2023

 

 

JANUARY

 

 

Sue Burkett, Cara Losier Chanoine, Julian Dobson, George Franklin, D. R. James,

Maren O. Mitchell, Ronald Moran, Toti O’Brien, Jennie E. Owen, Marjory Woodfield.

 

 

 

 

 

SUE BURKETT

 

War Zone

 

All that appears on the screen is his tube of toothpaste,

half squeezed

amongst ash, dirt, fragments of metal.

 

Imagine

this soldier at the beginning of the day –

toothbrush cleaning away imperfections

 

in a place he did not want to be.

The cool tang of mint in his mouth,

confetti of spit fresh on the ground.

 

A bit part character –

cleaning his gun, flicking a fag-butt – before

recognising the shrill air – the blackness.

 

 

In Love with Dandelions

 

Their dazzle was my first infatuation.

Flamboyant names easing off the tongue –

 

Milk witch, lion’s tooth, monks-head,

puff ball or even doon-head-clock.

 

I much prefers kiss-curls or priest crown –

a softer sound before the breath draws in.

 

My mother always called them pissenlit.

Never, she said, pick the flower heads.

 

In a dream one night I had to risk it - 

betrayal flashes in my skull.

 

The field is full of flowers. Petals stroke

my ankles with a golden wash of light.

 

For the hell of it, I pluck one pert stem;

hear a snap of fleshy green – my thumb nail

 

slices down the stalk. Such pleasure in cellular

scrunching like paper ripping from a gift.

 

A milky substance oozes across my hand.

Try it, my inner voice whispers. Of course I do -

 

a tang of bitterness on my tongue

the sheets damp when I stir.

 

Sue Burkett lives in Hampshire. Her poetry has been published on-line, Poetry South, Pennine Ink, and on the local radio station. She also took part in Elemental Dialogues, a co-creative project of film, dance and poetry.

 

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CARA LOSIER CHANOINE

 

Unmade

 

To dismantle a human being,

you must first unmake the body;

without a vessel, the self is just chaos.

 

There are a thousand ways

to do it:

unwrap the skin

spread the ribs

pull the guts up through the mouth

 

And yet, what is a mind

if not alive?

Chaos may survive uncontained,

bumping against the corners of its old lives

without attachment or recognition

Forced free from viscera,

the mind is an artery pumping itself empty

forget

forget

forget

 

What is Left

the ashes in a small, wooden box

atop a freestanding stereo speaker

ensconced in dark wood

a small black plate

name in gold script

a dignified memento

designed to disappear

into the décor

like its attendant grief

into the topography of everyday life

sealed to prevent the contents from flooding

the whole world with its absence

 

Cara Losier Chanoine is the author of the collections How a Bullet Behaves and Bowetry: Found Poetry from David Bowie Lyrics (Scars Publications 2013 and 2016). She is a four-time competitor at the National Poetry Slam and her work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Red Fez, WINK, and other publications. As a scholar, she explores the relationships between text, performance, and media in poetry.

 

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JULIAN DOBSON

 

City song

 

This is my city’s song, but not a song of steel.

By factory walls I pay respect to iron:

the Bessemer converter pigeoned, still,

 

a curiosity, obsolete as neon

signage. Windows bricked up, stairs blocked, mills

echo to loose slates, girders buckle in slow motion.

 

The daily surge of red-eyed men downhill

to grind out scythes and saws is now a flow

of captions to faded prints, images punched like holes.

 

In accumulating silt, dwarf narcissi open flowers.

Sun on their backs, a pair of mallards float downstream.

Soon sandmartins will return, flying

 

fast and low across the river. All strains

towards spring: a moorhen’s alarm, silver birch

saplings, a fuzz of catkins, and the strange

 

urge to mate and nest at the first blush

of warmth, bluetits flitting in and out

of willow branches, a worker whistling on a bench.

 

The urban pastoral unfolds. The trout

eat plastic. Trees bloom with bin-bags. That flash

- no kingfisher, but a trick of light

 

on a beer bottle. The grey heron’s swish

drowned by container lorries’ drone.

