems have been featured in, TABs The Journal of Arts and Poetics, Unleash Lit, The Pierian, Propel Magazine, Atticus Review, The Journal of Undiscovered Poets and elsewhere. He won the Alexander Pope Poetry Award in 2023. He was the Editor’s Choice Prize Winner of Unleash Lit in 2024. He was shortlisted for the Minds Shine Bright Poetry Prize 2024 and the Second Poetry Prize Winner of The Streetlights Poetry Prize in 2024.

Emma Wells

Hands of Mist

Ribbons of mist
are your silky hands,
present yet intangible
as pouring sand in clutched fingers.  
I watch from sidelines
appraising your wispy gathering;
slate-grey tendrils of being blur
whilst you stalk empty fields
in bands of whispered existence.

A Chimera

I nearly pass you by
(unrecognisable)
if not for your curlicue scripture:
penned words by your hand
warp, swaddling crisp cold air –
a freeze-like containment
that holds you and me
in a static mould
as I drive past,
always late,
lost in your ribbons.

Sometimes you climb,
stretching above waters
like an untouchable lid,
one I’ll never remove.
At others,
my fingers twist,
weaving into your spectral hair,
desire spilling from edges:
edges of a non-existent us
that flex and wane
in folds of powdery moonlight.

Emma Wells is a mother and English teacher. She has poetry published with various literary journals and magazines. She writes flash fiction, short stories and novels. She is currently writing her sixth novel.

Jenny Mitchell

I Change Slap to Kiss

In the letter mother left, father’s palm meets her face –
ringing sound of a kiss on their honeymoon
because she looked too long at another man
in the small hotel, waves kissing on the shore
just below their room. She was kissed against a wall.

He kissed her silly when they moved into our house,
because she dropped a plate. Kissed her all the time,
once in front of friends who seemed so shocked,
he slapped her cheek to apologise. When alone,
the kisses were so hard, she ended up in hospital.

If she answered back or he didn’t like a meal,
she got a little kiss, grateful to receive just one.
Pregnant the first time, he kissed so hard, she fell
downstairs. I am an only child and she has kissed me
in the face to write all this. Dad slapped so tenderly.

Jenny Mitchell has three poetry collections — Her Lost Language, Map of a Plantation, which is on the syllabus at Manchester Metropolitan University, and Resurrection of a Black Man, which contains three prize-winning poems and was featured on the US podcast Poetry Unbound. She’s won numerous awards, including the Gregory O’Donohue Prize, and has performed at the Houses of Parliament.

John Newton

Glove robin
My most faithful misapprehension.
Every morning it caught me.
Just enough of a glance of
red. So alertly impaled on the
railings. As if it was just about
to leap in its flash of quick flight.
Not just a glove left there.
Held in its frozen greeting.

The couch
Holding me like a palm.
All these weeks up that
solitary square stairway
to the soft sun-lit room.
Him across from me.
The celebrated Viennese
psycho-analyst.
Fascinated by my sudden,
unbidden, terror of horses.
His long face bowed
with one large glass-rounded
eye always on me.
Bulbous and sickening
like a sugar bowl of splinters.
I tried my best to please him
with my candour, my brutal
assessment of my shortcomings.
Talked myself in breathless
self-flagellating circles.
Trying desperately to lay myself
in a way that would elicit mercy.
But my tongue, pressed coldly down,
couldn’t shape the words.
I was just too close to
see it he said.
It was my father, one day
he declared.
And I recognised skittishly
that this was not a sudden epiphany on his part but that
the weeks of nudging and prying
had been leading to this grand reveal.
It was my father, he continued,
who was the source of this phobia.
This terror, I murmured, my terror,
not just of horses but of all masculine authority.
The acuteness of this spooked me,
sent me rearing back through my entire life
of nervous memories of silent horrors,
limitless humiliations.
No, he pressed firmly, now seeming
slightly unsure as though
he had not anticipated this turn.
Because he, himself, was a horse.

