This anthology showcases successful poets in the 2023 Frosted Fire single-poem competition. It includes prizewinners and those who were highly commended, shortlisted, or longlisted
Alphabetical list of poets:
Each poet’s name is linked to their poetry text, audio, and a brief biography.
Abigail Ottley
, Camilla Lambert, Caroline Bracken, Charlotte Murray, Charlotte Oliver, Curtis Brown, David Crann, Deborah Harvey, Derek Healy, Di Slaney, Gillian Scholey, Heather Cook, Helen Foley, Helen Kay, Ian Gouge, Ivor Frankell, Joy Tobler, Kristen Mears, Matt Jarvis, Margaret Morey, Philip Rösel Baker, Robert Rayner, Roger Elkin, Sheila Aldous, Simon Alderwick, Simon Langdale, Stafford Cross, Theresa Gooda, Tony Lucas, Vicky Hampton
indicates one audio of a poem. * indicates a poet who prefers no audio
First Prize (£350) Camilla Lambert
Second Prize (£150): Kristen Mears
Third Prize (£75): Philip Rösel Baker
Runner-up prizes (£25):
Deborah Harvey, Roger Elkin, Vicky Hampton
Highly Commended:
Ian Gouge, Margaret Morey, Sheila Aldous,
Shortlist:
Caroline Bracken, Charlotte Oliver, David Crann, Derek Healy,
Di Slaney, Gill Scholey, Helen Kay, Simon Alderwick
Longlist: Abigail Ottley, Curtis Brown, Caroline Banerjee, Charlotte Murray, Christian Ward, Helen Foley, Frank William Finney, Gillian Scholey, Heather Cook, Ivor Frankell, Jill Sharp, Joy Tobler, Kitty Martin, Kristen Mears, Lana Masterson, Maxine Sinclair, Matt Jarvis, Peter Duncan, Robert Rayner, Sarah Bamford, Simon Langdale, Simone Mansell Broome, Stafford Cross, Theresa Gooda, Tony Lucas
Prize-winning poems
The past, hovering
Waking, half asleep, I glance to the east
to gauge the coming of light. There are days
when a pale line of carriages slides across the gap
in mountain ash, pauses at the hidden station
for the opening and closing of doors, smiles
of brief encounters, and is away, on behind
the green slope before anyone can count to thirty.
In that pause of time the years that are gone
spread, shift, unstoppable as a melting glacier,
or a company of rooks complaining, chattering
themselves to sleep. The years slim down to become
a sudden hawk about to stoop onto a shrew.
In its claws the bird brings commands to remember;
on its wings it bears faces, a long-ago lover, frowning,
a post card of a Cornish beach where my father
showed us how to reach the rocks rich with mussels,
or it murmurs the tune of an opera aria that taught me
music is its own language, and I must learn its words,
or strokes my cheek with a remnant of a lake-blue shawl
I knitted my first-born. It wrapped his body for the grave.
Days to come decrease as those gone by mount up;
each one might be extra petal on a sunflower,
or yet one more fast-running stream to be leapt,
as I walk narrow lanes, tugged at by the hovering past.
Camilla Lambert lives in Arundel, West Sussex and began writing poetry in 2007 on retirement from NHS management. Her pamphlet Grapes in the Crater was published by Indigo Dreams Publishing in 2015 and individual poems have appeared in poetry journals (e.g. Poetry Ireland Review, Acumen, Agenda, The Frogmore Papers, Artemispoetry and SOUTH ) also in various anthologies. Several have been highly placed in national competitions, e.g. First Prize in the Patricia Eschen Prize for Poetry, 2022.
Camilla co-organised the Binsted Arts Festival, celebrating local Sussex countryside, and is involved in setting up the Arundel Literary Festival, planned for March 2024.
The Great Court Run
I saw it on the news, the day you beat
the clock, circling the court before twenty four
tolls could ring out. The race starts north-east,
near Newton’s rooms, takes the path through every
corner. Fifty runners, with all those feet
pounding cobbles, all those hands shaped like oars
through the air; it’s a crowd of one pose: see
their forward lean, their Orpheus stare, for
they dare not look back else it all falls away.
But then at the finish, everyone racing
forever behind—it’s like you can’t say
you’ve won. You stand, sweating, muscles aching
and, even now, too scared to turn around
while the dying chimes of the bell still sound.
Kristen Mears is a recent graduate from the University of Kent, where she completed a Masters in Creative Writing at the Paris School of Arts and Culture. There, she wrote a portfolio of poetry about family, love, and travel. Her other passions include climbing, music, and collecting fountain pens. This poem is inspired by her high-achieving triplet brother, who in 2019 beat the traditional clock of the Great Court Run while studying mathematics at Trinity College, University of Cambridge.
In That Fragile Moment
I woke early
and while you lay close
cocooned in sleep
your breath softly fanning my cheek
I slip-dreamt my way back to yesterday morning
when I stood awhile under the bird-cherry tree
looking up at the sky through plump white blossoms
– fragments of cobalt, incandescent
with bright essence of spring
Sky-fragments, held in a cling of branches
ribbed bark as dark as glass-blowers tongs
gripping but leaving no mark
Counted five blush-white petals
round each yellow star, merging together
to puffed sleeves of blossom. Lacy
air-washed, pure. Leaf buds still rolled up demurely
in sleep. Watched a bee work – already grafting hard
taking barely five seconds to kiss each one carefully
beckoned by the next
and the next
Counting seconds
– my human attempt to tie down time
like a child playing hopscotch, pausing briefly
on each mental square before jumping on
But time does not pause
We clock in and clock out through our human lives
every day a time sheet, as if accounting
for what we do makes it somehow worthwhile
– except when the space between sleeping
and waking allows us a brief escape
from the ring binder, allows us to slip
off the edge of the page
Does the bee track time by counting flowers
Does it sense its life ticking by?
Is there urgency in its flight, in its foraging?
When, in the hive, it dances directions
is it parsing the distance to the new nectar source
or the time it will take to reach it?
Suddenly I saw the far side of summer
Felt a sly draught sneak in
through the bedroom door keyhole
Saw the last shrivelled cherry
blown off the basement sill
Sashes rattled again in their casements
Saw us rake out old ashes, strike matches, make fire
while the callous, tirelessly winnowing winds
aged leaf-skin to parchment
till the bones poked through
and the bee, numbed to listlessness
drained of time, found a boiler flue
to crawl slowly into
and die
You stirred
and your smile was as fresh and kind
as the early morning light behind the blinds
In that moment I loved you
In that fragile moment – and that
was enough
Philip Rösel Baker is an Anglo-German poet living under dark night skies in a remote hamlet in East Anglia. He reads and performs his poems regularly at the Spread Eagle and Arlingtons in Ipswich. His poetry has been published in newspapers, magazines and anthologies in the UK and US – most recently in On a Knife Edge, a climate change collection published jointly by Suffolk Poetry Society and the Lettering Arts Trust, and Water (Michigan State University Libraries Short Édition). In 2022 he was long-listed for the International Erbacce Prize and he won the George Crabbe Poetry Prize in the UK.
