2025

 

 

FEBRUARY

 

 

Peter Cashorali, Mike Dillon, Catherine Edmunds, Angela France, Martha Ellen Johnson, Tom Kelly, Kate Noakes, Marion Oxley, Jenny Robb, Kerry Ryan,

Hannah Stone, A. R. Williams.

 

 

 

 

 

 

PETER CASHORALI

 

Alder

  

The problem

Is how to look away from the alder

Once we notice it,

The soft messages in its bark,

Way its branches

Weave in the canopy, moss

Up its trunk not a pattern

Because not repeating.

We’d never seen this tree before,

Now we’re seeing it                                    

Deep in all the time in the world.

The problem

Is how to keep hiking.

But there’s another alder

Just past it through the bracken--

Not another, a different

Moment of alder not twinned

With any other,

No two the same tree

No matter the reach of the forest,

No two tufts of wolf lichen,

Arcs of sword fern, strands of vine maple

Twining up a young hemlock the same.

Nothing the same but the forest

And no forest the same as this,

Forever and forever and forever.

Still, walk on and the trees fall behind.

Here’s the river, and the river is nothing

But water leaping and gone

 

Peter Cashorali is a neurodiverse pansy living at the intersection of rivers, farmlands and civil war. He practices a contemplative life.

 

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MIKE DILLON

 

One Winter Dusk

 

Silent as chimney smoke

or a wish without handles

dark clouds nicked by gulls 

insinuate thunder as they 

close in from the south.

 

The old man in the distance

slow as the thought of weary horses

moves along the low tide

with rake and bucket

in search of the Dungeness crab.

 

He lowers his rake

to the shallows, a lone

calligraphic silhouette

tapered as a faded religion

in the livid, lacquered light.

 

And the first lights come on

across the bay as the day dies

with a jot of decorum

where an old man works the low tide

as his god must have intended.

 

Mike Dillon lives in a small town on Puget Sound northwest of Seattle from where he writes poetry, essays and occasional book reviews. His most recent book is Nocturne: New and Selected Poems (Unsolicited Press, Oct. 2024). 

 

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CATHERINE EDMUNDS

 

Adlestrop be Damned          

 

—and then there’s that moment when you forget

to couple the loco to the coaches.  

she slips away, but that’s okay,

someone else’s problem,

you can walk off,

don your wellies, prune the japonica,

revel in the smell of the baccy tin

full of nuts, bolts, and fuses,

listen to a man on the radio

discussing evidence for a parallel universe—

 

with nobody telling you to turn that rubbish off,

nobody saying you can’t put

more than one kind of cereal in your bowl.

 

she’ll be shunting into a different station by now,

somewhere down the line, a billion miles away,

and you’re not allowed to miss her,

even if you dared.

 

Catherine Edmunds is a writer, artist, and musician whose published works include two poetry collections, six novels and a Holocaust memoir. She has had numerous publication credits in journals including Aesthetica, Crannóg, Poetry Scotland and Ambit; and was the 2020 winner of the Robert Graves Poetry Prize.

 

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ANGELA FRANCE

 

The Road

The streetlamps sputtered

The streetlamps muttered   T S Eliot ‘Rhapsody on a Windy Night’

 

This road is all roar and petrol-stink by day,

the rush to work and school-run, the nursery

drop-off, the rumbling queues of lorries

skimming past parked cars.

 

This road is quiet at night, empty of engines,

cycles and noise. A late dog walker

slows on the road-dusty grass verge, stops

by every tree. The last bus long gone,

two girls walk home, shoulders bumping

and faces blue-lit by their phones.

 

The streetlights mutter in binary code

to the only other lights, a blue-grey flicker

winking from slanted shutters

and curtain gaps. All the light is electric,

blinding the stars and turning the moon

away from us, a pale chad in a melancholy sky.

 

Angela France has had poems published in many leading journals and has been anthologised a number of times, her fifth collection Terminarchy came out in 2021. Angela teaches creative writing at the University of Gloucestershire and in community settings. She leads the longest running reading series in Cheltenham, ‘Buzzwords’.

 

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MARTHA ELLEN JOHNSN

 

The Coronation and a Royal Family

 

Yes. Objectively it’s obscene

in its extravagance. All those

jewels. All that gold. “Sell that junk

and feed the poor. What’s that? A

globe?  He seriously thinks he’s

King of the whole world? Oh, brother.

How much did this cost the Brits?”

Talking to myself in my empty living

room sitting on an old sofa. Alone.

 

My sister was a delicate person.

The world was far too harsh for

her, maybe like Hamlet’s mom,

frustrating yet with an innocence

worthy of every ounce of devotion.

Reading about the Royals was her

favorite thing. An unattainable,

fairytale life alive in her imagination.