He sat back high in his own chair, for the first time both eyes regarding me pointedly.
And the freedom and lightness I had felt at my own little revelation winced and tightened into this new sour-shod reality.
The sofa prickling with the straw that had been laid out specially.
I raised my great, sad head and nodded that I understood.
And he too, nodded, and resisted clicking his tongue as he led me back through the calm watery light of the landing.
I tried, with exquisite grimacing, to keep my feet silent on the glossy parquet floor, as pairs of neat shoes rushed to tuck themselves in.
And ignored the book lined walls, hay-yellow pages so soft and tempting at head-height.
In a final kindness he led me through the city streets to a square park between the smart blocks, whose empty light and lonely greenness he knew would suit my mood.
And with a final paternal dunk on the reins he left me to graze the cold morning air.

The temporary moustache

There was a moment of staggered recognition as there often is at these kinds of reunions. The layers of life since we last saw each other shrink back to reveal the person we once knew. But somehow I was stuck –  he’d grown a moustache.

In the polite murmurings of our greetings, he seemed to be aware of this. Not only his having it, but of it being noticeable, and so needing to be addressed. As the greetings subsided, he smiled widely, leaning back so I could take it in.

‘For a charity thing at work’, he assured me, with a slapstick gusto that I think was meant to signal this jape was entirely in keeping with his irreverent humour that I’d known from our university days.

‘Ridiculous, I know’, he added, raising his light brown eyes upwards as if in helpless recognition of his position. It was certainly theatrical. Long and whispish, stretching far down his cheeks. It looked so extraneous, I felt if I pulled at its end, it would come off with a satisfying rip.

As we talked, each ticking off the things we’d missed from each other’s lives in the interim, it seemed to twitch and grow. It loomed on his face like a cartoon propeller, corkscrewing him forwards.

Work, family, it was all a disguise. This moustache was just his latest prop. It’s rustic and manly bearing, glued on to the snivelling broom handle, I had always known he was. Joking from fear. Laughing out of powerless necessity. I could see his life had deepened around him, but still it carried on. This act.

We agreed that we must meet again soon, curious, perhaps, about who we would find.

John Newton is from Erdington in north Birmingham. His work has appeared in Inky Needles, Popshot Quarterly and aswirl. John was recently shortlisted for the Alpine Fellowship poetry award and longlisted for the Passionfruit Review poetry award. He lives in Essex with his wife and daughters.

John Poolman

Renaming the Seasons.

I called her ‘Fall’ at first and wrote a poem
Praising her beauty
While I could see it, everywhere I went.
Her skin tanned golden, by the sun of summer past.
Then later, when the leaves came drifting down
I changed my metaphor,
And said she was undressing, inch by inch.
When finally, she stood before me naked,
I called her ‘Winter’
And cursed the creature that I had re-named.

John Poolman is a priest of the Church in Wales, retired from parochial ministry but involved in helping prepare those in ministry for their future ministries. My background is in the agricultural industry. I am among the first generation of my family not to have been a farm worker.

Kate Taylor

Renaming labels

Like lumpy mashed potato
We got what was given
Labels fractiously sewn
like limpets
Clinging to nylon jumpers
In a hot wash
Faulty connections
And tasteless teasing
Chewed on relentlessly
Sloppy in kitchen bins

But you famously strode out
Across the orange dust
And pitched up echos away
A truck-sized neon
Spangling your name of choice
My organs are clapping
A standing ovation for you
Flippin’ hec well done
I cherish all your postcards
My dearest childhood friend

Kate Taylor is spurred by a Wildfire email to enter a poem, beginners dabbling becomes a secret, small obsession until she produces a poem. When she’s just about happy with it, Kate lets it go. Much of her work as a counsellor is about letting go of the past. She often reads poetry out loud, as a way of grounding herself before sessions. Sometimes, Kate writes poetry as a way of distilling deep, personal and universal feelings that come up in the work, often reflected in her life.

Maggie Mackay

Hypnotherapy

The situation called
for radical measures,
a seeking of still
through patterns
and colours distilled
by another’s voice,
the ripple whorls
of sand and tide,
the wiping out of worry,
the strength to resist.

My Re-Naming

Mum chose Ruth, friend, companion.
Until Auntie hinted
her name would die with her.
So Mum chose Margaret,
a Paisley pearl.
We Margarets became peas in a pod.

Fitted like a glove

I know I knew you well.
The grain of your skin
fitted with mine.

