2021

 

 

MAY CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

Johanna Boal, Claire Booker, Robert Cooperman, Jenny Hockey, Toby Jackson,

Jacqueline Jules, Rose Lennard, Beth McDonough, Kunle Okesipe,

Tineke Van der Eecken.

 

 

 

 

 

JOHANNA BOAL

 

Walking in Drinks

 

All streets near Guinness’s brewery are lined with trees

and barley is growing in a farmer’s field.

Imagine; mice, foxes, walkers, taking in the country air  

drunk the characteristic tang of Guinness.

 

Workers at the black wrought iron gates

drunk on the streets of Dublin,

harsh malted barley the summer’s day spoilt

sour, bothering strong smells lay thickly on me.

 

The cooper’s yard pressing logos ‘Guinness’s Factory’  

cranes loading them onto the canal barges

unique on black tarpaulin covering the barrels,

children playing and shire horses pulling and steering.

 

Lyons’s tea factory further along on the canal

tea chest strewn and the lined metal foil sparkled

summer’s sun in the canal, tea chest floating like boats.

Swans are swimming around them.

 

At my great grandmother’s house

stout bottles, teacups, saucers on the dining table.

I smell the tea leaves brewing in the canal water  

drunk on cups of tea and Guinness. 

 

Johanna Boal has published 2 poetry collections. Her latest collection is Fizz and Hiss, published by MayTree Press, 2020.  She has also been published in several anthologies and poetry competitions and in the 2019 Edinburgh poetry festival anthology. 

 

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CLAIRE BOOKER

 

What cannot be said

 

Friend, let me count the ways I rage

in fractions of your stolen days.

 

That when they come to lay you out

a convict’s crop will brand your scalp.

 

These sheets we chose for flights of fun

will graze my skin when you are gone.

 

Soon none shall know except for me

the secrets swapped as we sipped tea

 

or grasp the loveliness of line

those cloudscapes give our wind-braced pine.

 

Without your eyes I’ll surely fail

to capture diamonds on the black bird’s tail

 

or see our stacks flash ember bright

in streaming skies of varnished light.

 

And though I fight to hold each drop

our cup is pierced, it cannot stop.

 

What once we shared is seeping through

into a world devoid of you;

 

disintegrating with each chime,

each moment’s tick, there is no time.

 

Claire Booker lives in Brighton, England. Her poems have been set to music, filmed, displayed on buses and published widely, including in Ambit, Magma, the Moth, Rialto, Stand and the Spectator. She was recently presented with a Kathak Literary Award in Bangladesh. Her pamphlets are The Bone That Sang (Indigo Dreams) and Later There Will Be Postcards (Green Bottle Press). www.bookerplays.co.uk

 

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ROBERT COOPERMAN

 

The Portals of Hell: 1977

 

Cigarette smoke spewed from the Stadium Inn,

otherwise known as the portals of hell. 

Not that the brimstone stench kept us

grad students from its beer-soaked sanctum,

our professors paying for pitchers and spouting

guru truths, witty as Dickens, eloquent as Coleridge,

at least to us drunken spongers.

 

Once, a new Ph.D. student expatiated

on the utter experimental uniqueness and genius

of Ulysses, and how there had never been

anything like it, ever, in the history of literature.

 

Just then, our professor returned with a pitcher

of the lighter fluid the Stadium Inn sold as beer,

and firing up maybe the twentieth cigarette

of that Friday afternoon, demanded,

 

“Ever heard of Tristram Shandy, kid?”

 

That shut Leonard up; the rest of us silently

cheered: Leonard, with his black beret

and his pipe and his beautiful Japanese girlfriend,

who told him to screw himself,

when he later demanded they return

to Tokyo, so she could serve him like a geisha.

 

Robert Cooperman's latest collection is The Ghosts and Bones of Troy (Aldrich Press).  His latest chapbook, All Our Fare-Thee-Wells was recently published by Finishing Line Press.  Forthcoming from Aldrich Press is Reefer Madness and from Apprentice House Go Play Outside.

 

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JENNY HOCKEY

 

I remember a house I left behind,

 

a farmer’s townhouse by the pasture

with stairs that climbed complicatedly

to a bedroom where hay once piled,

 

that took a branch line to the bathroom

where the mahogany top of a dresser

sat above the sink’s gold taps. 

 

I remember jugs grabbed from the mantelpiece,

bracelets from the drawer. Giving them all away. 

But hard to recall what I’ve never missed

 

and hard to forget that first empty room

where once I’d written for my life

on a desk that took up half the floor,

 

a room with only a carpet now, and me

with my legs either side of a laptop,

sending my message before I left. 

 

Jenny Hockey is an anthropologist who retired from Sheffield University to write more poetry.  After a New Poets Award from New Writing North, her collection, Going to bed with the moon, appeared in 2019 (overstepsbooks.com).