Because she loved them, so did I.

 

Thinking of her all morning while

watching the coronation on TV. That

ridiculous crown with stolen jewels.

A cape, or whatever it is, he drags

behind with the pelts of sacrificed small

creatures knowing my sister would

think all of the lavish luxuries, the

scepter, the silly fur and velvet garb

were so pretty. “Oh, Mar, look.” 

 

I’d visit her in hospice. Together we’d

page through her People mag. Harry

is the naughty Prince. Laugh. Camilla

was not a home-wrecker like everyone

said. Charles and Camilla. A better match.

Princess Di. Tears. “It’s so sad, Mar.” 

William married a commoner. Love

Conquers All. Proof. Princess Kate

is pregnant. Glee. “Mar, I can’t wait!” 

 

I knew she couldn’t, though I had not

told her. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I

was cruel. Doubt stabs. Icy jabs. My

stomach hurts. I may buy a People mag

myself, cut out some pix of those fancy fools

and affix them to my bathroom mirror,

to remind me every morning of her noble

heart, her perfect love. I’d tell her, “Kate and

William had a princess. Charlotte. Harry

married for love.” And she would whisper

to me, “I love you, Mar. I forgive you.”

 

Martha Ellen Johnson lives alone in an old Victorian house on a hill on the Oregon coast. Retired social worker. History of social justice activism.  MFA in painting and drawing. Poems and prose published in various journals and online forums. She writes to process her wild life.

 

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TOM KELLY

 

Magic 

For Ken Stewart (1926-1991)

 

Every night going home,

he sees a new canvas waiting on an easel;

painting slowly, adding to the feast

filling their spare bedroom.

 

Hat on the side of his head, 

haversack over shoulder, 

thumb lipped under the strap. 

New ideas appear in the bus window. 

 

The factory’s drum and clang  

replaced by the dark shadows

of Jarra Slaaks* or his work boots,

making a world not tied to time-cards, 

with each brush stroke magic begins. 

 

*Jarrow Slakes: marsh

 

Dream

 

Granda’s on the edge of his chair,

he is rarely perched that way,

still has next-door-to nowt to say.

 

Words seem beyond reach,

until he says, with lips pursed, ‘skilly’.*

The memory of the excuse-for-a meal painful

as many a slap in the Boys’ Home.

 

Permanent nights give him a death mask;

an invisible haversack is pinned to a bent back

day and night.

 

Granny makes his bait*, waves him off,

wanting night to be over is their dream.

 

*Skilly: gruel, thin porridge

*Bait: portable meal

 

Tom Kelly’s most recent collection Walking My Streets is the thirteenth book published by Red Squirrel Press and explores Kelly’s life and changing face of his native north-east of England. www.tomkelly.org.uk

 

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KATE NOAKES

 

In Montevideo Jeanne Baret collects a thorny vine

 

and no sooner than it’s brought on-board the Étoile

for its bright bracts to be admired in all their starry

pinkish, purple, crimsonness, sumptuous against

a white wall, her man names it after another man.

 

If you’d have asked me, aged seven, on the second leg

of my circumnavigation, who the first man to sail

around the world was, I’d have told you.

It was in my scrapbook. And I’d have said Ferdinand

Magellan was Portuguese and the year was 1519.

 

Had you wanted the name of the first woman,

I’d have shrugged. I knew none of her-story,

no tales of disguised sailors or learned botanists.

But now, every bougainvillea, even the one

in monochrome on a friend’s forearm, reminds.

 

Small threats of everyday violence

 

On the 207 to Shepherds Bush,

a woman tells a man

he cannot speak to her like that,

she is not his wife,

he cannot threaten to slap her,

he should not talk to her,

she was not looking at him,

he should go back to his own country

where he can slap his wife,

she is not his wife.

 

Everyone stares, some shift,

ready to intervene.

He moves upstairs, laughing.

We ask if she is OK.

She says she is and that he should

go back and slap his own wife

and see where that gets him.

 

Such cold and sunny days again,

nights indigo with stars

and planets for the counting,

even here in the lit city,

where the African woman

comes to mind, her face

bright as the moon,

her words defiant,

holding out against the sky.

 

Kate Noakes' most recent collection is Goldhawk Road, Two Rivers Press, 2023, and her pamphlet Chalking the Pavement was published by Broken Sleep Books in 2024. Her content rich website is www.boomslangpoetry.blogspot.com. She lives in Bristol. 

 

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MARION OXLEY

 

A Question of White Campion

 

Is it better to be inconsequential on a beach.

Sea-lapped moments remain placid and calm

fret for a time before now. What can be salvaged

from sunken yearnings held in the warmth of amber.

 

Sea-lapped moments remain placid and calm

a stealth of white campion nods at the stranger

from sunken yearnings held in the warmth of amber.

