2022

 

 

APRIL CONTRIBUTORS

 

Brent Cantwell, Julian Dobson, Stephen House, Ann Iversen, Rustin Larson,

 Jennifer A. McGowan, Kirsty Niven, Hannah Stone, Sarah White.

 

 

 

 

 

BRENT CANTWELL

 

Strange Tides 

for Aysun 

 

This has nothing to do with the moon. 

The moon provides light so we can see 

Hard lines on faces drawn hard too soon. 

 

Four hundred thousand faces trying not to see 

The crowded boats and the sickening-sway, 

Those quietly facing an unquiet sea. 

 

No one tells the children it’ll be OK. 

There’s no singing and no one’s immune  

To the fleeing, the huddling, the deciding, the sway 

 

Of the sea beneath the moon 

Where deciding, jumping, not-breathing, no fight  

Sways and has nothing to do with the moon. 

 

On Ali Hoca Point beach there is no-light. 

The moon has made it West too soon  

Dragging another strange tide in without much fight: 

 

Beads, photos, phones, kelp,  

Plastic water bottles, a balloon 

Papers, someone's son and no help. 

Strange tides have nothing to do with the moon. 

 

Brent Cantwell is a New Zealand writer from Timaru, South Canterbury, who lives with his family in the hinterland of Queensland, Australia. He teaches high school English and has been writing for pleasure for 24 years. He has recently been published in Australian Poetry Journal, Poetry NZ, Landfall, and Foam:e. “Strange Tides” was previously published in Blackmail Press42,2017.

 

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JULIAN DOBSON

 

Easington Colliery

 

Atkinson was a sinker, sunk by a gush of water. 

It took three years to find him, sealed

in frozen sludge. His eighteen mates escaped.

An iron kibble clanked them to sanctuary.

 

They sunk the shaft in the end, plugging

the fish-fossiled marl slate. Later they fashioned

a chute to spit slag in the sea. They learned

every measure of Maudlin Seam, ironstone bands,

 

five-quarter coal. Today I follow a brown hawker's darts

to the pit head, admire springy oaks, surly hawthorn,

observe sunshine crayon plump rose hips. A warbler

flits from tall rushes, October sun snatches pink clover.

 

By the railway, rust-glow of willow-herb.

Squashed Foster’s cans, a condom, improbably large. 

Scrawled under a bridge, Tweddle is a nonce.

Bricks merge, shale-soft, with leaf-mould.

 

Northwards, the coastline is speckled

with business parks, roundabouts, lamp-posts 

where starlings whistle away afternoons. Below, 

earth is still at its shift.

 

Julian Dobson lives in Sheffield, where he can sometimes be found puffing up one of its many hills. His poetry has appeared in various online and print journals, including Magma, Ink Sweat & Tears and Under the Radar, and on a bus in Guernsey.

 

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STEPHEN HOUSE

 

roadhouse

 

i stop at a roadhouse

fill up my car with petrol and go inside

to the tingle of a doorbell

 

i pay a green haired woman for petrol

and order a strong black coffee

looks like you need an extra shot in it mate she says and laughs

an old woman in a pink cardigan sitting on a lounge chair

echoes you need an extra shot in it mate and laughs

 

the roadhouse feels like a home

 

a chubby bald bloke in ripped jeans enters

to the tingle of the doorbell

stained t-shirt covering half his belly

hi fatty the women say together

hi ladies fatty replies

he orders fish and chips

 

green hair goes out the back of the shop

calls i’ll nip down the river and catch you a cod

old woman echoes nip down the river and catch him a cod

both women laugh

i laugh and fatty laughs

 

old woman throws me and fatty a tooth gap grin

fatty says hi to me and i say hi to him

 

green hair comes out with my strong black coffee

i take it and turn to leave

fatty and the two women say bye to me

i say bye to them and exit the roadhouse

to the tingle of the doorbell

 

i pat a skinny black dog with three legs

 

get in my car and drive along an empty road

not sure how far i’ll travel today

or where i’ll sleep tonight

 

i stop the car

drink the strong black coffee on the side of the empty road

and think about driving back to the roadhouse

 

to ask the two women how they know fatty

why the dog has only got three legs

and if the roadhouse is actually their home

 