 

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TOBY JACKSON

 

Jumping jacks

 

In March; like the tips of tongues between lips, buttery-yellow stamens 

poke from unopened spears of crocus.

 

Fragments of field-margin and birchwood balance on a brick tower.

 

Who needs trees when there are chimney stacks? Clay pots, flaunching,

and bricks of flemish bond.

 

Crow in continuous silhouette, a Victorian paper-cut, roosting bird

busy at its centre.

 

Jet black against slow white cumulus, blood on his black beak, raspy caw

unheard by children in the garden below.

 

Back from the school run they soar and bounce from fronts to backs.

 

I am mindful of the gardens he scours through, not just foraging, performing

a practised and gruelling labour.

 

Carrion feeder, egg poacher, hops my paths as if he had laid them down.

 

This is about survival.

 

Songbirds in pairs scout and probe garden trees for nest-cavities. Blackbirds

rummage, mini hay-stacks gummed to their beaks.

 

As children do, crow shows self-control, has passed the Stanford marshmallow test.

 

But research gets glossed over by folklore; forever accused, maligned, they say

each evening crow joins a murder of companions. Crow never forgets a face.

 

As reputations go would you choose him as your avatar, your spirit guide?

 

Tell me crow, about your past life and roosting partner. Does this rooftop throne

make life harder?

 

From his vantage crow blinks, looks down, watches a boisterous corkscrew

says let me shake-off my ill-repute, this raucous call; eggs to hatch, to fledge

and teach old tricks.

 

A log roll, a seat-drop, a leap of children’s laughter. A full twist then jumping-jacks

ward off a mob of looting magpies.

 

 

Data capture

 

Well, the wind is up. Why did I turn? Which muscles stirred?

 

Leaves are burnished yellow, the eye is blazed, words struggle to capture the colour.

 

They fall, uncounted, to be pulled under by worms, flipped by blackbirds.

 

A fallen horse-chestnut splits from its rough skin, gloss-brown seed,

the sun’s core in its white velvet flesh.

 

The sick and the dead are counted daily, not known to me. Amongst this season’s fruit

how do I attend to these figures? 

 

Data streams are modelled, colour-coded graphs plotted, averaged,

make a trillion print-outs – blue for infections, red for admissions to the ICU.

 

Kids no longer play with conkers, no longer pierce and knot the season.

 

Paired up, strings pulled tight, missiles held in arrow-fingers arc to the target.

 

Sharp strike of nut on nut.

 

Merits and demerits exchanged. Which lost habits swing here?

 

Chestnuts fall, lie on untrodden paths, like the dropped contents of a boy’s pocket 

 

discounted.

 

Most seeds will perish, untethered, never to know small hands polish the skin

to more than the lustre that cannot be captured

 

they fall, each one a life in waiting.

 

Toby Jackson has spent his professional life in the visual arts, curating, programming public programmes on contemporary art and writing, mainly on museological issues,. He has been writing poetry most of his adult life and has been published in several poetry magazines.

 

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JACQUELINE JULES

                                                                       

Typing Telegrams

 

In a bygone era, boys on bicycles

delivered news in yellow envelopes

from senders charged by the word

and careful to be concise.

 

Cross-country communication

is less cumbersome now

but brevity still valued

in a world where no one listens

longer than a sound-bite.

 

My fingers are cautious,

inclined to delete,

to insert silence in the space

where I’d like to say more.

 

What if she takes offense?

Misunderstands concern

for condescension?

 

I type as if I have returned

to the days of the telegram

and a message

addressed to one person

could be passed

from hand to hand.

 

                                                                                                           

The Oxford Comma

 

I still like the Oxford comma,

though I fear it makes me look old,

like two spaces after a period, discarded

when typewriters disappeared.

 

At least I don’t still capitalize

internet or hyphenate email.

 

It’s not easy to keep up.

The rules change so fast.

 

People take sides.

 

I should think twice

before debating at dinner 

or over drinks.

 

Context, clarity, and nuance

may soon be obsolete.

 

Jacqueline Jules is the author of Manna in the Morning (Kelsay Books, 2021) and Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String, 2016 winner of the Helen Kay Chapbook Prize by Evening Street Press. Her work has appeared in over 100 publications including The Lake, The Paterson Literary Review, Potomac Review, Hospital Drive, and Imitation Fruit. Visit her online at https://metaphoricaltruths.blogspot.com/

 

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ROSE LENNARD

 

Angels

 

Like Jonathan Livingstone Seagull,

some pigeons believe they can fly

through solid glass. Not all the time

but in extremis, chased by a hawk, say,

one will attempt the metaphysical

mind over matter shortcut into

another dimension. It doesn’t end well,

at least the ones I’ve witnessed;

a shocking bang, and at best, the dove

lurches off with hunter in pursuit.

At worst she falls stunned,

and I’m witness to a crime scene

fierce killer mantling warm corpse

and daring me with yellow glare –

a story for another day.

