2025

 

 

MAY

 

 

Aman Alam, Nick Allen, Emma Atkins, Melanie Branton, Marianne Brems,

 C. B. Crenshaw, Craig Dobson, Kaily Dorfman, Sameen Ejaz, Annette Gagliardi,

Judith Taylor, Kim Waters.

 

 

 

AMAN ALAM

 

Everything Will Leave Eventually

The brick does not beg to remain part of the house. It just

waits to be loosened. We are all loose things waiting for a

slight shift.

 

Mother's anklets no longer rattle when she walks— she

walks differently now.

 

I open drawers and find receipts for days I don’t

remember. The sugar gone damp. The key that fits

nothing. The comb missing three teeth.

 

Once, we believed in morning. Now, light arrives like it

 has other places to be. The mirror no longer flatters. Even

 the birds look tired of pretending joy. Lips once ripe with

 gossip now sealed like prophecy.

 

The gods? They never left. They became us, and like

 everything else that becomes us, they are fading too.

 

Nothing golden here, only rust that holds better. Only

breath, that comes late. Only words that wear out faster

 than the pages they’re written on.

 

This too— these good seconds, these bare feet on cold tile, this coffee made sweet without needing sugar— will leave, without bow, without bruise.

 

And maybe the leaving is the thing. The great truth. The

real inheritance. The only god we can name without being

wrong.

 

Aman Alam is an Indian poet, currently studying English at Jadavpur University. He writes because it's cheaper than therapy and more socially acceptable than talking to himself.

 

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NICK ALLEN

 

Bergamo and the winter of death

[italics denote quotes from a variety of media reports]

 

I.

a generation has died   Mass is suspended  

what wont stop are the sirens

the hospitals are the trenches of a war  

the people are afraid of the hospitals

 

the undertaker says   you are a sponge  

you take the pain of everybody

the cemetery in Bergamo is locked  

and all the flower shops are closed

 

II.

snow falls across the unlit window and the empty doorway

all these coffins have elbowed aside the pews   so the priest

hurries along this new aisle and flicks a water-borne cross

of sanctification   a rapid blessing without breaking his stride

 

hundreds of dead convoyed away by the military   to be

cremated in a town less afflicted   to Florence or Venice

no one at the death-bedside   sleek hearses unattended

at funerals   the ashes will be returned at a later date  

 

III.

Renaissance cradle   foster home to the Black Death 

his temperature climbed to 103   his skin turned yellow

their lips are blue   fingertips turn violet

at home   he lay under a painting of the Virgin

 

the Red Cross is coming into the houses

each nurse wears two pairs of blue gloves

a zinc-lined coffin and a red plastic bag for their possessions

a melancholy rainbow across a winter of death

 

IV.

in Italy   government officials are reviled

as untori   the annointers   the greasers  

who by their inaction have spread this

plague as surely as those who spread

 

the balm on bannisters and doorjambs

in the seventeenth century when we

had evidence for so much less   now

that we choose to believe so much more

 

[untore / untori (pl) – from 16/17^th C Italy – someone who was alleged to have deliberately spread the plague via ointments on doorhandles, clothes – also a greaser]

 

Nick Allen is a poet and Trade Union activist, resident in West Yorkshire. He has published 4 pamphlets and 1 collection of poetry. His poems have appeared in anthologies and been placed in several competitions.

 

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EMMA ATKINS

 

Promised Grandads

 

A letter: promised, not yet written.

Promised not to publishers

but to a mother without a father

and a granddaughter without a grandad.

 

It’s not my story to tell.

It’ll be no-one’s story if rules are obeyed: If you love me, don’t ask again.

Still, my imagination runs away with itself:

 

crafts a highwayman of the fiancée who disappeared

and a Havisham of the nan left behind.

A ring: wrapped in tissue, tucked into a purse pocket –

just as good as a moth-eaten gown.

 

I am granddaughter to no grandads or many,

fearing you’ll turn those words on me: If you love me, don’t ask again.

Still, I wonder what relic that highwayman might’ve passed down:

 

A watch, a book, a camera. Something for me to treasure,

instead of these imagined grandads and an unwritten letter.