Your silence is all I have left
so I’ll take it, make of it a field
tucked in the gap between factory buildings
and the railway embankment
with views over the floodplain to the river, hills, the high
cloud mountains of another, older country.
The shouting of jackdaws and rooks in the rookery
the endless drill of motorway traffic won’t break its surface
nor the bulldozers grazing empty farmland,
digging foundations for a future town
beyond the wood and common.
One day a sparrowhawk will come
followed by rain that will wash the silence
clean of hope
and when I straighten up, stretch my arms, my back
I’ll find I’ve become its hollowing oak, its fox-
trodden paths, the ditch, these stands of towering hogweed.
By autumn I’ll be mist on a distant horizon
in winter I’ll lie down and turn to mud
looking up at the shapes the night birds make
against the dark.
Deborah Harvey has an MA in Creative Writing and is co-director of The Leaping Word, a poetry consultancy providing creative and editorial advice for writers, as well as qualified counselling support for those exploring the personal in their work.
Deborah runs poetry groups and the long-standing Silver Street Poetry Open Mic. With her fellow IsamBards, she conducts poetry walks in Bristol and surrounding area.
Widely published in journals and anthologies, Deborah’s poems have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s Poetry Please, and awarded prizes. Her sixth poetry collection, Love the Albatross, will be published in autumn 2024 by Indigo Dreams.
If we were Ancient Egyptians
your decision might carry more import:
pine, rose, cherry
— or some heavyweight wood
long since made scarce by those
seeking luxurious passage
to the next life.
As it is
you baulk at the cost of the cremation
never mind the casket,
shy away from procession
and the empty words of a celebrant
who would cram the night before
as if sitting an exam
whose outcome was in doubt.
Not that there would be much to say
– and to an audience of one at that.
“Cheap and cheerful”
doesn’t cover it.
If there is guilt
(not simply for your frugality
but much more besides)
you accept the burden, find yourself
further disquieted by the realisation
that whatever you decide
could be a way-marker for your own falling
into Osiris’ open arms.
Ian Gouge has been writing for many years with over twenty books to his name, mainly novels, short stories, and collections of poetry. In June 2023 he performed his poetic monologue Crash at the Ripon Theatre Festival. A sometime Indie Publisher, he also mentors at public writers’ retreats.
Grandfather’s clock
isn’t even a grandfather clock.
It sits on the mantelshelf
where cousins left it two weeks ago –
faded walnut veneer,
a back that won’t stay shut,
the tarnished brass plaque
remembering his union days.
The journey has unsettled it,
rattled its chimes out of synch;
nine of them at three,
three of them at nine, et cetera –
six hours ahead or six behind.
We’re letting the springs wind down
to adjust it when it stops.
But God, this all takes an age
of restless waiting,
watching, listening!
The minutes lengthen
like late winter grass,
imperceptibly,
keeping the blade at bay;
the chimes keep summoning
from their exhaustion
just strength enough to strike,
again and again and again…
thin arms stretch wide,
impeding time another hour
from slipping away.
I think I could beg
for this dying to end,
for one of these seconds
at last to be unending,
the struggle over with –
to fold these hands together
one final time.
Derek Healy was born in and grew up in Cheltenham. It still feels very much home from home even though he now lives across the Vale in Great Malvern. His third collection (Uncharted, Graffiti Books 2022) explores the unknowability of our futures – personal, societal and global – sometimes with humour and often with form.
Derek has been published in a number of journals here and in the USA . He has read on several occasions at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival and at the Cheltenham Literature Festival.
On hold
Audio read for Roger by Howard Timms
How long she’d lingered at that bedside
Mum never knew, but stood as if studying
his foetal prawn-form, the spectral head,
its milky skin drawn thin with red veins
like the un-down blur of a new-hatched
fledgling, his breathing deep as if a weight
sitting on his breast-bone had been shifted
and he was being unravelled from his mess
of flesh into a slow growing of monument
And all the time she heard his voice
Do not go Do not go
Do not go near that telephone
and pictured it squatting in the hallway
like those funerary urns she’d seen behind glass
in the Cairo Museum: Thoth’s black, fat baboons
of death with glaring stare, guarding the after-life
but couldn’t rid from her head
his chittering mantra
Do not go Do not go
so brought back her thoughts to the bedroom –
everything silent, even the rest of the furniture
(her dressing-table, his tallboy, the chairs)
as if witnessing the spilt temazepam-galaxy
on her Axminster rug
Do not go Do not go
Do not go near that telephone
Steeling herself in realization
he was no longer hers,
his intentions no longer hers,
she tranced out along the passage
to manage that jabbering baboon,
and found herself confronting her own voice
Your Dad’s overdosed
and, hanging up, put herself on hold
for the next three years
till death let him let her let me
off the hook
Roger Elkin‘s poetry has won over 200 Prizes and Awards internationally (63 Firsts), including the Sylvia Plath Award for Poems about Women. His collections include Blood Brothers, (2006); No Laughing Matter (2007); Dog’s Eye View (2009); Fixing Things (2011); Bird in the Hand (2012); Marking Time (2013); Chance Meetings (2014); Sheer Poetry (2020); The Leading Question (2021); and Small Fry (2023). Editor of Envoi (1991-2006), he received the first Howard Sergeant Memorial Award for Services to Poetry (1987). A published critic on Ted Hughes, Roger tutored at Wedgwood College, Barlaston, and was shortlisted for the Strokestown International Poetry Prize (2004).
The View From Here
Over the road
a telephone pole holds a cable spray
to June’s grey sky.
I hear you say, how are you doing?
imagining your voice looping the line
from the post to the house:
for years, a mother house-martin perched
her blue offspring on its anchoring
O-ring under my window ledge
stuffing their eager chirrs with flies
until the drawn-out phwheet of
summer evenings meant fledge
and flashes of white vanishing
into spaces in the conversations
between properties opposite.
But yours is a long-gone voice; mine
still a chivvying wind in your head
look up, look forward, look outward.
I take stock, listening to the clock
tick towards another hour – horizons
are just a means to count the months
March April May June
hiatus, a rude intruder
resolutely paused
unbothered whether we talk
again, or
how soon.
Vicky Hampton is founder and facilitator of Poets In Progress (PIPs), a peer-learning poetry group in the Forest of Dean. Her poems explore relationship, history and the natural world, and have won international prizes. She is published in anthologies including Graffiti, Eyeflash, Sarasvati, Red Poets, The Salopean and #Me Too, as well as ezines Wildfire Words, The Poetry Village and I’m Not A Silent Poet.