At Ball Street Bridge, be careful what you fish

 

for. The water’s sparkling, and a stain

crawls down the wall. The story isn’t steel, but oil:

a jazz-club fug to ease or clog my city’s song.

 

 

Subject to contract

 

You think you’re here to buy our house.

We’re inviting you to join a league of ghosts.

These echoes tune, familiarly, odd spaces

that escape the decorator, plumber, electrician.

 

Don’t fear them, though a few of them

wail inconsolably: their griefs,

like layers of paint, are there to permeate

crumbling plasterwork, gaps in timber frames.

 

Don’t snuggle up beside them: these spectres

like their privacy, to work things out

curled in an armchair with a book,

or at a desk, shiny from elbow friction.

 

Don’t engage them in conversation.

They’ll join the party when they’re ready,

their silence will reverberate

like falling wine glasses.

 

Stand quietly in the morning, before

you boil the kettle, or at night

after the boiler sings its compline,

and you’ll feel their creakings.

 

When the wind’s up you’ll hear them strum

on windows. In summer they’ll sound

like stretching metal, evaporation. Winter,

an easterly wheeze, snowdrift slip and thud.

 

Offer us what you like to live here,

move in, knock it around, it’s yours. Bring

your own ghosts - there’s room.

Stoke up the fire: let them roar.

 

Julian Dobson lives in Sheffield. His poetry has appeared in various online and print journals, most recently in Pennine Platform, Shearsman, and Orbis, and on a bus in Guernsey.

 

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GEORGE FRANKLIN

 

A Poem About Loss

 

Years later, I’m still writing the same

Poems, Eden that isn’t Eden, the past that

Was never Eden. Dying of old age

Isn’t simple. At least, it wasn’t for my

Parents or their parents. No reason

To think it will be for me either. Last week,

I was in a nursing home on a law case.

There was a woman 100 years old,

Deaf, and mostly blind, but she wasn’t

Ready to die. A Buddhist monk told me

Once that we get used to suffering, and

After a while, we think pain is normal.

But it’s hard to get used to the world. 

I remember my oldest son teething

At 3 months, crying without pause as

I walked him much of the night. 

I don’t know if walking him helped

His pain. Maybe it just made me think

I was doing something to make him

Feel better.  It was only a few steps

On an old wooden floor. I turned

At the radiator and walked back toward

The door to my bedroom, then back

To the radiator. Sometimes,

We’d walk the room in a circle, and

Sometimes, I’d recite whatever poems

I knew by heart.  The woman in the

Nursing home had cancers covering

Her face. Within a month or two,

The worst of my son’s teething was

Over. Sometimes, I’m still back in

That room, walking him

George Franklin’s fifth poetry collection, Remote Cities (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions), and a dual-language collaboration with Colombian poet Ximena Gómez, Conversaciones sobre agua/Conversations About Water (Katakana Editores), arrive this year.  He practices law in Miami and teaches poetry workshops in Florida prisons.  Website: https://gsfranklin.com/

 

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D. R. JAMES

 

New Year’s Resolution

 

A cliché of sequins staccatos

across this first verse of sun, across

undisturbed snow as white and composed

as Styrofoam—till you can’t dismiss

 

what’s winking, what truly is twinkling,

or then the burly squirrel bounding through,

a cartoon ball bouncing out its tune.

Granted, this should finally do you good.

 

In fact, it should go on resounding

against the discordant rounds without

and within, against the monotoned news,

the refrained and distasteful self-

 

revelations, against the flatted notes

of familial failures, of aging and its kin,

against the perennial drone toward ever more

of the ho-hum. Yes, you’d think it should . . .

 

and it does: this New Year lyric—landscape

writ bright with ice diamonds, wet confetti

free-falling at will from still branches—sings,

albeit pianissimo, against it all.

 

 

Field Notes from an Old Chair

 

Well, they’ve come, these early crews

though it’s only March, which in Michigan

means maybe warm one day,

the few new tender greens making

 

sense, then frigid and snow the next four,

fragile bodies ballooned, all fuzz

but feeding and competing just the same.

Who would’ve ever guessed you’d be happy

 

anticipating birds? Since you’ve taken up

the old folks’ study of how certain species

seem to like each other, showing up in sync

like the field guides specify, your chair’s

 

been scribing the short, inside arc between the feeder

and where you’ll catch a bloody sun going down.