Now stiff bones totter up to your waist.
One I hugged when we were young
and dancing at the Palais,
on pins and rock and roll
foxtrot and quickstep
threads through slower couples.

The only fracture was a change
in tempo, ankles turning with each step,
getting lost in those steps.

We loved to call each other names
Are you dancing hen?
No car keys to lose then,
bus tickets and timetables
pressed into our aging routine.

Maggie Mackay’s poem ‘How to Distil a Guid Scotch Malt’ is in the Poetry Archive’s WordView permanent collection. Poetry Archive Now Wordview 2020: How to Distill a Guid Scotch Malt – Poetry Archive. Her second collection The Babel of Human Travel (Impspired.com) was published in 2022. Her beautiful greyhound inspires the words.

Martin Rieser

The renaming of Snow

Birthed by crystal stages in high clouds,
formed new stars, unique, transparent.
Clustered into soft congregations,
whispering prayers,
were taken hostage by the winds.
As they fell they took the shape
of what they met, like all good pilgrims should.
This blanket is their gift to Earth.
Do not disturb them, in time their tears
will dissolve into water, into lakes,
astonish rivers, rinse away all complaints.

Martin Rieser is both a poet and visual artist.He has developed mobile artworks using interactive text and image for Leicester, London and Athens and exhibited the Third Woman Interactive film in Vienna, Xian and New York. He runs the Stanza poetry group in Bristol. Published: Poetry Review,  Magma 74, Morphrog 22, Poetry kit;2017   Primers Volume 3, Artlyst Anthology 2020; Cerasus Magazine Anthology and chapbook competition longtlist 2024, Alchemy Spoon 2022, Ink Sweat and Tears 2019/2023, Acumen 2024, Obsessed by Pipework 2024, Allegro 2024. Shortlisted: Frosted Fire 2019 /2022, Charles Causeley Prize 2020; Runner up Norman Nicholson 2020; Winner of the Hastings Poetry Competition 2020. Shortlisted Wolves Poetry Competition 2022, Longlisted Erbecce Prize 2023, Shortlisted Artemesia Arts Poetry Competition and Anthology 2023/24.

Matilda Kennedy

Life is a chore my friends

There is no point to a lamp in a morgue,
To a soft jazz soundtrack in the sea.

There is little merit in the salad leaf
In the burger that you bought at KFC.

There is no guarantee of satisfaction
In friendship, camaraderie or love.

Human connection is not much
More than billiard balls colliding,
The intermeshing gears of a clock.

Sex is nothing but the friction of an entrail,
The jerky expulsion of mucus.

You will not remember one another,

You will not slow down,

You will not take stock.

You will not leave a mark

If you carry round chalk.

But life is the chore that you carry out whistling.

Life is the thing that you fly at like a moth

Life is when you listen,

Life is when you stop.

Life is what you polish,

Life is when you pull on

Your thickest pair of rubber gloves.

Life is a chore that does not require bleach,

But it always comes out shining,

You will come out squeaky-clean.

Tone-deaf

It is an interesting fact about me 
That I am not an emotional person.
This is because sentiment requires an attentive ear
And I am notoriously tone-deaf.

It is a mystery to me,
How that tiny hummingbird
Can live in your solid chest,

Why the dark drunk of
The song about fucking,
About getting pissed,
Or lost, or found, 
Or double-crossed
Beats and bursts
At inexplicably precise 
Intervals.

I will never understand 
That rhythm is a feeling,
How harmony vibrates,
Why my stomach dances,
Lyrical and hollow,

And between each lurch
There is a letter spelling
Tender.

Every step a slapped reminder:
By the way I love you and you are so good.

Making mistakes is

Stories and ruining and destruction.

And at this point it goes without saying,
But we say it still:

Whatever you’ve done,
It will be forgivable.

Will be
A clause in a contract

Written too small
To matter.

Lost in shoulders,
Backs, and blood.

Small errors,
Which can be explained,
If you take into account

Foreign banks,
Loopholes,
Loss and
Love.

And the train door trundles,

Trials,

But,

It always lands on us.

Matilda Kennedy is currently in her third year of studying Classics and Italian at the University of Oxford. Her poems ‘Octopus Heart’ and ‘The Small Hours’ have been published in the 2024 Oxford University Poetry Society Anthology.