Servants of Time
Are we the seeds of the future,
moon-wrapped in fate,
the gentle tidings of the gods
eroding all earthly plans?
Is man without power?
A conscious incompetent
swimming against the current.
The liegeman of his life.
The servant of the stars.
Invisible, wind-tossed, rudderless.
In the infinite sea of the universe,
does he float, helpless and adrift,
impotent and inadequate,
slave of time’s ticking clock?
Bid him watch the dandelion
In the field near that water’s edge.
Then he will know, without doubt,
that even the tiniest seed
blown by the gentlest of breaths
can alter a world.
Shelf life
Warped hands grasp the conch shell,
stroke its curved lines, and milky eyes
see two, lily-white bodies, bikinied and budgied
owning the beach and their futures,
hearting their love in the sand.
see a not-to-be mother by the breakwater,
drowning in her grief,
salting the sea with her tears.
see hope and fear in a beach-ball body
as poppable as bladderwrack seaweed,
both swollen with sperm and eggs.
see her towel tented child peeling off
a second- skin cossie from goose bumped flesh,
each wriggle a ripple of sand-scratching pain.
see a daddy patiently washing sandy feet,
and their ice-cream-dribbled sandcastle,
battlements and towers flagged with pride.
see, a granny holding coats and bags.
whilst her son and grandchild tiptoe
seaward across hot, smooth stones.
see gulls dive bombing a disability scooter
as a gran edges down the crusted slipway
trying to touch the beckoning waves.
See my lifetime in a shell, kept
on a shelf, in my nursing home cell.
When the Fire Raged …
… I saved only an album,
an 11 day life in photographs.
Father son and mother preserved in cellophane
covered pages, salt stained.
An early birth and a lightning dash
to a hospital miles away.
A bustling unit saving lives
and a camera pressed into our hands.
Watch, we’ll show you how it works.
We took turns to make the memories.
How we did the preciously mundane.
Changing a nappy, moistening dry lips,
stroking his downy skin
through the portals of a plastic incubator.
Pearlescent moments captured in our minds
and on a camera, a proof of existence.
Look, see, we are a family.
Turn a page.
A photograph of a St. Christopher
attached to his tiny home.
Given by his granny to his dad
and now bequeathed to his son.
A golden straw we grasped with hope.
Now a page of birthday cards,
a celebration for dad’s day.
We’re smiling in these snaps.
Seeing a future for us all.
Just a Polaroid camera and our only child
handed to us in a private room.
The curtains were patterned with grief
The walls painted with sorrow.
Take photographs and make memories …
… while you’ve time, was left unsaid.
A standard photograph of father and son,
Child nestled safely in his arms, except
wires and cables trail from heart and lung
to machines that tick and click away the beats
of this longed for partnership.
An image of him in his proper home,
his three foot oak coffin, blue satin lined,
tiny on the polished dining-room table.
In those long, short days between death
and burial, we couldn’t abandon him to strangers.
He came home to The Moody Blues and
Neil Diamond and the dog who sensed our sadness.
The only chance for him to be with us.
His mum and dad.
Gillian Scholey is from Cumbria. She loves writing poetry and flash, and is also penning her first novel. Gillian has had work published in several anthologies including Poetic Vision and Poetry for Ukraine, and she hopes her first pamphlet will soon be published. She enjoys gardening, reading and Afternoon Tea.
Nobody Noticed
Nobody noticed the fly fall –
drop out of the air, mid-buzz,
and land on a dog
also asleep before
its fur could twitch the fly away.
Or how the vase of damask roses
closed their petals
like curtains for a daytime nap.
Or the way the fire ceased to roar
and retreated into the cave of itself
to hibernate indefinitely.
Or how the minstrel’s piping ceased,
mid-phrase (nor was there
anyone to imagine how sweet
the rest of the melody would be).
Nobody saw the clock freeze upon a moment,
arms outstretched to embrace the next, which did not come,
did not, did not and still did not –
its tiny cogs mid-chomp, springs coiled like a sleeping cat.
Or how dust descended upon the scene like layers of memory.
And all of this
was changed
by a single
kiss.
Charlotte Oliver’s work has been published widely and placed in competitions including Indigo Dreams Autumn Poetry Competition, Wirral Poetry Festival Prize, Lord Whisky and Patricia Eschen Poetry Prize. She is an Ilkley Literature Festival New Northern Poet 2023. Her debut pamphlet is How To Be A Dressing Gown (Dreich).
Sheila Aldous
Totems
What is this in the kilned darkness of her body
this girdle of her, this crying out in space?
Its prowess surprises as it catches her unawares.
The turn and tumble, kick and punch, fly and dive.
It will be a footballer, a ballerina, an astronaut.
It lives in this cave’s wattle home, this network
of fibres, of walls thick and bloody
of muscle caked in a balm, of acceptance
of a crushing stone ache that settles in the day,
wakes her in the night.
She hears a gurgle deep within her,
embarrassingly loud, hopes no one else can.
She hears some way off a crying in the night.
How many more months
will she find herself
in the corner of her room:
find herself again?
Unformed bones pummel her body,
stretch her skin. Her breasts resemble
great hills, full and brimming
as if they had emerged
from the sea like Aphrodite
rounded and blooming.
On that brief holiday she met
him, thought he was an Adonis,
an Ares, a Hermes.
And he was all of those.
But he is not here. He would
have flown to her if he had known.
Or so she liked to think: left his wife,
his peasant children.
Would he have liked her like this?
She is like an overblown sail ready to split:
she wants to blow like a whale. She knows
she will be bloody from the battle.
She will forget all the totems of maternity:
cot, walls pink or blue, nappies towelling or throw-away
[not good for the planet],
bottles, sterilisers, baby-gros,
names, sex. Particularly sex.
She will forget to pant, to stay calm,
[good for the baby].
Sod the baby.
Sod the nappies.
Sod sex.
She will scream until the jailer scolds and soothes,
turns down the light, feeds her gas and air —
and she will breathe it in:
breathe it out, out, out, out.
I hope it doesn’t play the bloody violin,
she screeches with a final push —
I hate the whine of strings.