Then, mornings, if you forget, two doves startle you

when you startle them from a window well,

 

and as if the titmice and chickadees,

finches and nuthatches can read

they trade places on perches all day—

size, you notice, and no doubt character

 

determining order, amount, duration.

At this point you could’ve written the pages

on juncos or on your one song sparrow so far,

plumped and content to peck along the deck beneath.

 

And that pair of cardinals you’d hoped for?

They’ve set up shop somewhere in the hedgerows

and for now eat together, appearing

to enjoy each other’s company, while all above

 

out back crows crisscross the crisp expanse

between the high bones of trees

and the high ground that runs the dune down

to the loosened shore. Soon hawks will hover,

 

and when a bloated fish washes up overnight,

luring vultures to join the constant, aimless

gulls, you’ll be amused you ever worried

that the birds would never come.

 

Recently retired from nearly 40 years of teaching college writing, literature, and peace studies, D. R. James lives, writes, bird-watches, and cycles with his psychotherapist wife in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan, USA. His latest of ten collections are Mobius Trip and Flip Requiem (Dos Madres Press, 2021, 2020), and his prose and poems have appeared internationally in a wide variety of print and online anthologies and journals.
https://www.amazon.com/author/drjamesauthorpage

 

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MAREN O. MITCHELL

 

Quantum Beats

                   —for Lyn Hopper

 

The poet of Haiku saw,

thought, questioned,

 

then wrote. What she wrote

I read as:

 

At our pace, what about the space,

the smaller beats between breaths;

 

what life-segments, ours and others,

have we missed, misinterpreted,

 

disowned, guzzled,

not liking the taste, spat out,

 

between exhales

and inhales;

 

what could we have examined

and learned to love;

 

between outputs and intakes

what case do we have for ignoring

 

constellations linked to other eyes,

undiscovered demons,

 

old gods of other species

we will not face,

 

no trace ever to appear near us again

in this one life,

 

not even through disgrace,

despite how we may pray?

 

 

To My Husband in the Time of Covid-19

 

When this winter/spring Pandora’s box opens and lets loose an unknown

virus deadly to humans, you, anthropologist,

say the earth is a living organism that periodically shrugs to right and rid

itself of over-growth. We implode and shrink,

stockpile and try to hide, while simultaneously aphids hatch on wintered

pansies that color our kitchen window sill,

and all news spills over with multiplying numbers of carriers and deaths,

as the aphids pace circular compost containers,

some clockwise, some counter clockwise, like tiny opossums caught

in lamp light, counting time until their morph

into flight, while, without family, thousands of us die, tended by masked

strangers who risk themselves for others,

at the same time deer tiptoe from the forest to our yard to accept offerings

of corn and seed, and ants, aerators of earth,

appear in the bathroom fulfilling their spring pilgrimage to toothpaste

and I re-enact my self-appointed role

of executioner. Peeps scream from every ditch and pond; each evidence

of life startles me. Scarce last year, wasps

are welcome, as are flies, their healing maggots to be wondered at, like

viruses, the first complex cells, best proof

of evolution, able to change our DNA and our future generations,

essential to our procreation. Dead clematis

sprout from the Underworld; our cats sleep their enviable sleeps, and in

cities accumulating bodies lie side-by-side

on ice rinks at the same time I plan meals days and weeks ahead, maximizing

fresh, frozen and staples, (the egg best-used-by

date legally soon to double), plan the garden with hopes for carrots, check

on those we can no longer hug, as outside

air we breathe into our tender lungs is shot full of bird song that disburses

like witchcraft at its best, and sunsets flaunt

pageantries to stay us into worship with the promise of night when moths

knock on our windows, so that whether you

and I live a little longer or whether we die soon, your feel, your touch,

your scent and sight surround me, each day

a gift, our dreams suspended between us.

 

Maren O. Mitchell’s poems appear in Poetry East, Tar River Poetry and The Antigonish Review. Three poems have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. Her chapbook, In my next life I plan..., is forthcoming from dancing girl press in 2022. She lives with her husband across from a national forest in the mountains of Georgia, US.