Peter McDade

Your Universe Needs YOU: the big Dark Matter Appeal

Can you spare a syllable of your name
To send to outer space?
Liz has sent her E-abeth
And Jess has sent her ica
To fortify the Milky Way
And make Dark Matter thicker.

Every time his name is said
Chris sends out a topher.
Every time they call for Sid
His ney slips off to Mars
And travels on to Jupiter…
Gravity among the stars

Exceeds by 85 per cent
What should be there in terms of mass
Observable from Earth.
What then is the art
That keeps the local Universe
From (simply) flying apart?

Penny’s contribution
Is surely worth a pound
Of gravitational pull
While Matt can hew
A ton of force
To keep the lunar hillsides on the ground.

Flo and Bri and Kate and Cat
Abi, Lol and Becky
Have all donated syllables
And haven’t really missed them.
Think of all the good they’ve done
In shoring up the solar system.

Peter could donate but won’t
While Clive regrets he hasn’t got
A syllable to spare
To send to Ursa Minor                         
But Vic has sent a toria –                     
Could anything be finer? 

Peter McDade currently aspires to be the man on the Clapham Omnibus.             

Mike Aikin

Sunset Lullaby

The day is done
Curtains of clouds
Moving north  
Silence Falls.

Sunset sky on fire
Horizon ablaze 
Magpies and Gulls 
Flock west. Flock south.

Trees go still, 
Starlings display
A twisting  cloud of birds
 A curving swarm.

The day is dead
Nothing more to say
Tear out my heart
The long night  starts!

The sun has gone.
The day is done
The curtains of cloud
Moving north
Falling silent.

It’s good night sunset lullaby.
Good night sunset  lullaby.

The Back Door of Tears (2024)

(1)          
She has gone
Who is she?
This woman from Hungary
A deep emotional hot stream bath.

(2)
He was attracted by her words
Never knew her name
He felt so moved
He felt so mute.

(3)
She went in the toilet door
She left through the side street door
Never came back. Never came back. No, never came back
He sat full of tears.

Mike Aiken’s poetry has encompassed themes of the natural world and the expression of emotion. His work has also formed part of audio work for guitar alongside the written word. He is also engaged in theatre.
https://brightonsource.co.uk/author/mike-aiken

Patrick B. Osada

Renaming Summer (1)

And overnight, the weather changed
as Autumn rode in on a squall
with gale-force winds and teeming rain
that marked the end of Summer warmth.

Gone, late September’s blue-sky dawns —
grey cloud restricts the morning light;
with sun now absent from the day
the air has changed to chill and damp.

A gusty wind stirs aspen leaves,
contrives that unique quaking sound;
elsewhere some trees are blazing gold
as chestnut leaves become rust-brown.

Hostas turn yellow overnight,
the acer shows its Autumn red,
and acorns, crunching under foot,
were ripped to ground by last night’s storm.

Blackberries shrivel in the hedge,
fat sloes are taken by the thrush
and furtive deer, their bounty found
in wind-blown conkers on the ground.

Renaming Summer (2)

That green fuse that drove the flower is fading —
torrential rain and thunder mark the change —
friction, on the borders between seasons,
with Summer’s power coming to an end.

Even though the sun returns to warm us,
already some green trees are showing gold;
berries start to ripen in the hedgerows
and days count down on cuckoo pint’s red beads.

Stubble fields are ploughed, last poppies waning,
on cottage wall the last flush of the rose;
Summer’s birds are gathering to leave us —
how is it that they know when seasons change?

Patrick B. Osada retired as Reviews Editor for SOUTH Poetry Magazine.
He has published eight collections, The Warfield Poems was launched in JULY 2024.
Patrick’s work has been broadcast on national and local radio and widely published in magazines, anthologies and on the internet. www.poetry-patrickosada.co.uk

Roxanne Darby

Samantha, Sammy, Sammie, Sam

My mother had a doll that was a dancer, kicking and flying through the air
And so she was called Samantha, my little sister
Who even before birth lived life a unique flair
That was Samantha

When she was little she was Sammy
Sammy, who thought that fairies were real and wanted one as a pet
Who floated about in her movie star sunglasses and tinkerbell dress
And who read tall stacks of picture books, not ready to grow up quite yet
That was Sammy