Fugue
Part One
I see you at last and I am fixed like a needle in iron by the river —
and I say — breathe — breathe while you still can — and you breathe in
deep and fine — I say fine because it is like the whisper of a gull
as it comes into land — landing like the amiable start of a word unspoken —
like the lenient swoosh of forgiveness — like the landing on a silk bed
that yields to your body — as you yielded to mine —
in that overture — with that first kiss, and I listen for your heartbeat —
I put my ear to your chest but it is not rising — not rising like the water —
the water gently lapping around your face — and I face the night when
an owl calls your name — Ophelia — and you tell me that isn’t your name —
you sing it to me — and I sing it to the reeds — you say you are lost —
lost like the lamb on his way to the slaughter house — to the house where
hands will not feed him — will not clothe or feed him — and you kiss the air —
and you say you will stitch yourself into the walls of the house — stitch
your flesh until the blood runs through the seams of the house — runs
into the river — and I look into your eyes fading in the muddy light —
and I shake you — stand up — stand up — and I shake you again —
and the echo hammers in my ears in a crescendo — rise up, come back
from these margins, come back to me — and the heel of my hand goes in —
goes in deep — deep as far as the bone of your breast and I count those days
before — count them until all I hear is the creak and crack of your ribs —
and your eyes are the colour of the river — the colour of the river that changes
with its mood — and I know by the hue how to treat you — I know to tread
gently as I did on our first date — to use my knowledge of you — of every secret
corner of you — to direct you — to lead you as I did — as I did to the next part —
and I swirl you around in the eddy — swirl you like blossom dandifying
the breeze in Maytime — Maytime — the month of our marriage —
and the music lifts you — and flowers dance around your head — and I kiss
you on the lips — and I kiss you — and the dance is the limb of the leat
as petals circle us — and we are the composition — the fugue in all its parts —
and you sigh —like the sigh of a conductor’s baton — pianissimo — letting go —
you say you are tired of the music — and the music slips through my fingers —
and I say again — breathe — and this time I speak a petition to you — to that stem
of you only I know — and I plead with you — to come back — you are sinking
like bars of dark light — like endings — like endings signalling the coda —
where the drums roll — roll on the stave into a long march — and I bend
over your cheek and it is wet with tears — tears like pouring rain —
but it is not raining — and I see — a blue tinge on your lips — and a tunnel
with a north wind blowing — and I feel your breath escaping — blowing cold
from the tunnel where there is no light — and I say — gently this time —
breathe — and I kiss the air again as I softly let you go.
Part Two
I see him through the rim of the water — his lips are red — red notes
like good wine spilled through dimpled glass — and a melody wafts
a counterpoint — and he looks older — looks as if he is the rain — he is fixed
to me like iron in a river dragging me up — dragging me like thunder —
and a hammer echoes bubbling the waves — I breathe in the bubbles fine
and deep — and I hear the whisper of a gull coming in to land —
like the lenient plea for forgiveness — for a kiss and I yield as my body once
yielded to his — filling me like love — and I feel sleepy from the press of his lips —
from the press he used to fold me into him — he puts his ear to my chest —
but my chest is not rising — I hear an owl call a name — and I hear the harsh
voice of the night — Ophelia — this isn’t my name — the one he gives me —
as he crushes my ribs — and he says he will stitch himself to the walls
of our house — will not leave again until I do — until our blood runs
like sunset into the river —and he shakes me — and his lips
are like the mouth of a tunnel — opening as they suck and push air
into me — and the heel of his hand is going in deep — and he is clothed
in muddy light — his eyes are the colour of the river — the river that changes
from clouds of ragged blue to dark depths — to match his mood — and his eyes
signal a cadence — a closing of memory — how once he had swirled me round
in the eddy of Spring — swirled me like blossom dandifying the breeze —
and I hear music from that Maytime — and I drift lifted into that other time —
into a pianissimo and I let go to dance in the leat — to swim into the warm embrace
waiting for me where I can sleep — and the petals fall — fall silent — and I am sinking
into the riverbed — and I hear again the owl — this time like the last drop of rain
after a storm — calling me on the wind of freedom — freedom to sleep —
and we are the harmony — the fugue of all parts — until I fly — and he finally lets me go.
Sheila Aldous has won the Yeovil Poetry Prize, the International Welsh Poetry
Competition, and placed second and third in others. She also shortlisted in AUB, Wildfire Words, Survision, and the Bridport Prize. Her collections are Paper
Boats (Indigo Dreams), Patterns of All Made Things (Hen Run), and While I
Was Sleeping (CloseToTheEdgeBooks).
The clock
The little things make clock-hands revolve –
and finally cartwheel backwards:
a broken plate, a lost key, those scraping violins
that place mid-life sons on car-seats decades earlier,
children then – unrecognizable shadows of the adults
they would become; she, the girl-mother she was then,
the dimmest glimmer of the grandmother-to-be:
backwards cartwheeling to the scrabbled hours of courtship
when today’s grey hairs and Quasimodo shoulders
were the monopoly of an older and unfathomable generation:
when we danced in the reflection of each other’s eyes;
when we spoke in the whispers of each other’s dreams;
when our songs were harp-strings pulsing in each other’s souls.
Backwards fast and faster spins the whirligig of clock
through summer hopscotch, tag and whipping top,
through winters of desperate, perennially tragic snowmen:
the idle melt; and falling carrot; and pissed puddle;
a child’s tears; a father’s drama and a mother’s consolation.
Backflip the cartwheel to the womb, that overgrown and bloody path
through brambled love to the spiky unrepentance of conception…
Clock speaks not, nor does clock see. Mirror reflects
only what is before it. And of the room beyond the mirror,
the time beyond the clock, the claustrophobia of space,
the time and space and those that occupied them
that shall return no more… no sight, no sound, no smell, no touch!
To touch and not to touch! Mirror hangs like a Damoclean sword.
Clock faces from the wall like a cenotaph at the end of time,
like a hostage kneeling before a guerrilla’s threatened fusillade of shot,
yet no ransom demanded; yet no ransom paid; and no negotiation –
merely a guarantee of the oblivion of yesterday; the temporality of today;
the annihilation of tomorrow; and the impossibility of eternity.
Clock chimes the non-returning hour. Who asks of whom
to wind the clock? To what end; and from what beginning?
The pendulum makes an anxious cardiology of every man
tied by invisible chain-links to the clockmaker and his apprentice;
to the first forger of steel, the Neanderthal blacksmith and the feeder
of the flames; to the ape that shook itself free from wolves,
and the wolves from tyrannosaurus rex, from sabre tooth,
from the meteor that fell, from the spinning orbs that cooled from galaxies,
from the space that time forgot, to that mystery of no time at all, when…
Fast-forward the clock-hands to jump the chapters in between:
for backwards lies insanity, the foolishness, the idiocy, the recklessness of being –
fast-forward goes through all the convolutions, evolutions and absolutions of love
that overflow this mirror, this clock, this pen, this breath with all loves gathered
like bouquets of roses, the scent no less beloved for being fragrant if ephemeral.
The little things are all that they shall ever know in this place;
and all that they may ever take out whole and to another.
David Crann was a solicitor in an English market town until 1990, when he and his family moved to Provence. He became a distributor of English, German and Dutch books until retirement.