Inconveniences are anecdotes trapped like flies.

 

A stealth of white campion nods at the stranger

sick gannets fall from the sky. Heads buried in sand

inconveniences are anecdotes trapped like flies.

Blame alone will not survive on this makeshift raft.

 

Sick gannets fall from the sky. Heads buried in sand.

Is it better to be inconsequential on a beach

where white campion bends to scent a coastal path.

Or fret for a time before now and what can be salvaged.

 

Marion Oxley lives in the Calder Valley, West Yorkshire. Her poems have appeared in such magazines as Orbis, Atrium, Dreich, Channel, Blue Nib, Bangor Literary Journal, Obsessed with Pipework, Fragmented Voices. Her pamphlet In the Taxidermist's House was published by 4Word Press in 2021. She is a Forward Prize nominee for Best Single Poem.

 

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JENNY ROBB

 

Ode to Paul McCartney

 

When I’m six, you wave and wink at me,

as the Fab Four drive through Liverpool streets.

At eight, your brown-eyed gaze from my poster

sends me to sleep. I dream I rescue you

from your fall into sewage-sludged Mersey;

my life-saving skills earning your love, forever.

But Jane Asher steals you. I want her gone,

use setting lotion and sleep in huge rollers

to straighten my hair and win you back.

You’ll croon All My Loving to me,

and when I’m grown up we’ll marry.

 

And now I watch you. Your head still cocks

to one side but your voice is weak. I know

you don’t want me to rescue you; your life

is as far from mine as those stars we see

that have already died. Your hair is grey

at Glastonbury; mine is dyed,

but not for you. Maybe I’ll catch a glimpse

as you drive through the streets of Liverpool

again, searching for Yesterday.

 

Jenny Robb’s been writing poetry since retiring from a career in children’s and

mental health services. She’s been published in online, print magazines and

anthologies. Her debut collection is The Doll’s Hospital, (Yaffle Press 2022.) Her

second collection is Hear the World Explode, (Yaffle Press 2024.) She lives in

Liverpool.

 

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KERRY RYAN

                  

A Straight Line

 

Each time I cut with scissors, Pythagoras weeps.

Euclid sighs, puts his head in his hands.

 The line always deviates from purest intention,

          no matter the pencil’s angle, the ruler’s metal precision.

The journey between two variables is never linear, but look at me,

still trying for exactitude after

all these years of life.

 

Everything the Amish create has a flaw on purpose.

          Only God is perfect, they say. 

Yet here I am,

still trying to slice out that perfect square

as my paper shrinks

smaller/

smaller/

smaller.

 

 

Kerry Ryan has won the Hachette GYOS prize 2024, the Spilling Ink short story prize, been shortlisted for the Myriad First Editions prize, the Writers & Artists Prize 2023, HG Wells Short Story Prize 2023 and had poetry and prose published in The Manchester Review, The Kenyon Review, 3am Magazine among others. 

 

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HANNAH STONE

 

Take her, earth, for cherishing

(after Aurelius Clemens Prudentus and Herbert Howells)

 

For Sarah (1980-2024)

 

Words make their mycorrhizal magic surreptitiously;

borrowing ideas from here and there,

evolving new meanings ripe for the context.

So ‘hælig’ mutates to ‘healing’;

‘hæling’ becomes ‘the touch that cures’ –

not visibly, perhaps, but in the deep wisdom

of ‘holos-holistic’ earth where ‘wholeness’

is root, and seed, and bulb; next season’s

flowerings swelling as they sleep. 

 

Take her, earth, for cherishing;

receive her to your tender breast.

Even in its ruin, this body of a woman

that we brought you was noble, worthy;

loved beyond the measure of language.

 

Hannah Stone is the author of Lodestone (Stairwell Books, 2016), Missing Miles (Indigo Dreams 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 Leider, 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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A. R. WILLIAMS      

When My Daughter Asks, “Why Haven’t You Started Writing Yet?”

Didn’t Michelangelo envision his sculptures
before chiseling them from marble?

 

Or Shakespeare sketch his plays
before composing his masterpieces?

 

And didn’t God, before creating humanity,
first declare, “Let us make mankind in our image”?

 

          I deflect with paper-thin words,
knowing I’m fasting from
all usual creative delicacies
on a day of celebration—her birthday.

 

Only I know why I don’t write today:
because today of all days, I am aware that
once I release something into the world,
it ceases to be fully mine,

 

becoming its own entity outside of me.

 

 

A.R. Williams, a poet from Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, is the author of A Funeral in the Wild (Kelsay Books, 2024) and Time in Shenandoah (Bottlecap Press, 2024). You can connect with him on Instagram and X (@arw_poetry) or at his website: virginiapoet.com.

 

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