2023

 

 

JUNE

 

 

Philip Dunkerley, Gerry Grubbs, Jenny Hockey, Sharon Kennedy-Nolle, Michael Lauchlan, Patrick Lodge, DS Maolalai, Paul McDonald, Shamiksa Ransom,

Sam Szanto, Hannah Jane Weber.

 

 

 

 

 

PHILIP DUNKERLEY

 

Blades of Grass

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

            — Walt Whitman, ‘Leaves of Grass’

 

Crouching here on the ragged edge

of this harrowed field,

my dog running on beyond the oak tree,

I take in my hands the dark earth,

soil of the planet of which I am part.

 

Earth, soil, soiling my hands.

From you, life, in you, the archive of life,

rich elegy of all that came before.

From you my forebears wrested a living,

your darkness their lives.

 

Like seeds we blow over the land

until, finding a place to put down roots,

we stay, living as best we might,

passing the germ of our selves on.

And, when we are done, we return,

 

dried-out blades of grass,

into this dark soil. We came at dawn,

like time capsules, unstoppable,

driven to make shift where we could,

unending chains of exuberance.

 

Now here am I fingering the earth,

the high clouds of heaven above;

and look! here is my amiable dog

jolting me back to the present.

Oh, Dog! Must I think for us both?

 

Philip Dunkerley takes part in open-mic events in and around South Lincolnshire, where he lives and where he has run a poetry group for more than ten years. His poems have appeared in a fair old range of journals, webzines (including The Lake) and anthologies.

 

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GERRY GRUBBS

 

Looking Upward

 

I hold it the way a flower

Holds its name or night

It’s vast constellations

 

The gardeners know

Those names

 

The night watchmen

Know too the names

Of the stars

 

Not from memorization 

But from their long practice

Of looking upward

 

Gerry Grubbs has poems appearing in Haikuniverse, Mudfish and other small magazines. He has a new book forth coming from Dos Madres Press, Learning A New Way To Listen.

 

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JENNY HOCKEY

 

Contraction

 

Like tech,

comp, meds, bike,

we shrink 

to a syllable,

 

slip off a tongue,

become 

a passing breath —

thrive intact

 

only in family ties

of birth

where Michael,

Diana or Robert

 

sometimes

spark an anecdote,

after the glasses

are filled.

 

 

Just gone 7 am

 

and the uproar of machinery

lifts the corner of a duvet.

 

Seven hi-viz men are already

filling potholes with molten stone.

Call it tarmac, call it a mix

for chocolate cake.

 

Doesn’t it rain after that, doesn’t the rain,

oh my, doesn’t the rain come down —

 

make short work of the tarmac,

the machinery, the seven hi-viz men, the uproar

under the duvet, the gravel-studded wound

of the cyclist who slams on her brakes,

 

her new hydraulic brakes,

 

doesn’t the scar on her shoulder

outlive her and somebody tells her so,

doesn’t somebody tell her she’s not

 

a spring chicken any more. Eat up your cake,

they say, and stay where you are right now.

 

Jenny Hockey has poems published in The North, Magma, The Frogmore Papers and Dreamcatcher, reviews for Orbis and in 2013 New Writing North awarded her a New Poets Bursary. Her collection, Going to bed with the moon appeared in 2019.  (overstepsbooks.com, jennyhockeypoetry.co.uk, familyhistoryandwar.com)

 

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SHARON KENNEDY-NOLLE

 

Nick, Patrick, and the Nightmares in Building 57

 

What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with you?

 

Another mother shrieks, next table over, of her son, inmate Nick,

who doesn’t understand.

Why not watch crazies kill,

whether horror movies or here?

It’s Halloween, after all,

so he pivots, dives up and rips the phone off the wall.

Inmate Patrick shrugs, but the voices escape the wired hole,

syllables crawling down the Dali wall.

Whether Poe, Stoker, Brockden Brown,

the chattered allusions march out,

nightmare notebooks, scribbled quotations

fill the state-issued bureau drawers.