 

Emma Atkins (she/her) is a poet and novelist currently studying for her PhD at Middlesex University. Most recently, she was published in Amsterdam Quarterly's 'Generation' edition and Issue #13 of Drawn to the Light Press. ‘Promised Grandads’ previously published in The Stripes Magazine in their March issue, 2024, 

 

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MELANIE BRANTON

 

Hook

 

French diminutive, but the root is pure Norse:
little crozier, doublet of croquet and crotchet.
I picture crabby Vikings, shepherds and bishops

 

work granny-square ponchos, with mallets
or malleable flamingoes, to a starched-arse,
hot-trot Mozart beat. Older than Hastings,

 

older than the Conqueror, with his eye-penetrating
arrow, this widdershins, distaff geometry,
counted out in chains and slips, doubles and trebles,

 

mathematical meditation, finger-prayer
plucked with a dancing hook to the power of three.
Soft polygons, woolly round the edges:

 

shells in place of circles; honeycomb
instead of quadrilaterals; strawberries, edges
protected by a Ready-Brek halo of fuzz. More forgiving

 

than knitting, which clicks disapproval, picks holes
in every dropped stitch. Here holes are celebrated, garments made
entirely from holes. They froth into lace borders,

 

fizz into cardigans, volcanic, champagne bedspreads,
peekaboo bubble-bath jumpers with strategically placed foam,
flirty frivolity fashioned with a come-hither fluttering of the wrist.

 

Melanie Branton is a spoken word artist from Redfield in Bristol. She was longlisted in the 2022 National Poetry Competition and has had work published in journals including The Lake, Poetry Wales, Poetry Salzburg Review and The Moth.

 

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MARIANNE BREMS

 

Feather Meme

 

Hikers before me have left feathers

stuck in the cracks of a wooden trail marker

at a junction.

Small feathers with downy barbs

flutter in the fall breeze

where delicate shafts may not hold.

Large feathers with curled edges

and sturdier quills sit deep and solid.

 

As memes they stand

to carry the import of one road taken,

not another,

on this day, not that.

This small family of Kilroy was Here

gather in good company

to speak to a public not yet come,

inviting them to leave their own mark

across a waiting space.

 

Preparing Soup

 

It’s the attachment of new shelves

on empty walls that helps absorb the acid of grief,

surfaces to hold familiar vases, books, and photographs,

along with new ones.

 

She removes these things from confinement

in boxes she will soon flatten,

places them in the space bound to shrink

as her collection regrows in her new condo.

 

There are cabinet shelves to cover, curtains to hang,

hooks to secure,

and still so many boxes, more than she remembers,

though she left so much behind.

 

The dog stares at her from next to his dish.

Without urgency, she squeezes and releases

the loose folds of skin behind his ears,

squeezes and releases, before filling his bowl.

 

He retrieves from the bedroom the plaid flannel shirt

she gave her husband of forty-one years

last Christmas before the accident.

The dog jumps into her lap, plaid between his teeth.

 

She takes her time spreading the shirt over them both,

smoothing each fold as they lock eyes for a moment.

Then she hangs the shirt over the back of one dining room chair

and carefully buttons each button down the front.

 

She can see it there beside the table

as darkness gathers outside the curtainless window

and she prepares soup.

 

Marianne Brems is the author of the full-length poetry collection Stepping Stones (2024) and three chapbooks. Her poems have also appeared in literary journals including The Bluebird Word, Front Porch Review, Remington Review, and Lavender Review. She is a nominee for the Eric Hoffer Book Award 2025. Favorite poets include Kay Ryan, Ellen Bass, and Naomi Shihab Nye. She lives, cycles, and swims in Northern California. Website: www.mariannebrems.com. “Feather Meme” First published in The Bluebird Word February 2023, “Preparing Soup” First published in California Writers Club Literary Review 2022 November 21, 2022.

 

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C. B. CRENSHAW

 

Steamboat Sublime

 

On General Pershing Street

the crows eat Lo Mein

from styrofoam cartons

while down at the museum

of the Second World War

the Ardennes Offensive

plays on a digital loop.

 

The projectors over there

decode streams of numbers,

signifying suffering

in the dark forest room where

the sound of Howitzers exploding

among the artificial trees

tends to bore the children

down from the Midwest.

 

Tonight the Carnival Liberty

will carry those children

down the Mississippi River

churning quietly by

flaming oil derricks and

ghostly lights in the delta.

 

Roll, Jordan, roll

the old folks used to sing

down on the German Coast

watching dark blades churn

the oilblack current.

 

Black oil, the wings on the

Pershing Crows.

Rust on the wind.