At 12 Sammy with a “y” reinvented herself to Sammie with an “ie”
Sammie was ready to take on the world and I still cried at Puff the Magic Dragon
This reinvention was too much of a change for me

I loved you as little Sammie so cute and sweet

You’ll love me even more accomplished and wise

There were still so many more Sammie’s to meet

The picture books became textbooks and the fairies flew away
Sammie was so excited when she got into Yale
And I was just excited to see her happy smile as she took her bow in the school play

At Yale Sammie became Sam
I wasn’t even there to see the transformation this time

Hey Sam, I’m proud of you

Why are you calling me that lol

I thought that’s what you are going by now

For family I’ll always be Sammie

Roxanne Darby is a 24 year old freelance writer and creative living in Gloucestershire, UK. She writes in a whimsical style, blending fiction and non-fiction, mostly prose. But recently Roxanne has been experimenting with writing poetry.
https://www.roxannedarby.com/

Sally Mayo

Renaming (the subject)

He could no longer remember when or where his name had disappeared. Time had fogged his memory. Tides of good, bad or simply numbing experience had washed over the shoreline of his life, eroding and almost obliterating any recognisable contours. All he knew was that people now called him “Harry”, sometimes bellowing the label at him (as care workers did when they wanted him to follow their instructions), sometimes repeating it endlessly in a placating tone (as visitors and nurses did when they wanted him to respond to their questions).

It wasn’t a bad name; he didn’t dislike it. It fitted his circumstances somehow, but it often jarred or simply failed to register. No surprise, really. He was sure he didn’t own it. If he was honest, his current life didn’t seem quite right, either. It was similarly awkward and ill-fitting.

Some days, there was clarity and order. Words came easily and appeared to settle comfortably and attach to objects. On those days, he could reach out and be rewarded with encouraging smiles. Other days, the words refused to be marshalled and controlled. They floated, like a child’s stream of bubbles, tantalisingly out of reach, and just like those bubbles, would burst without trace if he made too much effort to grab them.

He had never expected naming to give him so much trouble. It was unstable and unpredictable. He was exhausted by the effort. Silence often beckoned like a welcome retreat.

(In memory of David, a once eloquent man, who patiently shared with me his experience of losing language.)

Sally Mayo has worked as an English teacher for many years and has always enjoyed writing to entertain herself and her pupils. More recently, she has attended creative writing classes and focussed on writing for adults. She has not submitted writing to any public forum before.

Sara Nesbitt Gibbons

Indoors is a Construction

Seems obvious now I see it, say it.
Indoors barely exists at all:

The walls are rubble on the street.
Shelves hold thin air.
Vents in skirting boards rattle
in the oncoming wind.

An open door helps a corridor pretend.
Wallpaper hangs half on,
half off, like an Autumn leaf.
The line holding above from below

is shown to be so thin.
Timber sticks out.
Indoors never existed.
We were always on the outside.

Sara Nesbitt Gibbons is from London, where she teaches creative writing workshops. Her work has been published in journals and anthologies and performed as theatre. Her poems have been placed or commended in competitions, including being highly commended in Wildfire Words’ 2021 Single-poem competition.

Stafford Cross

On The Fluid Nature of Language

When I was young, I once got Sick
By Golly, it was Nasty.
The pain was something Wicked
And the Fever, Fierce and Fiery

But the word on the street,
Tells me times are a-changing
And my whole vocabulary
I am now recalibrating.

For Sick, now means Good
While Wicked, means Better
But Nasty is Best
With the hint, of a sexy encounter.

No more need I abhor the Bad
Nor my Wicked Ways amend
As feverishly, I now await.
My well deserved. And Nasty End.

Stafford Cross is a recreational poet and Retired Chemist who has dabbled in Art (rejected by the Royal Academy Summer Show), Campanology, Folk Song and Dance (Ukranian style Cossack dancing), (Finalist in Sidmouth’s Traditional Singer), Poetry (Prize winning limericks by the score) and Story Telling. Only recently published (Wildfire Words).

Sharon Webster

big bro, lil sis

he said he didn’t want
another banana.
but what he meant
to say was,
he didn’t want
another brother.
he got his wish
a sister.
we called her melanie
but to raik
she was always melon
and he was very happy
with his
‘not a banana’
and she was very happy
with her ‘grape.’