 

Either way, I’m left with an imprint

like an angel’s on the window

raised wing intricately etched

each filament of every feather

painted in soft grey at the instant of the strike

maybe the head, tiny feathers at base of beak,

closed eyelid as if at peace: perfect.

 

No doubt the real angels fly straight through

without a feather

out of place.

 

Rose Lennard is a rewilder, garden designer, ephemeral artist, environmental activist and writer. Her writing is rooted in a lifelong deep connection to the natural world. In her spare time she grows organic vegetables and goes for long walks. www.chameleongardens.co.uk  @gowildwithrose (instagram)

 

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BETH MCDONOUGH

 

Half-lit

 

In that fir's dark grandeur, two pigeons ruffle
this month's false confidence of unhasped spring.
Their mating's a sheet crack of winds,
their flag-batter anger of wings.
 

Close by, a japonica clings to the wall,
as her small pumpkin apples
still gnash. Somehow she can't let them go
to the wrinkled ground mush of their peers.
 

Pavements print with last year's leaves,
brown skeletal fossils on grey.
Large salts sparkle the damp road.
Brittle air clasps at the lifeboat shed.
 

That balaclaved man with his jaundiced skull
slips by. Who knows where he's from,
or where he's going? He always lies.
We bike past one another, swap a nasty glance.
 

I turn into February's brilliance, unsure
of what builds this fear on a well-treated road.
My head maps known hazards of potholes beyond,
but turned Manfred Mann, I just pedal on.

Beth McDonough's work is often Tay-centric. She swims there, year round and forages nearby. Her poetry is in numerous places; she reviews in DURA. In Handfast (with Ruth Aylett) she explored autism. Lamping for pickled fish is published by 4Word.

 

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KUNLE OKESIPE

 

Two Hills Make a Stone

 

I want to know how it feels to be a root,

be a hermit among worms and microbes

but flaunt the leaves of my solitude among the clouds.

 

I want to know how it feels to be a cloud,

to levitate aloof beneath the gallery of stars,

to vary my whiteness with vagaries of purple sadness

and fall like rain ashes when I no longer can take it.

 

I wish I knew what a destitute leaf tells its neighbour

on a cold Monday night,

to know how a yellowing leaf has spent its chlorophyll

or how the bereaved tree mourns its fallen fruit –

 

I want to know where the light of your eyes goes when it sets.

I wish to spend an evening in you,

to know how you carry the water of your sadness

without spilling it.

  

 

A Poem Written in a Different Republic

              

In certain republics poets are traffickers of flowers.

As they move petals from doorposts to city squares

they suffocate many a tyrant

in concrete mansions with pillows of beauty.

 

In streets where agonies travel like roads

and memories howl in an hour that lingers

among troubles that are juvenile like riots

many a felon they’ve sent to jail with legalese of florists.

                        

In certain republics, poets are nannies of truth.

Many a home they’ve rocked with songs

unruly rivers they’ve pampered with fishes

and thrones of cedar they’ve turned to benches.

 

In yonder republics, poets are masons with tools of rhymes.

They’ve mended a valley with the innards of hills

unbuilt a house to the rudiments of sand

and many a cornice they’ve fixed with brows

that blink like magistrates.

 

In certain republics, the poets are buried

but they cajole their ghosts

and traffic the drug of flowers across their graves

dripping with blood, fury and silence.

 

Kunle Okesipe currently teaches postcolonial literature at Igbinedion University, Okada, Nigeria. His adaptation of Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters, The Rattling of Sagoe’s Drink Lobes won an Association of Nigerian Authors’ adaptation contest. His poetry has appeared in adda, The Tiger Moth Review, Moonchild Magazine, African Writer Magazine and others.

 

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TINEKE VAN DER EECKEN 

 

Parole

 

If food had a language

it would be French:

moules marinières et dorades dorées.

 

If a kiss could speak

it would talk in Italian:

saro il tuo contadino

e tu la terra mia.

 

If the wind could speak

he would sound Flemish:

met gierende stem in de gutsende regen.

 

If Mother Earth had words 

she’d speak in Bibbulmun:

Nidja boodja. And ask, Where is your fire?

 

If peace could plead

it would say in Kirundi:

Amahoro

Leave Africa alone.

 

Let drums sound,

tears be dried

Let breath be spiced

with the scent of rain on desert sand

 

Let wind blow away the memory of blood and war

Let rain infuse life into crusted land.

 

Let elegance brighten the days.

 

Let language bring language

Words bring vigour

Parole, parole.

 

Tineke Van der Eecken considers Western Australia home and has Flemish-Australian multilingual heritage. Her memoir Traverse (Wild Weeds Press 2018) was shortlisted for the 2016 TAG Hungerford Award, and follows Café d'Afrique (Tineke Creations 2012). Her poems have appeared in Dreamcatcher, Going Down Swinging, and other journals. readtraverse.com Facebook: TinekeVanderEeckenAuthor

“Parole” was first published in Uneven Floor, May 2013

 

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