2020

 

 

JANUARY CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

 

Stephen Beckwith, Ric Cheyney, Kitty Coles, Leslie Dianne, George Freek,

Caroline Hardaker, Deirdre Hines, Karla Huston, Aaron Lembo, Fiona Sinclair.

 

 

 

 

 

STEPHEN BECKWITH

 

Texting Poem

 

I fit as

many seeds as I

could in

the pot.

No potting

soil left or

I would have

planted more.

 

I brought your

sandals in

before the rain.

 

Every time I

went out to

the yard today

that fucking

rabbit was sitting at

the garden’s edge.

 

I have seen more

of that rabbit

than I have

seen of you lately.

 

The fence will

be harder to

set up after

the storm and

the posts

loosen in the

wet soil.

 

Stephen Beckwith has published five nonfiction books on communications, written eight novels, two books of noirish short stories, three volumes of poetry, and a historical biography of the voyageur, Louis Campau.

 

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RIC CHEYNEY

 

Not Fair

 

In the few months since it became my property,

my mother’s ancient barometer

has stayed tilted between change and rain,

as if the sun went with her

when she left.

 

Squalls, glooms and brief respites

have been all my weather,

and now in early summer

I look for a first arising of brightness.

 

Rain, Change, Fair, still the three sections

attend the mercurial needle like rival suitors,

one firmly out of favour,

while I too am stuck

in sorrowed possession.

 

I am troubled by this instrument’s famed reliability.

Packed and transported from the wake,

it has quickly settled

back to coping easily

with pressure.

 

I tap the glass.

The needle edges rainward.

 

Ric Cheyney is an agrarian misanthrope, writer, critic, songsmith and woodland gardener.  Some of his songs can be found on YouTube and SoundCloud. His collection In Praise of Nahum Tate is published by Matador. His website woodminster.net has more info.

 

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KITTY COLES

 

Iseult

 

The eyes of the boar glare, sightless, into mine.

They are filmed with death, the way breath films a mirror,

and small, fierce pits of dark among the bristles.

The tusks hook upwards, pointing to my heart

and the lips sit ajar, as if stopped short in speaking.

The tongue is thick and furred with silences

but the blood that sluices from the severance,

like wine pouring, heavy, from a jug’s wide neck,

has its own message to impart to me,

with eloquence and clarity of purpose.

It pools in my lap, extends its veins down my skirts.

When I next see my love I’ll hold him and

the cold will spread its fingers through my flesh,

the way ice stretches, hardening a lake.

 

 

Red Spring

 

The rocks are stained with copper,

autumnal washes, nothing like blood,

 

none of its carmine and scarlet,

nor the murky brown it hardens and dries into.

 

But the water is tangy as blood, a shadow-taste

lying metallic, chilly, on the tongue,

 

medicinal and strangely comforting:

if it’s unpleasant it must do us good.

 

Stepping in, it shocks us, slams us

with cold, an ice that burns,

 

snatching away the breath. It catches

the hem of my skirt. My feet glow ghostly,

 

subaqueous creatures bearing their own light.

Walking, I near the edge.

 

Beyond the trees, someone is moving,

glimpsed, like an apparition, through dead leaves.

 

Kitty Coles’ poems have been widely published and have been nominated for the Forward Prize, Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her pamphlet, Seal Wife (2017), was joint winner of the Indigo Dreams Pamphlet Prize. Her collection, Visiting Hours, will be published in 2020 by The High Window. www.kittyrcoles.com

 

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LESLIE DIANNE

 

Color Thieves

 

On the Q train

Two pale men

inked up skinheads

American flags and eagles

crawling up their arms

scowl at the

bright yellow hijab

framing the

brown girl’s face

I read their minds

the lack of sun has

left them unwell

their skin has

known no warmth

their whiteness

has had no color joy

burnt into it and

they have had

no soft rainbow

brighten their lives

after a storm

they think they want

to yank away

her yellow scarf

remove the symbol that

says she doesn’t belong

I say they

want to steal

her color

because they have

never been blessed

with any color

of their own

 

 

Lucky

 

A hungry child

eats dirt

from the dry road

lips caked white

with crushed gravel and

animal droppings

 

He hides when the

soldiers march the

village past his

bright wide eyes

later he remembers

a crimson hat

how a crying woman

lost her blue

plastic shoe

and how the man

who steadied her

was bludgeoned by the

soldier who’d already

claimed the woman

as his own

 

Her blue shoe

sat at the side of the road

long after the procession passed

when he got to America

his friends told him he was lucky

that they hadn’t seen him

and taken him as their son

and sent him home to kill

 

He was the lucky one

who years later

remembered how his

mother lost her blue plastic shoe

and how his father  

pretended not to see him

and signalled him to stay in the woods

and kept his mother distracted

as they passed their only son

on their way to the end

Leslie Dianne is a poet, novelist, screenwriter, playwright and performer. Her work has been acclaimed internationally at the Harrogate Fringe Festival in Great Britain, The International Arts Festival in Tuscany, Italy and at La Mama in NYC. Her poems appear in Night Picnic Press, Kairos, Mused and Ghost City Review.