His poems have won prizes and commendations and been published in many magazines.
My Parents’ Clock
My childhood moved to the rhythm
of its constant beat, second by second.
They kept it a few minutes fast
so no-one would miss their bus.
It ticked our lives away
on a lace cloth on top of the sideboard
next to the tarnished silver dish
where they put bills, football pools,
and the book for the insurance man
who came on Fridays.
Often its whirring chimes
were drowned out by Coronation Street
or the scorn in my father’s voice
as he berated the foreman.
But sometimes they spoke
above a thick, uneasy silence,
like when the undertaker’s
rhythmic hammer nailed down the lid
on my grandfather’s coffin in the next room
and I willed those clock hands to move faster.
Then I left home and forgot it
until I had to lift it down,
unwound and dusty, from the sideboard
in the care home, on the same lace cloth,
beside the same tarnished
silver dish, empty now of papers
just as her life had emptied of concerns.
I put it on my mantelpiece
inert and silent as the past
it had once presided over.
I tapped its pendulum
and its heartbeat started,
faltering at first. I held my breath
to keep it going, to nurture its fragile life.
The chimes returned
taking me back to those half-forgotten days,
that claustrophobic room,
Coronation Street, my father holding forth,
the insurance man who came on Fridays,
the undertaker’s black leather gloves.
Margaret Morey inherited a family clock from her parents and nurtured it back to life with the help of a local clockmaker – Mr George’s Museum of Time – near where she lives in Northumberland. After retiring from being a careers adviser, she enjoys walking, tending her garden and has at last found time to write.
Ballast
I do not sleep
while I wait for the phone
to ring
time is a body
in a flotation chamber
I am neither sound nor solid.
A stranger
will tell me he is either
dead or found
I have rehearsed both
in my head
during six weeks
of fluid dread.
I walk I stand I sit
but can’t feel my feet
they have swollen
to twice their usual size
as if all my unshed tears
have pooled there
as ballast in a ship’s hold
keeps the vessel balanced
so it doesn’t capsize
in high seas.
There is an echo on the line
my own words
mock me
Where is he?
Where is he?
After the call
I lie on my bed
legs raised against the wall
stay there
till my ankles reappear
& time turns on the light
dries salt water
off its skin.
Caroline Bracken‘s poems have been published in Poetry Wales, New England Review, the Irish Times, The North, Poetry News, Gutter Magazine, Belfield Literary Review, Erbacce Journal, Poetry Jukebox and elsewhere. She recently completed her first poetry collection with the support of awards from the Arts Council of Ireland and DLR Arts Office.
Welcome to the Discharge Lounge
You sit in the upright chair waiting to be discharged, like me, waiting to go home. You have your papers, your prescription, your white wrist band saying who, when, what, your barcode of events. You have a pink smiley face, your skin is smooth, glasses firm on a tidy nose, your grey fringe straight, sides short. Your right arm hangs but your left hand tucks it back under the soft blue blanket over your knees. We wait.
The men come for you first, they’re very cheery. You are duck, love, sweetheart, their best job of the entire day. They lift you into the wheelchair and your lips flinch, but you thank them for their strength, their kindness. They ask about your husband who is dead, you say. You were his carer, he had a heart attack in January and while you were waiting for the ambulance, you had a stroke. He died while you were in intensive care, and you never saw him again. The men falter with the safety straps on your chair, clear their throats. They ask if you have family, someone waiting for you at home.
You had a daughter, you say, but she died aged eleven and you never got over her, never tried for more children. We all look at the floor. A nurse busies in to check your papers, make sure the men know where you’re going, that you have your first pack of tablets. You tell the men not to worry, your lovely neighbour has a key and she will be your first call if you fall, if you can’t manage as well as you hope after six months here, all the physio. Your neighbour has helped fit the ramp, the shower, the rails, kept the garden neat. There are roses, so red, so pretty, your smile shows us the roses. You can’t wait to be home.
The men squeeze your left hand, tuck the blue blanket tighter round your knees, check you’re all onboard and ready to roll, their favourite lady of the week now, not just today. You take the scent of something precious from the room when you go. I twist my white band round my wrist and try to catch the trail of it, smell the rose petals on my skin.
Di Slaney lives in Nottinghamshire where she runs livestock sanctuary Manor Farm Charitable Trust and independent publisher Candlestick Press. Widely published, broadcast and anthologised, she was the winner of The Plough Poetry Prize 2022. Her collections Reward for Winter and Herd Queen are available from Valley Press.
ode to an averted apocalypse
audio voiced for Simon by Howard Timms
Things were easier when we knew the world
was ending tomorrow. It was Twenty
Twelve. I set a reminder to not wake up
for work, then thought what’s the point in that?
I sent a template text to everyone
I’d known throughout life. It said you mattered
the most. I didn’t use the word love, not
enough. I thought if we survive we should
use that word more, although I never did.
Looking back, we wasted that last day on Earth.
It’s as though we knew we’d be here tomorrow.
It’s as though we’ve never felt like that since then.
We talked about that night the other day.
How we wasted it checking our watches.
water is life
audio voiced for Simon by Marilyn Timms
I think about how I thought about time
yesterday as moving from left to right,
from past to future, as ticking away.
But I am reading earlier this morning
about how other cultures see time as
filling space, like liquid filling a glass.
Only yesterday, I go downstairs
and the tap has been left on and the sink
is blocked and the water overflows
like time that has already passed
and has nowhere to go but over.
The floor is wetter than tomorrow.
I take care not to slip in case I fall
onto my back. If I fall I will lie
on a wet future. A future which is
behind me, according to some
other cultures. It makes sense, I will think,
as you can’t see the future. The past you can see,
so the past is in front of you, the future behind.
My mother tells me it’s no use crying
over spilt milk, or a flooded kitchen,
or lives that end too soon. I will not think
of time as running out and disappearing
into space like youth, but as filling up
the pool of days and then overflowing
into lakes and rivers of a
world that exists behind us,
if we could only turn our heads.
If we can only turn our heads
we will see an ocean. We will see a whale
as big as all our mothers’ love.
She is filling her lungs with days and nights,
hope and fear. She releases
to the heavens through her blowhole. Returns
to the stars, each one a raindrop
where there will always be stars, always
life and future rain.
Simon Alderwick currently lives in Oxford. His poetry has appeared in Magma, Berlin Lit, Poetry Salzburg, Anthropocene, Frogmore Papers, Dreich, IS&T, and elsewhere. A pamphlet, ways to say we’re not alone, is forthcoming with Broken Sleep Books in February 2024.
Oh dear, I shall be too late!
When you went, the world was out of time:
banshee ambulances were rushed off their
wheels, CPR chased your butterfly breath.
Your daughter, hurtled down the M6,
too late. A carrier bag of pain-relieving
pills dozed unopened on the dresser.