Stephen House has won many awards as a poet, playwright and actor. He’s received international residencies from The Australia Council and Asialink. His chapbook real and unreal was published by ICOE Press. His next book is out soon. His poetry is published often, and he performs his acclaimed monologues widely. “roadhouse” published by Panoplyzine USA / Sparks of Calliope Ireland. (Last published 9/12/20)

Stephen House | Australian Plays Transform (apt.org.au)

 

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ANN IVERSON

 

Full Moon

 

over the neighbor’s house

poses herself just so

on this perfect

midnight canvas

 

what keeps her awake 

is stardust

what helps her sleep 

is bird song

 

the chimney

billows warmth

into the cold, spring air

two stars join hands

 

Bright Morning Moon

 

floats

between worlds

of dark and light

along the canopy

of black blue

 

discovers a slit

in the sky

turns sideways

slips through

to the other side

 

Ann Iverson is a poet and artist. She is the author of five poetry collections and has also authored and illustrated two children’s story books. Her poems have appeared in a wide variety of journals and venues including six readings on Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor. Her art work has been featured in several art exhibits as well as in a permanent installation at the University of Minnesota Amplatz Children’s Hospital. Ann has served in education in some capacity over the past 25 years. 

 

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RUSTIN LARSON

 

Wealth

 

Gar the orange tabby sits

on the kitchen table

and watches notes of music

float from the radio.

 

The notes look like

little puffs of smoke

because he has this expression

of watching something

dissolve in wonder.

 

The station plays Mozart,

still the best music

after hundreds of years.

The music fills bank accounts

of wandering ghosts.

 

It is the tears of the horizon,

the evening stars of late autumn,

the fire in the yard

of the black and red chickens.

 

I accept it, even though

there is also this beeping

of a world going backwards--

a garbage truck delivering

instead of picking up.

 

Still there's the evolving

smoke of music, the wondering

eyes of an orange cat.

 

Rustin Larson has been published recently in London Grip, Poetryspace: spring 2022 showcase, and Lothlorien Poetry Journal. My latest books are Slap and Anvilhead, both published by Alien Buddha Press in 2021.

 

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JENNIFER A MCGOWAN

 

Sahara Dust

 

The sky’s gone wrong. Sahara dust.

It’s your time of year

 

but your legs have faded, in concert

with my shallow bones; cannot

 

take the bruising we used to.

So I dream of it: hot Prague days

 

when the tyres of my chair melted;

sun on reconstructed Ypres. Even asleep

 

I cry at the Menin Gate: tens of thousands

whose blood drips under stone; tens of thousands

 

whose names did not fit, who weep elsewhere,

to the tune of Silent Night.

 

Today I woke up, had waffles for

the first time since seeing you,

 

maple syrup from a different continent:

sweet-tasting, unlike the sky, which burns,

 

washes and drifts in the footprints of millions

trudging into the western sunset.
 

 

Barclodiad Y Gawres

“The Giantess’s Apron”: a Neolithic burial mound on Anglesey

 

She hides things.  Only if

you bring a torch will you see

spirals, chevrons, living organic forms.

Without, there is just darkness, past history,

other things to break your shins on.

 

Escaping with your breath, you

take in the smell of the day sea,

let the wind wash over you, make you new.

It is good to be here, in the sun again,

stretching limbs that respond to your wishes,

this time.  You continue on.

 

Behind you, an apron of green

over her swelling belly, birthing

the dead, over and over.  Clouds turning

to rainbows in a darkening sky.

 

Jennifer A McGowan won the Prole Pamphlet competition 2020 with her book Still Lives with Apocalypse. In October 2022, Arachne Press are producing her next collection, How to be a Tarot Card (or a Teenager). She is a disabled poet, a re-enactor, and prefers to spend time in the 15th century when possible.

 

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KIRSTY NIVEN

 

Scots Wahey!

 

Whit is it aboot writing in ma oan language
that maks me feel like a fraud?
Is it the whingers that call it a dialect?
Is it the gentrification of ma wee city,
filled to the gunnels with clever clog students?
Mebbe it was the posh Broughty Ferry in ma da,
or ma maw’s cooncil estate shame
an’ her rants aboot the postcode lottery.