 

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RONALD MORAN

 

The Choice

 

For the first time, I lay

down in bed wearing

shoes, each pointing

in a different direction.

Which way to go?

 

The shirt I wore last night

I hung from an oak branch,

trying to air out its chorus

of delicious scents

amassed at Club Bliss.

 

Dancing to the wind,

it sent my neighbor's dog

into a rash of frantic barks

that began my process

of choosing the way.

 

My shirt drove a stake

into that dog,

and I knew instantly

I had to keep going

sideways in this world.

 

Ronald Moran lives in Simpsonville, South Carolina, USA.  His last six collections of poetry were published by Clemson University Press.

 

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TOTI O’BRIEN

 

Seasons

 

Years later, they couldn’t recall the taste of the

water kept in a clay jar that stood on the kitchen

floor, lidded with a bundle of cloth like

a bandage, like the dressing of a wound.

 

Darkness was the keeper of freshness

—windows like loopholes of donjons,

drawn curtains, shutters half-closed.

Summer asked for twilight, they knew.

 

Thickness also kept the sunrays at bay. Those

walls could hide treasures or corpses. Pots weighed

more than their contents. Hefty slabs hugged

water—or wine—as lovers would have.

 

The iceman came once a week.

They smashed almonds, made orgeat.

They pressed lemons.

Refreshing, whatever that meant.

 

Like those fans that opened like flowers

trimmed in lace and gold, flapped

their wings like tropical birds

perched on tireless wrists.

 

Children didn’t have fans, and still they

loved summer. Endless light. Nights that heat

cracked open. The contrast between

bright outsides and inside penumbra.

 

Midday naps on the hammocks, when nothing

could be done but waiting for shade, for a gust

of ocean breeze reaching the hilltop where the

house, like them, lay quiet and immobile.

 

The breeze, mixing sea salt with the mineral

sting of their sweat. Lazily, they swatted flies

as they looked at the dancing geckos,

envying reptile sang-froid.

 

Later, they were lulled by the cricket song.

They learned patience.

They watched stars falling from the sky

at mid-august, to come kiss the ground.

 

 

Epiphany

 

Tiny strips of plastic were fastened to the wall

with small dollops of grout. First, she thought

they were ice cream spoons a child had dared

embedding, probably with artistic intent.

 

Until the adult explained those were not

silverware. They were braces meant to bridge

the cracks left by the last earthquake, keeping

the opposite sides of the crevice in place.

 

Not décor but sheer bandage—sort of hospital

gown, pajamas in daytime. She felt shame for

the house and, now, she felt the sadness as she

climbed the ramp of the staircase.

 

Fissures were irregular, deep, twisted and

ragged. It was hard to believe those plastic-spoon

hooks would mend them, to understand why

the gaps hadn’t simply been filled.

 

Obviously, that was the best they could have

afforded. The house would remain wounded

and dressed, like a soldier sent hastily

home from a camp hospital.

 

Figs dried out on the balcony, impaled

on bamboo canes. A single plant of basil

fought the acrid smell of fish rising

from the sidewalk.

 

From the balcony, beyond a spread of roofs

topping other maimed, crooked walls,

the sea could be spotted, foamy

and pale.

 

She heard it in the distance, murmuring its

soothing rosary of wave. She saw it—

licking the sore, the sour land

with its patient tongue.

 

Toti O’Brien is the Italian Accordionist with the Irish Last Name. She is the author of Other Maidens (BlazeVOX, 2020), An Alphabet of Birds (Moonrise, 2020), In Her Terms (Cholla Needles, 2021), Pages of a Broken Diary (Pski’s Porch, 2022). 

 

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JENNIE E. OWEN

 

The Bans

 

The wedding itself

lives in a cardboard box in the attic.

 

The mad woman discreet and snug

under a layer

of tissue paper.  It’s in

the bones of a man,

a child, miles away

in an unknown city,

it’s in the turn of his head, in

the stoop

of her shoulder.

 

Nowhere else.

 

It was once briefly

in this place, caught

in the semi-dark darkness

of a December evening.  Garnished

with flowers too garish, too

much like spilled blood.