Too late my text reading see you Friday,
the old school friend’s proposed visit,
the chemo, the plans to fix your worn hip.
Too late your grandson, too young to
remember you, other babies not yet born,
the tennis season, the king’s coronation.
Too late the unsown seeds embalmed in
packets, the new glasses stuck in the post,
the news of Crewe Alex winning something.
Really, it was you who left too early.
The clocks went back last week,
but your watch overtook hours, days,
years, speeded up, revved to the end.
Your salad tea is limp in the fridge.
You always were our own white rabbit.
At sixteen
she bought two dresses and Just Musk scent;
the fragrance dizzied her to adulthood.
By twenty she’d found her brand, Ma Griffe,
an alter ego on offer at the local chemist
in a clean-cut green and white striped box.
By thirty the odour gave way to job, babies
and working with smell- averse people.
Retirement sneaks up; she wants noses to notice
her again. She lurks in the perfume section
of a department store, a time traveller
in a strange land who cannot speak the language
of cologne but waits for a sorting hat.
She loves the sweat of flowers and herbs
but not to wear herself, like seasoned meat.
No, she wants the scent to be part of her,
to let the world inhale who she has become.
She squirts a sample on her wrist, sniffs.
Auntie’s Gateposts
The pavement near her semi is tarmac
crumble. White gateposts tell me
I am near, tut-tut my lack of visits
and uncombed hair, but then these toothy
stumps, missing gated dentures, smile.
Driveways are biographies of those
who own them. Auntie’s is a tragedy of
rogue repairs. Built before cars filled out,
it declines to change. Beech hedge and rose
trees narrow it further – a furred artery.
The next-door house sulks. Jane has died.
Her posts are grey, pockmarked, stiff,
two bouncers, turned into headstones by
a cold-call reaper. Maybe Auntie’s obelisks
are gran and grandad, her guarding angels.
Yes, stern gateposts are longevity’s secret.
Auntie shuffles her hours beyond reasons for
living, but on warm days she takes her Zimmer
to see the posts, stands between them,
wipes her nose, beams at dogs and prams.
Helen Kay ’s second pamphlet, This Lexia & Other Languages (v.press) arrived in 2020. She curates a platform for dyslexic poets: dyslexiapoetry.co.uk. She was a finalist in the 2022 Brotherton Anthology and winner of the 2023 Ironbridge Prize. Twitter @HelenKay166
Abigail Ottley
The Onset of Winter
She is bending over, her rump in the air,
so her words are consumed by the fire.
She always wears a knitted hat, even
when the weather is warm. Today,
across the foreshore, the wind whips in,
dislodging the crows from the treetops.
They flap skyward screaming, like noisy children,
squawking and kicking up a fuss. Meanwhile,
a robin puffed out against the cold, seeks
shelter in the lee of the wall. All summer long,
the same watchful robin, the same
gang of black-caped crows. It was
early this morning she went to work
in her old, too-small, tweedy coat. She
says it keeps the damp at bay, stops it
seeping into her bones. See her dip and
straighten, straighten and dip, the brown
tweed pulled taut, its buttons straining.
This year’s rich harvest of yellowing leaves
she is swiping into piles at her feet.
It is not quite winter: there are no frosts yet.
Even so, she can tell the cold is coming.
The birds know it, the rabbits, too.
The tang of it hangs in the air.
And here she is, in her old tweed coat,
feeding last year’s growth into the bonfire,
bending over, her rump to the sky,
her broad features flushed from the heat.
Grunting she rises, stares into the flames,
holds an armful of leaves like an infant.
She does not turn. She knows I am watching.
It’s a hard old season, she says.
Abigail Ottley writes poetry and short fiction from her home in Penzance, Cornwall. This year she was placed both third and Highly Commended in the Frosted Fire Pamphlet Competition 2023 with two separate pamphlets.
Curtis Brown
You Still Love Me
remember –
going through all our stuff? –
how we laughed, cried,
re-lived our entwined lives.
so much stuff;
the smaller house
would never accept it all –
this lifetime of dull objects
cradling precious moments.
we made judgement calls;
repurposing, rehoming, extracting
our memories. no-one could ever
take those away.
today i travelled
from our smaller house, to here,
where you lie, and wonder
if you can feel your hand in mine;
if when you call names
out of your childhood,
you have forgotten me.
our walls have been breached
by years, our smiling portraits
stolen from you. those i hold
are yielding. i vaguely watch them,
leaving us
with only now – moments
drifting in ephemeral glory.
now, where i know you
still love me.
Curtis Brown is a poet, and multidiscipline artist based in London, UK. He has had work published in numerous journals and anthologies, and shown in several film festivals around the globe. When not around a camera or pen, he can often be found growing in his garden,
Ivor Frankell
a poem for time or time for a poem
our time is short
for some not short enough
time waits for no man
but may wait for a woman
sometimes
a time to remember
is already forgotten
and the last syllable of recorded time
is m
“time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back”
I forget where he left it last night
“tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow”
are three days I don’t want to think about
and a stitch in time
is soon unravelled
“had we but world enough and time”
I could create the perfect rhyme
carpe diem means
pluck the day
but sometimes the fruit’s not ripe
time can never be brought back
but who knows where it went?
Ivor Frankell lives in Cornwall and enjoys the inspiration of Cornish language, culture and landscape, and the poetry groups he contributes to. Some of his work is published online and in printed anthologies. He writes about his obsessions – identity, history, the environment and that helps him to stay relatively sane.
Who has the last word?
Brief notes, scratched on the back of
used papyrus – taken up later to wrap
figs or fish, thrown on the dump
joining the accumulation of fragmented
rubbish, painstakingly sifted, studied
by grave scholars of some distant age.
Folios of parchment – long dismembered
as the fabric came to have a greater worth
than any words writ on it – scrap sheets
used to pad covers on supplanting knowledge,
lost, until leather frays, spines crack,
an ancient script emerges from the binding.
Or student scribbles glossing the margins
of long-pondered wisdom. New generations
cease to value over-written lore, volumes
forgotten in the dust of centuries –
until those incidental jottings come
to hold the liveliest interest on the page.
Even the sparse words carved in stone –
turning to cliché with the labour – suffer
slow ravages of lichen, ice, harsh sand.
Deciphered texts on buried tablets
more often prove to be accounts of tax
or trade than gnomic wisdom, crystal verse.
Well-thumbed chapters of best-sellers end up
in the shredder, hand-made volumes stolen,
archives perishing by fire. No guarantees
against obscurity. Even the smartest
of technologies are vulnerable to change,
to obsolescence, failure of power supply.
Tony Lucas
Email etiquette, Head of English
It lands in my inbox with a heavy thud. Line
after line of anxious text about a new student.