 

C.B. Crenshaw is an artist and musician in North Florida.  https://cbcrenshaw.com  

 

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CRAIG DOBSON

 

Neptune’s Darlings

 

Littering the shore’s dawn

where the storm left them,

dozens of dead starlings.

 

The pier – which hung their

crowded chatter on its irons

like weed beard; held their flinted

 

iridescence against all weathers –

wades out, skeletal and silent,

into the sea’s still lie,

 

leaving their black luck’s tide

hauled to and fro

beneath the gulls’ white glide.

 

Craig Dobson’s had poetry, short fiction and drama published in several UK, European and American magazines. He's working towards his first collection of poetry. He lives and works in the UK.

 

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KAILY DORFMAN

 

Return       

 

The river’s lost in thought this time of evening.

A few yards down the bank, a pair of turkey-vultures

droop to browse the muddy river-stones

 

and shake heat free from their long smooth

molasses-colored wings. Two lilies unravel in a vase

while through these redwoods, traffic gnaws the air

 

relentlessly. My brother’s gone to find the old rope swing

and left the house alone with me. The sluggish water

there is lower now. Last time we came here,

 

years ago, it prowled the banks as high as the cracked

willow tree. But since then we’ve all drawn in a little closer

around its startled minnows, a little nearer to the ground

 

Kaily Dorfman was born and raised in Santa Cruz, California, and completed her MFA in poetry at UC Irvine; currently she is a doctoral student in creative writing at the University of Denver. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, the Foothill Editor’s Prize, and the Best New Poets anthology, and is published or forthcoming at journals including The Wallace Stevens Journal, Painted Bride Quarterly, Summerset Review, Ibbetson Street, The Fairy Tale Review, and Foothill Poetry Journal

 

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SAMEEN EJAZ

 

We Will Always Be Here

 

The halls of Wuthering Heights still echo with Catherine’s cries,

And Juliet drank the potion for love and not to die.

 

It was love, or so the poets claim, that drove

Orpheus to turn around and let Eurydice die.

 

Betrayal tastes sweet when it comes from a friend, say Elizabeth,

did you lick your lips as you condemned Mary to die?

 

Temptation drives Kings and poisons Queens,

And Anne Boleyn was always going to die.

 

Helen, your beauty brought down empires, so they say

Melanus or Paris, love or duty, all your choices will lead people to die.

 

A sister is your first line of defence, and deepest confidant

Well, Charlotte, it’s not like an edit will trigger Emily to Die?

 

Hughes and Plath, poets, the Gerwig and Baumbach of their time,

He destroyed her journal, we will never know why she had to die.

 

Ophelia, you were just a footnote in Hamlet’s madness,

And Medusa, they wanted to gift you isolation so you would slowly die.

 

Women die, and die, and die, it’s a punchline, and a plot device,

And comic relief, and a plot twist, and an elegy, the woman must die.

 

My apologies to Iqbal, and Ghalib, and Murakami, and Bukowski

Now we live out our narratives, your poems are doomed to die.

 

But the muse will live forever, like the ghazal you will never catch me.

The absence of my voice haunts your poems, I will never die.

 

Sameen Ejaz is a student of literature, fascinated by the freedom within the rigid structures of poetry. She focuses on themes of absence and longing.

 

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ANNETTE GAGLIARDI

 

Spider’s Touch        

 

                              Day 1

 

The urge to write is an itch unscratched,

Tugging at the cobwebs in my mind.

 

Three spider bites marking the knee joint of my right leg prickle.

I wonder what future damage they might do.

 

I wander the cemetery alone, while craving inspiration,

denying the urge to register every perception.

 

Garter snakes mark the grass with quiet strokes;

Arachnids lurk in nearby hedges.

 

My computer hook-up failed - cell phone blocked communication from home.

I’m alone with my spiders - trapped in the web of my own desires.

 

Sitting tight in my cinderblock dorm room, I don’t sleep –

and vomit my impressions into my electric tablet.

 

                             Day 2

 

This morning I find two more spider bites that I try not to itch.

One nudges my waist; the second joins Arthritis to nag my lower back.

 

Is my nightgown harboring these villains of the night?

Daylight and hunger steal the inspiration found so easily in the dark.

 

I feel kinship to Annie Dillard* whose

frog’s suctioned body left it’s shell at the shoreline.

 

It’s chancy, putting myself out there;

presenting my work like so many burnt offerings.