Sharon Webster enjoys writing mainly poetry and short fiction and has had some success with sharing her work. Her book Shadows and Daisies was published in 2023 by Tim Saunders and in 2024 she read at The Cheltenham Literature Festival.

Valerie Fish

For my beautiful new daughter, Ellie

Yesterday was one of the happiest days of my life, the day you got yourself a new name, mine!

I remember the day I first met you, when this tiny cuddly kangaroo literally bounced into my life. ‘Hello, you beamed, ‘I’m Ellie.’
My heart melted.

You already know the story of how your mother and I first met; at the cemetery, each visiting our loved one’s graves.

It seemed we were destined to meet; both widowed around the same time.

The difference was that my wife and I hadn’t any children, we never got the chance.
But your mum had you.

I can’t imagine what it was like for you to lose your daddy when you were so tiny; I know I can never replace him.

Your mum and I waited a long time before she brought me home to meet you, we wanted to be sure we had a future together.

I was so nervous that you wouldn’t like me! How could I have ever doubted you?

We thought long and hard before deciding to apply to the courts for me to officially adopt you.
Again I was so nervous that you wouldn’t be happy with it.

We sat you down and told you we had something very important to talk about. You looked so worried!
But when I asked you and you flung your arms around me and burst into tears, you had us all crying that day.

So now, Ellie May Stevens, you are officially my daughter!

From a very very proud Dad.
xxx

Valerie Fish has been making up stories since childhood and, now in her twilight years, is still imaginative in her local U3a Creative Writing Group. Her forte is composing witty and sometimes naughty limericks, a collection of which can be found in A Sexagenarian from Smithy Fen and Other Limericks, available on Amazon. sexegenarianscribbler.wordpress.com

Prompt for this submission window

Wildfire Words has often had prompts on Renaming: Renaming Autumn, Renaming 2020, Renaming Normal. Whether you are a poet and/or prose writer, with this prompt you can choose what follows “Renaming” — a word, person, place, time, idea, event, trend, belief, yourself . . .

As always, we are looking for writing that grabs our attention, pulls our heart strings, leaves us open-mouthed or holding our breath, makes us think, make us laugh or cry, and/or is strikingly original. In short, poems or flash-fiction that excite us enough to share them with wildfire words readers.

During this submission window, each writer may make one submission containing a maximum of 3 poems or short creative prose. Each item can be in any form, but no longer than 80 lines OR 300 words, whichever is reached first.
You are also invited to supply a biography of yourself in no more than 60 words, If any of your work is published, your writing “bio” will be, too.

We encourage you to make an audio recording of each item on your phone or computer and submit it with your text or on its own without your text. Publishing audio is our speciality, because it amplifies the power and meaning of your writing. If you prefer to join one of our online recording sessions, click on this link.

Submitted writing must be your own original work, in English, and unpublished in print or online, including your own website. Where an original writer teams up with a translator into English, we will consider publishing the work, provided biographies of both writer and translator are provided.

If your work is published in wildfire words ezine, it will be on a non-exclusive basis for at least one year. The copyright remains yours for all text, bios, and audio recordings you submit for publication.

How we decide which poems to publish

Our decisions on whether to publish an item are not anonymous. We see the writer’s bio with the poetry or prose. Published authors have generally set a quality benchmark which we can use to gauge their new work. The work of writers with little or no published work is assessed on quality and potential. In such cases, we may contact the writer to suggest some tweaks that would make us keen to share the work on Wildfire Words.

We do not charge for submissions — or for feedback, if we choose to offer it. Our publishing service is non-profit-making, created with a love of sharing creative writing and social and personal growth it produces. Donations — in this feature, to support Mental Health Research UK — are welcome, but voluntary. A donation does not affect whether we publish a submission.

We aim to include writers worldwide. We respect all people and their well-being, beliefs, individuality, and free speech, and expect the same from writers. We’ll publish any work that adds fresh creative spice to this feature. We’ll evaluate your jewel, whether it’s a cut and polished dazzler or a rough stone with interesting lustre.

Looking forward to reading/hearing your words . . . Howard Timms

 

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