His eyes narrow in quiz:

 

What’s my line, now?

 

From his last research paper for history:

Hitler still has the Russian summer beckoning,

and those poets are not yet frozen dead on the Eastern Front…

But no time for candy bars and Cokes today,

no visits to the machine, no touch.

Buzzed back into reality

locked down in bigger Romper Rooms,

we’re all just Bozos,

Krugers, Lecters.

 

Sharon Kennedy-Nolle’s poetry has appeared or is upcoming in many journals including Ignatian Literary Magazine, Zone 3, The Round, Prism Review, SLAB, Potomac Review, Pennsylvania English, Bluestem Magazine, El Portal, Juked, Euphony, apt, Cape Rock, Sanskrit, Vox Poetica, Chicago Quarterly Review, MacGuffin, The Midwest Quarterly, Evening Street Review, Studio One, Trampoline, and Off the Coast, among others. Her dissertation was published as Writing Reconstruction: Race, Gender, and Citizenship in the Postwar South (University of North Carolina Press, 2015).

 

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MICHAEL LAUCHLAN

 

In Praise of Patient Students

 for Zena, Sumaia, and Brandon

 

I would tell you, my friends,

about my cottonwood trees. But

you ask me, who can own trees?

And I agree. I’m not even

sure they are trees, though

they reach a hundred feet

into December’s sky. Let’s agree

for now that December owns

the cold gray air. Everyone

in Michigan can grasp December,

even in a classroom with afternoon light

spilling across your faces.

I’m told they all grew up

after a massive tree was split

by lightning a few decades back,

long before you were. When

lightning struck, (it’s always

striking) I was miles away,

building a porch, taking no note

of flashes crossing western clouds,

being quite consumed by nails

and hammers and by boards that once

were live pines, their needles

scratching upward like a vast

green prayer. But the cottonwoods

on the land we bought so long

after the city divided up Crowley’s farm,

which earlier settlers stole

from the Potowatami–those cottonwoods

grown from the ground stump

of a timeless forebear who stood up

to lightning and cracked–are they

not really one ancient tree

that never understood death?

 

Michael Lauchlan has contributed to many publications, including New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The North American Review, Sugar House Review, Louisville Review, Poet Lore, and Lake Effect. His most recent collection is Trumbull Ave., from WSU Press.

 

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PATRICK LODGE

 

The Farmer of Ty’r Tonnau  (House of the Waves)

 

Your tumble-down house is adrift

in high summer weeds, wild flower

bee hum, field mouse scuttle. Here

iron hinges seep rust, veining

salt-scoured frames. A must of sadness

hangs; a long time since a door swung

shut in brief reprieve from the chiseller

wind that shoved its calling card through

every crevice, baying victory in your face.

 

Ty’r Tonnau is forsaken now – cracked,

furrowed, no longer bawling defiance

to the bay’s maw that daily gnaws

nearer its last stones. The scraps draggle

near the cliff edge, the land is falling

away from itself. A mirror to you, the last

to work this land, who saw fields, stock,

and roots, flushed away on each wild tide;

who finally stepped back from the edge.

 

It was all too much. Alone in a stone

sarcophagus, each sleep a small death,

each dawn, a cold waking to the pounding

dispute of wave with land that parsed

out the futility of rising, of picking up

tools to scrap afresh with a dying farm.

Everything conspired to defeat muscle,

soul, to mock the Sunday chapel bromides

that rolled in waves from pulpit to pews.

 

And always on the horizon, taunting

you through the tarp-flap window,

Bardsey, that holy island of saints,

floating out of reach, smug and arrogant

in the buoyancy of sanctity; ebbing

and flowing with the heady insouciance

of a pilgrimage accomplished, a promise

redeemed, though never for you, farmer,

deserted by your own land.

 

Patrick Lodge’s work has been published and anthologised in several countries and he has read at poetry festivals in the UK, Ireland, Kosovo and Italy. He has been successful in several international poetry and short story competitions. He has three collections with Valley Press and is working on the fourth, provisionally titled Arkana.