 

The witnesses

held candles, lit a pyre

with all the risk

of a childish experiment

getting

out of hand.

 

The stink of burning hair, wax

melting

onto their best shoes

 

She stood there veiled,

like her sister before

like all the women

before that

mourning already

something she could not

christen, something she could

not name but which

 

could thankfully

be sealed in a little wooden box

buried in the rafters.

 

Jennie E. Owen has been widely published online, in literary journals and anthologies.  She teaches Creative Writing for The Open University and lives in Lancashire with her husband and three children. Jennie is currently working on a poetry PhD with MMU.

 

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MARJORY WOODFIELD

 

Physic Garden

with words by Rumi

 

A living medicine chest. ‘A tincture of this is all you need.’

Indian Aconite. ‘Have you heard of The Curry Killer?’  I say no,

think to Google it later. She stands beside hemlock.

Mentions Socrates. ‘They came here to learn the difference.’

By her foot, white flowers and fern-like leaves. Sweet Cicely.

‘See how similar.’ She tells us her name is Valerie, which is

not to be confused with valerian. Moves on to mandrake,

the plant that screams. ‘Did you know that witches

once took the petals, mixed them with reptiles’ blood,

and by this magic were able to fly?’ She laughs.

 

‘Just a story.’ Dark berries under green leaves. Belladonna.

‘One drop to make the eyes of Venetian courtesans sparkle.’

We follow to the Dye Garden. ‘Woad,’ she says, ‘Celtic warriors

used it to paint themselves blue before battle, scare enemies,

it also has antiseptic properties. Good for wounds, though of course

they didn't know that.’ Valerie, whose name is not to be confused

with valerian, laughs again. We pass twisted willow obelisks.

Beehives. Mead. Crest of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries.

“Look,” she says, ‘’Apollo overpowers the serpent of disease.’

 

In the Edible Garden, lemon balm and peppermint grow in teapots.

Sunflowers and cannas in the Useful Beds. She finishes the tour

under the mulberry tree. ‘A mistake. Brought back by King James I

to make silk, but what he needed was the white mulberry tree.

These berries are red.’ She points to the café, the gift shop, walks

away. Clip clop on the gravel path. A gate leads to Swan Lane.

We stop beside flowing calligraphy.  هد د شکو باغ به ای خنده  انار

A laughing pomegranate brings glory to the garden.

Persepolis

We leave the Alborz Mountains far behind,

to take a road that crosses sand and stone.

The sun burns gold. My father says a palace,

we find another place, another time.

Still columns touch bare sky.

 

Beneath the sky my sister climbs stone steps,

runs far away. I count and close my eyes

to give her time then swiftly over sand

search out her hiding place. Those days were gold.

 

I hold memories. Gold-leaf, rubies, sapphires

blue as desert sky. Inscriptions. Xerxes, King of Kings.

A ceremonial place where tribute nations come with gifts.

From far Abyssinia, a giraffe. Ivory tusks from Nubian sands.

But that was then. Time has a way of changing things.

 

Today I see gold light

on shifting desert sand. The Immortals

wield spear and shield against an empty sky.

Between Mede and Persian, cypress tree.

Winged bulls. Far from the world I know.

Another place.

 

I hold my father’s photo. Remember how he placed

his hand on mine and pointed. Timed his gaze into the distance.

Alexander, travelling far to raze Persepolis,

carrying jewels and gold away on mules and camels.

Still I see the sapphire sky, the endless sand.

 

Desert haze. Sand swirls. The ground is cedar ash.

Darius places his sceptre in another’s hand.

Sky darkens, time stills. Once they carried golden vases,

a ring with griffin’s head across this Plain of Fars.

 

We leave, walk slowly over sand, take time,

place hands together in this golden

evening, open sky. We've travelled far.

 

Marjory Woodfield has been published by the BBC, Orbis, The Lake and others. She won the New Zealand Robert Burns competition (2020) and the NZSA Heritage Poetry competition (2022). This year she’s been highly commended in the Erbacce International Poetry and placed second in the Inaugural Patria Eschen Poetry Prize. 'Physic Garden’ was commended in 'The Hippocrates Prize', 2019. 

 

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