 

Weans are telt they’re too well educated
to haud on to their own culture.
It’s no professional. Fur eejits and gadgies.
Long gone are the days of verse speaking trophies
and learning to caimb my bonnie broon hair.
Poetry hinging on with me through it aw,
it’s a minter to admit this is my first Scots poyum.
Sorry Grampa, it still doesnae rhyme.

 

Kirsty Niven lives in Dundee, Scotland. Her writing has been published in several anthologies including Foundations, Landfall and From The Ashes. Kirsty’s poetry has also appeared in numerous journals and magazines, like Re-Side, Monstrous Regiment and The Poet's Republic. She can also be found on websites such as The Wild Word and Eunoia Review.

 

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HANNAH STONE

 

All the Christmases we never knew …

 

R M Lockley, Pembrokeshire: ‘As far as this book is concerned, there is only space to consider the last million years.’

 

… include the covid-cancelled one,

the omicron-disrupted one;

the omega and alpha of Christmases

stretching from the imagined past

of Christmas card scenes to a future,

beyond digital, when AI will craft our celebrations;

the Christmases of truly silent nights

when meteors wrote their own myths on dark skies;

the carcasses of Christmases unearthed by foxes;

the Christmases so cold that earthworms

coiled themselves into comforters;

the Christmases that kept the secrets of nematodes;

the wassailing, gossipy ones when country churches

hosted muddy-footed muddles of pipe-playing singers,

before Tractarians collared choir boys

and lined them up like crochets on a stave;

and, somewhere in the middle,

the putative one in Palestine

with harassed inn keepers and obliging oxen;

the one invoked by the bidding prayer

which invites us to remember those who

‘worship with us, but on another shore,

and in a brighter light,’

and this one, we thought we’d cracked,

which splintered into bright fragments,

a shattered bauble, each piece reflecting something of the whole.

 

Hannah Stone is the author of Lodestone (Stairwell Books, 2016), Missing Miles (Indigo Dream Publishing, 2017), Swn y Morloi (Maytree Press, 2019) and several collaborations, including Fit to Bust with Pamela Scobie (Runcible Spoon, 2020). She convenes the poets/composers forum for Leeds Lieder, curates Nowt but Verse for Leeds Library, is poet-theologian in Virtual Residence for Leeds Church Institute and editor of the literary journal Dream Catcher. Contact her on hannahstone14@hotmail.com for readings, workshops or book purchases.

 

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SARAH WHITE

 

Spells Not Readily Undone 

        

Foods lifted

with the left hand to the lip,

salt spilled and not

swept up, wine poured

with the wrist tipped

         backward,

 

cracks stepped-on

in the walk, leaves of rhubarb,

night-shade blooms, Jack-

in-the-pulpit,

 

         amanitas,

 

unnumbered

sheep, hours of sleep un-

slumbered—

 

worse than that.

worse than three on a match—

the peanut wedged

in a toddler’s wind-

pipe—endless grief,

even for a sister born

years later, given the lost

girl’s name,

doomed in heart

and mind

until a kind Muse

comes and allays

part of the harm.

 

The Old Man in Chapter Nineteen

 

Slave, amputee, he swelters in the jungle,

his hands and feet lopped off

because he ran, not fast enough,

from the field of cane. Voltaire,

even in 1759, knew how

an old man’s pain sweetened

the tea of Europe’s ladies,

lords, and laborers.

 

Nor had he received a pension

for years of scratchy stalks borne

from field to refinery, refinery

to distillery, where amber bottles

 

 were filled with tafia

and adorned with scenes of smiling

slaves in aprons.

 

Imagine Candide in his Turkish garden

pouring a bitter stimulant

for bawdy Cunégonde—

 

Imagine the cane, the smiles, the aprons.

 

Imagine the runaway in Surinam

tending to limbs he doesn’t have any more.

 

Sarah White's memoir, The Poem Has Reasons: a Story of Far Love, is about to appear from Dos Madres Press.  She is moving from New York City to South Hadley, Massachusetts.

 

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