 

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DS MAOLALAI

 

Tuesday 

 

I open the door, ringing a bell  

with my movement  

and unmachined presence.  

I’m alone, I'm surrounded  

by engines and oilstains,  

old newspapers stacked 

on a knee-high glass table by a desk. 

it's a little reception just off 

to one side of a garage – some pictures 

of cars up, some pictures of women  

and a guy sitting down  

at a desk there who waves me  

to wait. he's mexican, brazilian –  

some sort of spanish-type –  

short hair, a wire muscle and a plasticish  

jacket. I wait, let him finish his call, then explain  

what I need from a service. primarily coolant,  

though I'll take a full works and fluid  

replacement – why not? it's a pretty good car –  

it'll run if I pay. has been pinging some lately; 

some dials have been pointing at red.  

he nods – tells me "tuesday" and takes 

down my details. my name and a phone 

number, reg of the car and the make;  

unprompted I mention the colour. he asks  

where I live and I point just outside –  

just downhill, just over the river,  

into dusk where the sunset's  

pulled over its 5pm style.  

in a garage a red car sits damaged 

by driving, but stylish the same. 

an old man with a pretty bad  

cough on a corner  

and elbows out, smoking  

outside of a bar. 

 

The bakery 

 

the dog is asleep  

by my elbow. 

I am on the sofa; 

I’m changing the shape 

of some poems.  

her body, curled close,  

makes the curl  

of a freshly baked  

flaking croissant 

at a deli or bakery 

or counter of a coffeeshop.  

 

and I don't know – it’s pastry  

I see when I look at her. perhaps 

it’s the colour. the fur; golden  

crunch. perhaps 

the head, which is shaped 

like a scone, and light  

and fist-sized and delicious.  

and those eyes lodged, 

those wetly black  

olives – some terrible breakfast 

from some other country  

you try out on holiday, find you don’t like.  

 

in the morning 

I get my breakfast  

and sometimes there's a shit  

laid out for me and cooling  

on tile. and she jumps  

at my knees – all excitement  

and I let her out 

for that early 

first piss. she comes in, 

dewdrop dampness, 

and grass steams outside –  

clouds like a bakery window. 

 

DS Maolalai has been nominated eleven times for Best of the Net, eight for the Pushcart Prize and once for the Forward Prize, and his poetry has been released in three collections, most recently Sad Havoc Among the Birds (Turas Press, 2019) and Noble Rot (Turas Press, 2022)

 

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PAUL MCDONALD

 

Cezanne and the Gardener

 

I watch you paint a portrait of 

the gardener, your favourite child of nature. 

You make him weightless as a 

swallowtail settled on a wicker chair; 

a changeling, his gaze framed by sunlight. 

 

Cool in linen slacks, he occupies 

a place that didn't quite exist 

before you noticed it. Who but you 

would paint away the shadows,

set summer free to fade his 

 

shirt, bleach his shoes and beard?

You’ve seen his dream of transformation,

heedless of boundaries that the rest 

of us insist on, his will to merge 

with worlds beyond his skin, the gardener,

 

your favourite child of nature.

He’s like a man made of seasons,

or honey, set to flow far beyond each 

compass point, time, the shared mind. 

As you pack away your paints,  

 

he rakes the first leaves, the gardener,

your favourite child of nature: no need to

look for him, he’s always there, even when 

he leaves. The scent of oil recedes on

his picture: the shape of a shapeshifter. 

Paul McDonald taught at the University of Wolverhampton for twenty five years, where he ran the Creative Writing Programme. He took early retirement in 2020 to write full time. His most recent book is Don’t Use the Phone: What Poet’s Can Learn from Books (2023), and his latest poetry collection, 60 Poems is forthcoming from Greenwich Exchange Press this year in 2023.

 

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SAMIKSHA RANSOM

 

Practicing Punk Kid

 

the photo-man finally yells, statue!