Precious offspring of another fretting parent.
How long is an email ‘page’? It seems to go on
for eons: litany of failure, and at first I’m disinclined
to help. Yeah, yeah. I skim-read the electronic tome
searching for the salient bits, the headline,
some things her teachers can do something
about that don’t involve counselling for the sender,
suffering from a severe case of Year Seven syndrome.
No need to read the whole thing, I tap out
Instead read Tolstoy, it’ll be quicker! Winky face.
Just move Lily to the front away from Jake; change
her reading book. I intend to forward to the right
staff but in haste hit REPLY ALL, then doubt,
check, curse digital speed, and no undo function.
A reply comes back within minutes. Two lines only:
I will be sure to limit my too-verbose words in future,
and thank you for looking out for Lily. Smiley face.
It’s the tell-tale coordinating conjunction
that makes me think of my own, too-fast growing daughter.
What this mother really wants is for me to rewind
the clock, return her child, beat back the waves
of experience washing over her. I can’t stop either
drowning in the ticking tide of secondary-school water.
Theresa Gooda is a poet from Sussex. Her poetry has been published by Sentinel, Wildfire Words, Dempsey & Windle, Vole Books, Slipstream Poets, Cannon Poets and English in Education. She enjoys experimenting with form and exploring marginalised voices in her writing
8 pm. Maundy Thursday. 2020
Twas the Day before Easter and Outside the House,
Nothing was stirring, except for a Mouse
The Cats were in lock-down, so he’d come out to play
And he walked round the House in a roundabout way.
He paused by the bathroom, heard sounds from within
The tinkling of water, the sound of the Lav
More splashing of water, a little girl’s laugh
But how many Birthdays, can one family have?
Then in the back garden, No cloud in the sky,
No aircraft neither, nor traffic passing by,
Just bumble bees buzzing and butterflies flapping
Little birds singing, a woodpecker tapping.
In the distance a gathering of Magpies were chattering
He knew the old rhyme, but only a smattering
One for Sorrow, Two for Joy, Three a girl and Four a Boy.
But what do NINETEEN Corvids bring?
He climbed up the fence to view the next garden
Where old Captain Tom was walking and counting.
I wish I’d learned Maths, said the young mouse perplexed,
If that’s ninety-nine, I wonder what’s next?
He saluted old Tom, jumped down from the fence
Ran round the house and into the street,
Where long lines of cars, their batteries flattening,
Were silent as mice. …Aaww. Isn’t that nice.
He crept through the hedge, to the neighbouring garden,
Where the cute Girl-Next-Door was looking at flowers,
“Good Morning Young Lady” the little mouse squeaked
“Get away you Animal”, the Girl-Next-Door shrieked
Ran six feet away and glared at our mouse
That’s Social, he thought, going back to his house.
The Milk man delivered, stepped back, deferential
Vehicles occasional, their journeys essential, passed by, reverential.
Delivery Vans, Binmen, Truckers and Postmen
Thames Water workmen, tracing a leak.
Dogs walking their owners, mums shopping for loo-rolls
An old man out walking, carrying a scythe.
As Evening drew on, the sky slowly darkened
And twinkling stars appeared in the gardens
The Blue Fairy Lights spelling out N H S,
Time for bed said the mouse as he went to his nest.
Snuggled in bed, at a minute to Eight
A faint noise awoke him, the sound of a door
Being opened, then pattering feet.
Then silence, expectant, descended once more
The clock it chimed gently, then clapping erupted,
With hooting and hollering and banging of drums
Girl-Next-Door and her family, were clapping as well,
And all down the street the same thing was happening.
Mothers and Fathers, their Sons and their Daughters
Were clapping for Nurses and Doctors and Porters,
Care homes and carers and all their supporters
Shop workers, policemen and those not reported.
Off in the distance, fireworks were crackling,
Sirens a-wailing, and Church Bells a-ringing
Till it seemed like the whole wide world was a-singing
And clapping its heart out, for those Heroes, Amazing.
Tick1 Tock! Writer’s Block
Tick! Tock! Writer’s Block!
The deadline is one day away
You may find it comic,
I can’t find a topic
My mind is as blank as my verse.
Should I write a love song
Of passion, Ecstatic
Or a moralist sermon
Instruction, Didactic
A short story, Laconic
A farce, Idiotic
Who-dunnit, most Cryptic
Or tragedy, Historic.
Tick! Tock!
Out! Damned Clock!
I’ll go with the latter,
It makes little matter.
Tomorrow’s the appointed day
When on the writers’ block,
My own block, I must lay.
In times long since, when I was a Prince,
I learned the Divine Right of Kings.
That I should Lord it o’er the Land
And so my Pride took Wings.
The House of Lords, they are my Peers
They know their place… and mine
But the Commons, they know not their place
And spurn my countenance divine.
They taxed my patience to the end
But denied me my Taxes and Excise
So Parliament I did suspend,
And thus did them excise.
Hampden and Pym, did debate and prattle
But Fairfax and Cromwell, gave me battle
Marston Moor hurt me full sore
But Naseby was my Nemesis
And now to Whitehall I am come
To ‘wait my final hour.
Tomorrow, will be cold I fear
So two shirts I will warmly wear,
So none may say I cower.
Tick! Tock! Stop the Clock…
The Deadline now is here…
Come Axeman, Do your worst!
Remember, I am Charles the First
I pray to God of Ages Past,
I will not also be the Last.
Stafford Cross is a recreational poet, retired scientist, not over-educated in poetry, but knows what he likes.
He has written songs, stories and poems – including prize-winning limericks by the score – which he has shared with friends, performed in folk clubs, and only recently started getting published. Stafford believes that audio performance is important for the informal feedback you can get.
Fractured Visits
Clock ticks, ticks, whispers and screams,
Son’s steps heavy, mired in dreams,
Father’s eyes lost, riddles and schemes,
Alive but gone, so it seems, so it seems.
Seconds jumbled, memories crash,
Egypt, father, love’s brash clash,
Hieroglyphics, plots, a mind’s wild flash,
Son’s tears hidden, heart’s deep gash, deep gash.
Room’s cold stare, shadows play,
Madness speaks, reason astray,
Conspiracies weave, night to day,
Son’s soul torn, words can’t say, can’t say.
Wristwatch stings, time’s cruel dance,
Mind’s chaos, love’s lost chance,
A father there, yet lost in trance,
Never found, never found, life’s dark romance.
Pain of absence, living death,
Stolen bond, stolen breath,
Frantic thoughts, a maze, a quest,
Son’s despair, heart’s unrest, unrest.
A ticking ache, a mourning wild,
Child reaches out, chaos beguiled,
To find a father, love reviled,
A longing deep, time’s lost child, lost child.