 

I walk the long way to breakfast, taking my poetry

and itch along like so much baggage – a cripple on a mission.

 

Writing is a lonely existence --

sitting in wait for some intended audience to get caught in my lacework.

 

                             Day 3

 

The white light of morning drenches my windowsill;

I wonder which itch to scratch first.

 

Three more bites ring my waist at the lower left rib.

Have I brought them with me, or did they come with the accommodations?

 

I spot my predator lurking overhead in search of breakfast;

Opportunity becomes incredible -- yet so savage.

 

The critique was relentless and brutal.

Yet, the urge still itches even after the scratching.

 

Sharing my inner voice is treacherous.

There is no sharing without the venom of rejection.

 

A question injects itself upon my consciousness - am I undone –

deflated like Dillard’s frog or stuck in my own web of compositions?

 

Annette Gagliardi is a Minnesota writer with roots in the Dakotas. She has published in Canada, Sweden, England and the USA, won numerous awards for her poetry and the PenCraft award for her Historical fiction: Ponderosa Pines: Days of the Deadwood Forest Fire. The newest chapbook, titled: Caffeinated, published through the Island of Wak-Wak, won the Literary Titan Gold Book Award for 2024. See her website: https://Annette-gagliardi.co

 

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JUDITH TAYLOR

 

Dedication  

 

This is for you, if anyone's ever called you cheery

so that you have to give them answers

through a gritted smile.

 

For you, consoling your children,

when they're unhappy at the prospect of an ordinary life

- like, say, the one they see you living.

 

For you in the greasy morning

as you wash your step and your little width of pavement

clean of the party people's vomit, piss, blood, again;

 

for you, being talked across and through

at breakfast-tables, counters, desks;

you, as you stumble home again in tired shoes

 

to whatever disaster home’s been keeping

carefully, all day, for you to be greeted with

when all you want

 

is to sit down in a corner somewhere

rest your head on the MDF, and close your eyes

oh, close your eyes for a moment.

 

To you I dedicate dachshunds

and marmalade cats; all hair salons

called Curl Up N Dye, or some worse pun.

 

Each and every string of lights too difficult

to extricate from its hedge or tree

and left there after Christmas

 

left there all year long

still blinking out irregular red and white and gold, because

why not?

 

And that dark bird, in the alder trees

by the Bingo at the retail park

that sings above the traffic noise, between the falls of rain.

 

All these are yours

and yours alone. May you smile at them. May you smile

when there is no-one there to see you.

 

Kimono for a woman

 

i) Probably Kyoto, 1680-1705

 

Old-gold silk

printed with a green trellis

 

over which mountain roses climb

spill, bloom

 

in costly red embroidery

edged with gold.

 

Robed in poetry, I recall Spring.

Is this not fine

 

and beautiful? Am I not

fine and beautiful too?

 

- and asking you, in the only way I can

will you remember Spring

 

with me

 

in airless summer?

 

ii) lining added at a later date

 

Leaves grey, and fall.

I can't lament them, or

 

how nothing is as it used to be.

I will still have splendour

 

in spite of all this new-

fangled Coromandel drapery:

 

I will have a lining made

for Grandmother's gold kimono.

 

I will be sumptuous.

This winter

 

I'll be wearing mountain roses

against the cold, and Spring

 

so long remembered

 

soon returns.

 

V&A, FE.163-2019, decorated with flowers and lines of poetry. Seen at the exhibition Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk, Dundee, May 2024.

 

Judith Taylor lives in Aberdeen, where she co-organises the monthly Poetry at Books and Beans events. Her poetry has appeared widely in magazine and her latest collection, Across Your Careful Garden, is published by Red Squirrel Press. She is one of the Editors of Poetry Scotland. 

 

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KIM WATERS

 

Christmas Cards 1999

 

All through December

they hung from the ceiling

spine to spine,

 

a line of tents, a campsite

of angels, kings

& shepherds.

 

Strung-out on tinsel,

a weight of sentiment

over our heads,       

 

we ducked below them,

afraid to upset

the status quo

 

till New Years Eve

when someone

pulled a tack & they fell

 

like a strip of flags

across the race line

of a new millennium.

 

Kim Waters lives in Melbourne, Australia. She has a Master of Arts in creative writing. Her poems have appeared in The Australian, Acumen, The Shanghai Literary Review, Under the Radar, The Wells Street Journal, Marble and La Piccioletta Barca.

 

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