 

                                                                      goes snap, snap, snap          as fast as he can.

 

on my way out he whispers, she’s a tough one.

 

                                          a lady looks at me and nods.

 

 

i am twenty-three now                                     and not fond of children

 

                                                  save the ones whose eyes are feral or placid.

 

 

i am still     a       practicing        punk            kid

 

 

                          my business is to       Flout          

                                                                             Defy

                                                                                            Transgress.

 

if cake needs three spoons white sugar,

 

                                                               i sneak in four.

 

if somebody needs a mocha

 

                                                                          i brew black chai with big tea leaves.

 

if somebody hands me a map, 

        

                                                      i get lost.

 

it is my habit to tear the instructions off

 

                                                                  the box of Brownie Mix and Maggi.

 

                                                   i hate moderation.

 

it’s either black        

                                                  or white

 

      mountain tops or valleys  

                            

                                                               double or nothing.

 

 

some people find it amusing                   to instruct me            on various matters.

 

i think of them as the

 

                                          photo-guys telling me to

 

                                                                        watch the birdie

 

         and quickly shut my eyes.

 

Samiksha Ransom is a writer from Allahabad, India. Her work has appeared in Tint Journal, EKL Review, The Chakkar, JAKE, Live Wire and more. ‘Practicing Punk Kid’ was previously published in Kitchen Sink Magazine’s Fall 2021 issue. Samiksha is on Twitter as @SamikshaRansom (Samiksha Ransom (@SamikshaRansom) / Twitter)

 

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SAM SZANTO

 

Singing at Bedtime

 

My daughter and her father

sing together

every Saturday night,

for months Moana, now Encanto,  

harmonies and rounds

silver and exact.

 

Songs like these are unmeant

for my mouth. From me

my daughter gets the same

made-up lullaby every weekday,

two rhymed lines repeated twice,

Iris I love you, Iris I do,

as I stroke her unlined forehead

she holds on tight

to Bunny with the Pink Coat,

Time to go to sleep, Irie-boo.

 

Her elder brother has a one-liner,

Beast of the Beasts, my mancubus, Rufi Roo,

his dad or I yelling it out

loud as oranges

as he lies on top of us

while we roll around

pretending to be surfboards.

 

These songs have knotted themselves

into the beds’ golden pine

and the floors’ light heartwood.

 

When the children leave home

they will break out,

vowels round and fat as raisins

jumping across the streets,

consonants long and thin as sticks of rock

hopping and skipping behind them,

heard but not seen.

 

Sam Szanto’s poetry pamphlet will be published by Hedgehog Press in 2023. Her poems are published in journals including The North, BODY literary journaL, Hybrid, Dreich and many others. She won the Charroux Poetry Prize and the Twelfth First Writer Poetry Prize. Find her at samszanto.com and on Twitter: sam_szanto

 

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HANNAH JANE WEBER

 

Trash Receptacle at Waldo Library

 

Dabs of mucus adorn the sidewalk here and there,

wee stained-glass windows of mottled blood and phlegm.

 

The sun pours the same light on these little wads of lung

as it does the splotches of residual snow.

 

The light that warms me

is the light singing from the spit.

 

It is the light that reaches into the library’s uncapped trash receptacle

and gently bobs around, nuzzling bits of abandoned waste,

illuminating the petals of a gum posy.

 

It is the light that embodies the air and highlights the crud clutching the liner,

the same light that bumps into night and tells us when a door is ajar.

 

The light that prowls the debris of a trash receptacle with one ray

and heaves me into existence with another ray

is the light that lives in death.

 

Hannah Jane Weber’s poetry has been published in I-70 Review, Plainsongs, The Poeming Pigeon, Ponder Review, Rosebud, Slippery Elm and more. She is also a recipient of the Dylan Thomas American Poet Prize. Hannah Jane is a children’s librarian and tennis enthusiast. She lives with her husband and their dogs.

 

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