Clock ticks, ticks, whispers and screams,
Love endures, fractured dreams,
Father’s eyes lost, what does it mean?
A son’s lament, a love unseen, unseen.
For in the maze of mind and heart,
A son’s love, a father’s part,
A bond unbroken, yet torn apart,
Fractured visits, a timeless art, timeless art.
Matt Jarvis is a poet drawing inspiration from life’s rich mosaic of events, both his and others. Infused with Buddhist and Zen philosophies, he delves into introspection, unravelling the human psyche. Nature is his sanctuary, where he crafts verses resonating with the soul, capturing the profound interconnectedness of existence.
Home Video
swung in a blanket
back to 1992
where the only edges have spongy grass
and a dynasty of hands beneath
where thoughts are birdsong
a brief flash of colour
not yet dense enough
to hang
in the yellow air
where I crawl, chubby cheeked
beneath permed heads split wide
in sunflower smiles
that haven’t yet felt winter’s fingertips
on the nape of their neck
one grandmother
younger than her children are now
cradles a mewling Thomas the Tank Engine blanket
heedless of the train
hurtling along the tracks of their lives
the photos and videos stop abruptly
when he reaches four
after that just precipice
the empty space
between clifftop and shore
the other grandmother exists only as a voice
with the power to clog the throat
even before consciousness sifts out its identity
trampling the brain like an old coffin path
her life a tulip
crushed by a shoe
closest thing to a sister
stumbles after the beacon
of my white dress hair scraped back so tight
it hurts
thirty years later the roles have been reversed:
a white ribbon wound
around the stump of the evergreen
we cut down
and never replanted
a couple middle aged and weary
as late August wildflowers
a woman who wishes she was still
as young as she looks
a dandelion clock
where her face should be
no babies
Charlotte Murray won the Silver Prize for Poetry in the Creative Future Writers’ Award 2023, and second place in the E.H.P. Barnard Poetry Prize 2023. She has been published in various magazines and anthologies, including celestite poetry and Mancunian Ways. She is a member of Hive Poetry Collective. Twitter: @charlouwriter.
Bamboo
The Chinese counted with the abacus,
fingers slipping beads back and forth
from integers to tens and hundreds.
But the bamboo has no fingers,
no abacus, yet somehow counts
the years to each season’s flowering.
For some, 30 years, others 60,
yet for others a staggering 110 years.
Each variety with its own inviolable cycle.
Flowering not just in haphazard patches
at haphazard times, but each variety
everywhere in the world at the same time
after its allotted ticking of the clock
for 30 or 60 or 110 years. And then,
flowering and seeding done, it dies.
Neither the cleverest human scientists
nor abacus fingering Chinese can tell
how the bamboo clock tells its time.
Pity the pandas when their whole
bamboo forest dies at once, and they must
find another variety with more years yet
of life, and food for their life.
Joy Tobler read poetry avidly in her teens and asked for poetry books for her maths prizes. She also won a magazine prize for a poem against rock and roll. Yet for the next 30 years she barely looked at poetry, only returning to it when suicidally depressed. Joy is thankful that passed; poetry didn’t.
I can stay this way forever
TV on, sound low. Everything seems almost the same as it ever was.
Time ticks on, but now; you sleep.
Breath comes and goes; quickly in, quickly out. Hardly filling your lungs but telling me with each passing minute that you won’t need this breath much longer.
But I’m trying not to listen.
Because for now, you’re here.
And so I talk.
I talk about the weather.
I talk about the news.
I talk gameshows, I talk sports.
I pretend things are the same and nothing is changing. It’s change I fear the most right now.
The change from life to death. Neither here. Neither there. Sitting painfully in the middle, not enjoying the process, wishing it would end, thinking your final destination would bring us both peace.
But I was wrong. Let me go back. Let me live in the middle if the middle is all I have.
Give me back that time so I can talk again. I’ll talk, and I’ll say: Don’t worry, I can stay this way forever.
Helen Foley
The night sky
forecast for this July says Venus
will be brilliant in evening twilight;
that Jupiter and Saturn will show
above the horizon before sunrise.
The glory of the Milky Way – thousands
of light years away passing through
Cassiopeia – may ruffle the outstretched
wing of Cygnus the swan. Tonight
the density of unresolved stars, those
unfathomably distant galaxy discs
so certain of their endless orbits,
do not spark their usual wonder:
In space no-one hears you scream
Much less that small voice I hear
swelling like a moon tide:
Another birthday. How many more?
I know the weight of loss, but not
when the light will flicker and fade.
Robert Rayner joined Northumbrian Writers’ Group on retirement following a career in law. He has been successful in various competitions and his work has been included in online anthologies and in print.
The blinking orange dot
I really do hate this
I’m a bit mad at you
But an order of magnitude
Madder at myself
I expose my soul
Through text devoid of body language
I wonder, do your eyes
Melt doe like or just burn angry
I just don’t know
If we can fix this
I just don’t know
If you want me to fix this
With clever words
And emotional tugs
Twat or hero
I’m none the wiser
You’re too far away
For me to run to
Which is such a good thing
My sanity aside
So I wait for the beep
And the blinking orange dot
On my not so smart phone
That does everything
But intercept your thoughts
I want to see inside your head
I want to be inside your head
I need to know
The depth of pain
If the wounds are fatal
Or the patient will survive
I need to know if you’re busy composing
Or just ignoring
Pondering forgiveness
Or not giving a shit
So I wait
Choking slowly midst
Adolescent brain fog
Waiting for the beep
And the blinking orange dot
On my not so smart phone
That can do everything
But intercept your thoughts
Please, oh please
Just fucking beep
Glow orange and let me die
Simon Langdale used to write poetry in his twenties and has now rediscovered it in his sixties. He’s generally inspired by emotional upheaval. Being told he had a small chance of not surviving a cancer started him writing again and gave him a new zest for life. Every cloud. . .
Thelma’s sadness
I care about the plight of jellied shapes
in dark polluted seas,
but Thelma’s sadness shocks me
with the punch of personal grief.
This ape is close to being human,
a disconcerting hybrid, personalising pain.
She’s rescued, safe and cared-for,
but never will be free.
I watch her pick at orange peel,
her large hands trailing in the dust.
Under that red startling hair
despondent shoulders slump.
I could imagine wisdom in those eyes,
deep sorrow for the forests felled,
for all the cruelties inflicted.
I feel she knows the earth is dying;
her world has disappeared already,
confined to dust and orange peel.
Heather Cook has been placed or shortlisted in various competitions including Buxton, Ware, Wildfire Words, Writing Magazine, Shepton Mallet Snowdrop Festival and Hysteria.
She is an active member of Woking Writers Circle and Woking Write-Out-Loud online events. Heather lives in Surrey surrounded by extraordinary and magical woods. More on Heather
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