 

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GEORGE FREEK

 

Near the East River (After Su Tung Po)

 

Tonight, the light is dim.

The stars are spread

like pebbles on a beach.

I watch a squirrel flit

from branch to branch,

a dervish in a trance.

The moon is a scream

in someone else’s dream.

A hawk swoops. His hunger

must be fed. He returns

to his nest with

food for his young,

 as a squirrel’s life is shed.

A dove cries out,

but remains unseen.

The river continues to flow,

but it is very deep.

 

 

Snowstorm on the Lake (After Tu Fu)

 

The window is frozen.

Morning hangs like an icicle

three weeks old.

The sun barely lights the day,

and it doesn’t stay.

Birds turn from an icy wind

to search for grubs.

They search the trees.

They search the dead leaves.

On the lake, boatmen stare

with frightened eyes,

at the coming storm.

They row towards

the shore but make

little headway. Their hands

tightly grip the oars.

In this implacable weather,

they have no time to pray.

 

George Freek's poems have recently appeared in Big Windows Review, The Adelaide Magazine, Green Light, and The Tipton Poetry Journal. His plays are published by Playscripts, Inc.; Lazy Bee Scripts; and Off The Wall Plays. 

 

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CAROLINE HARDAKER

 

A Recipe for Meringue

In 2017, after three previously published attempts in China, the first known attempt at creating genetically modified human embryos in the US occurred in Portland, Oregon.

 

Evoke the light touch required to make meringue.

 

Whisk the mix like you’d doctor a diary entry,

retrospectively. Deftly tap the steel spoon

to play a tune, a fine one,

and wear her shoes. Lace them up

in predetermined blue. Stick to her mother’s recipe.

Avoid the starry mess of too much sugar;

drizzle it in like a snowstorm in an old film.

Be wary of the golden spider, hiding in milky white.

Seal off the windows, so rain won’t haze

the sculpted peaks. This isn’t crochet, or lace.

 

Keep true to the light touch needed to craft meringue.

Bake light, and slow. Serve on a platter

a bald canvas for the gallery, sketched only

with a mosaic-fingerprint, marking cracks

through which tangs rise after a rain dance.

 

Caroline Hardaker's poetry has been published worldwide, including in Magma, Ink, Sweat, & Tears, and by The Emma Press. Her poetry collection, Bone Ovation, was published by Valley Press in October 2017, and her second Little Quakes Every Day will be published in 2020. You can follow her adventures at www.carolinehardakerwrites.com

 

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DEIRDRE HINES

 

Cold Case

 

Three magpies swaying on the fuchsia tree branches

cannot hear the desiring hisses of my hungry cats below,

but it is when the aroma of next door's dinner assails us,

like some last temptation, there is no other choice

but to answer our collective hunger, and go into town.

 

Because I do not own a car, and because neighbours here

gave up on loving each other as themselves after the mortgage,

and because not every taxi firm will risk the pick up here,

and because there is no credit left on my lonely phone,

I am left to my feet in old fliplops as the only vehicle of choice.

 

I hear the shouting boy, before I see him and his horse

in the wastelands of the gardens of what was Ballymacool House.

He shouts at him to stop, then go go, then stop, but

pats him on the nose when he sees me staring at them both,

When I ask him his horse's name-'Fagan's Boy' is his proud reply.

 

In searching for an answer that won't make it look like

I too, believe all his kind are thieves and rogues, I only find

'That's a good name-I wish you luck with him' but

he is already untying the silkie propped up against the chestnut

as I feel gravity drop me back in time to this same place.

 

I am staring at a the pigtails of a little girl staring down at me

from the window of a primrose coloured wagon, although

it may have been the fading afternoon light of May

that made me think everything that day was christened

by yellow, and how could a grazing horse be gold?

 

I can still hear the humming of the electric fence

the concerned farmers had placed all around this halting place

and see the downturned mouths of those religious adults

calling in with words like 'condolence' wrapped up in mouths

thin as the righteous and cold as the coffin the father lay in.

 

When I asked how this had happened to him no-one spoke,

only to say that 'We are all only passing through' and to 'Sshh',

until at last my mother broke-'He was electrocuted last night'.

And then ' He didn't see the fence'. But last night

a full moon had woken us all from a sweltering sleep.

 

The silence that grew between us lengthened then

in the gathering gloaming. Not one electric fence

in all the fields I'd roamed had ever harmed a sheep

or cow let alone' a drunk man' walking home,

but like all sacredly held grounds their truth held till now.

 

They call this place ' The Halting Site' after all of those

who have come in off the road, and instead of primrose wagons

pulled by golden horses, all the eyesores of the past

are hidden in identical, but yet in this forgotten wasteland,

Fagan's Boy and his driver feed another haunting hunger.

 

Deirdre Hines is an award-winning poet and playwright. Her first book of poems The Language of Coats includes the poems which won The Listowel Collection Poetry Prize 2011, and is published by New Island Books. Other awards include The Stewart Parker Award for Best New Play for Howling Moons, Silent Sons, Several Arts Council Grants, and most recently being shortlisted in The Patrick Kavanagh Award ( 2010) and The Allingham Poetry Prize( 2018). New poems have appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, Abridged, Crannóg, Three Drops from a Cauldron Beltane Special, The Bombay Review, Boyne Berries and elsewhere. She sits on the organisational committee of North West Words. An experienced creative writing facilitator she can be contacted at deirdrehines@hotmail.com

 

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KARLA HUSTON

 

Descent

 

My father’s mother was a shieldmaiden. Her hands

were mallets of fur and weft. She used them 

to pound shuttles of rags through a loom.  

Her rugs lay as still as sleeping children.

 

She wrapped warp around pins, hung cones 

from spindles, counted piles of sewn rags, finger 

to nose to finger: aught aught. 

The loom split and shuddered.  

 

Grandmother’s shield was her most righteous 

armor. She hammered the Lord’s Way. Her rugs 

were legions of virtue and fringe. My 

fingers were candles of yellow uncles.

 

Karla Huston, Wisconsin Poet Laureate (2017-2018) and the author of A Theory of Lipstick (Main Street Rag: 2013) as well as 8 chapbooks of poetry including Grief Bone, (Five-Oaks Press: 2017). Her poems, reviews and interviews have been published widely, including the 2012 Pushcart Best of the Small Presses anthology. 

 

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AARON LEMBO

 

The Old Green Tree Pub

for Neil Rollinson  

 

We ordered jug after jug

of west country ale

 

discussed the taboo

of influence and faith.

 

I described the infamous

passage from Ulysses;

 

‘Leopold Bloom masturbated

on the beach because

 

Gerty MacDowell

lifted her skirt and spread her legs;

 

simultaneously Catholics celebrated

Mass, nearby in St. Mary’s parish.’

 

On the next table along

a man dressed in a white suit

 

said something

about the chapters

 

when Bloom has a poo

and Molly imagines

 

sucking off Stephen, in bed.

‘Calypso and Penelope

 

are the episodes

I think…’ I riposted

 

gawping at the green goblin

wielding a bloody pickaxe

 

tattooed on the side

of the stranger’s bald head.

 

Aaron Lembo has an MA Creative Writing from Manchester Metropolitan University and his debut poetry pamphlet  Ekphrasis Revised  was published by Bath Spa University's Art Department in 2015. He was the winning librettist for the 2017 Rosmaond Prize. Currently, Aaron is living and teaching in Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam

 

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FIONA SINCLAIR 

 

Card

 

I hesitate before buying the card;

unsure if it Is still etiquette for baby boomers.

A simple text might suffice now;

but somehow that seems more suited to

sexting, invites for coffee, I’m running late.

Of course, her sisters may be instructed to head off

these well- meaning words, that do not in fact bring comfort

but land on door mats like life’s final demands,

and, will shove in drawers, until the grief

has down- graded from acute to chronic.

 

In Clintons, I scan banks of birthday, weddings, Christmas cards.

Finally find ‘Bereavement’   tucked away like a pauper’s grave.

Shake my head at brash designs,

with condolences bold as neon signs,

finally find one card, a hint of pastel flower with

‘In Sympathy’ whispered in lower case. 

At home, the card lies on the table waiting for the right words,

until, I sit with pen in hand, mentally writing then scratching,

Thinking of you, So sorry for your loss, Sad to hear,

 

Instead a brief tribute to her husband; easy to talk to,

edge of his seat enthusiasm for books, art, films…

and to her, an acknowledgement of our friendship going back

some 50 years to the day we were shooed away to play in the garden,

whilst our mothers gossiped over Darjeeling and Disque Bleu.

Later I slow the car, mute the radio, whilst trying to recall

a red or yellow front door, to their fresh start house;

thrust the card in cursing the tell-tale letter box,

scurry back down the drive before I am caught

door stepping her grief.

 

Fiona Sinclair's new collection Time Traveller's Picnic was published by Dempsey and Windle in March 2019. She is the editor of the on-line poetry magazine From the edge.

 

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