2020

 

 

NOVEMBER CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

 

Jean Atkin, Joe Balaz, Carol Casey, Robert G. Cowser, Sarah L. Dixon,

Edilson A. Ferreira, Nels Hanson, Dierdre Hines, Beth McDonough, Roger Mitchell,

 Ronald Moran, Angela Readman, Maggie Reed, David Spicer.

 

 

 

 

 

JEAN ATKIN

 

John Henderson Walks

 

It was his working road, stone-faced

six days a week.  He trod it soft over

the mosses.  His nailed soles sparked

its humpback bridges.

 

It was his slow cattle road, starred

with umbellifers in spring.

The slide-gait of his bullocks

pouched its verges.

 

It was his wood-haul road to the coppice

where Fred Todd’s sheds were stacked,

and he nodded back, and a cream cob

leaned over a door.

 

It was his father’s father’s road, their hedges

inverted all along the mirror ditches:

their blackthorn, axe-laid, singing a blackbird song

into the silence after he’d gone.

 

Thermos and Robin

 

Only my grandma had a percolator.  It chugged

on the cooker till she poured fresh coffee

 

into a silver Thermos jug.  Stoppered it

with a cork.  Standing beside

 

and below her, I’d read again

Thermos stamped into the metal.

 

When she lifted it, it was covered in

the little limestone dents of our walks.

 

She put a china cup, a glass of milk and

the biscuit tin on the Tarn Hows tray.

 

Blue sky, blue lake,

pale plaited wicker rim.

 

She opened the window, laid her old hand

out on the sill. I laid my young hand on hers.

 

Five tiny seeds tilted on my heartline.

Not breathe.  Not move.  The smell of coffee

 

waiting warm

and the bird, light

as a blown egg        

its sharp-toed landing

and its shining eyes

as bright as beans. 

 

Jean Atkin's latest collection is How Time is in Fields (IDP, 2019).  Her poetry has featured on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Ramblings’ with Claire Balding, and recent work appears in Finished Creatures, The Moth and Agenda.  In 2019 she was Troubadour of the Hills for Ledbury Poetry Festival, and BBC National Poetry Day Poet for Shropshire.  www.jeanatkin.com

 

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JOE BALAZ

 

Grandpa Him

 

Unseen leaves reach like fingers

into da subterranean darkness

 

while roots are upturned

and seemingly drying in da sun.

 

Telling da story of dis old tree

 

is like reciting wun memoir

witout remembering anyting.

 

Wheah watah seeks

its lowest level

 

it’s amazing how survival clings

and wants to take hold.

 

Upside down

but somehow living

 

soaked flowers still bloom

and swollen seeds still dream.

 

Eyes stay all blurry

 

seeing

everyting and anyting

 

dough nutting is clear

except da silence in da ear.

 

Grandpa him

 

eventually ending

and passing into oblivion

 

year aftah year aftah year

 

on wun inscribed headstone.

 

Joe Balaz writes in Hawaiian Islands Pidgin (Hawai'i Creole English). He is the author of Pidgin Eye, a book of poetry. The book was featured in 2019 by NBC News as one of the best new books to be written by a Pacific Islander. In July, 2020, he was given the Elliot Cades Award for Literature as an Established Writer. It is the most prestigious literary award given in Hawai'I. Balaz presently lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

 

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CAROL CASEY

 

Metaphor

 

A large metaphor can be 

the elephant in the room.

A small metaphor can be 

the mouse that scatters the elephant. 

And when this leads to

a house of cards falling down,

it is a mixed metaphor.

 

So when your elephant 

meets your mouse 

and knocks over your 

house of cards 

you can get all mixed up 

about large and small. 

 

So that when you slip on a mole-hill

on your way to the mountain 

and come into intimate 

and protracted contact with the

kaleidoscopic cacophony of carnival

that lies in between, 

it takes a while to understand 

that this is the trip.

 

Carol Casey lives in Blyth, Ontario, Canada. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared inThe Leaf, The Prairie Journal, Sublunary Review, Plum Tree Tavern and recent anthologies, Tending the Fire and i am what becomes of broken branch. Metaphor was first Published in the League of Canadian Poet’s Feminist Caucus Report, June 2017

 

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ROBERT G. COWSER

 

Beginning and Ending

 

A poem should open gently

as a black Oriental fan spreads

into the welcoming air,

claiming its own space

and casting a crescent

on a polished floor.

 

Since a poem also must close,

let it be sudden

like a screen door

snapping shut at twilight

on a summer evening.

 

Robert G. Cowser’s poetry, short fiction, essays, and short plays have appeared in various literary publications, primarily in the United States but also in the UK and in Chile.  He is a Texan currently living in Missouri. “Beginnning and Ending” was first published in Bean Switch 2(1985) 27.

 

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SARAH L. DIXON

 

Lockdown Boyfriend

 

I sew the horizon down,

applique hills and valleys

and cross-stitch the sea.

 

Needle-felt family members.

I build a boyfriend from my clothes,

stuffed with soft toys and skirts.

 

He rests his feet so well on the stool.

I almost believe he is real.

His arm on mine. His shaded eye contact.

 

We share a bottle of Pinot,

with curry and candles.

He enjoys me singing 80s rock ballads.

 

He isn't much of a dancer

but encourages my pogo

around a fairy-lit front room.

 

 

How to assemble a human

 

Strip away any signs of wear and tear,

Always apply a base coat.

Do not assemble when too hot or too cold.

 

Ensure you have the correct tools

before you start.

Count each peg, smile and disapproval.

 

The shiny side

should always be facing outwards.

Hide away the screw-holes, the nail heads

and any rough edges.

 

Brush away the sawdust.

It is unsightly

and probably means you went wrong somewhere.

 

Sarah L. Dixon is based in Huddersfield. She had a recent acceptance for Bloody Amazing. Her books are The sky is cracked (Half Moon Press, 2017) and Adding wax patterns to Wednesday (Three Drops Press, 2018). Sarah’s inspiration comes from ale, being by/in water and adventures with her son, Frank.

 

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EDILSON A. FERREIRA

 

Seasons on Fire

On “Autumn Leaves”, Oil on Canvas, 1856, by John Everett Millais.

 

Four women in the field.

Three young women and a little girl.

Late afternoon, trying to accomplish her job,

gathering a pile of leaves to make a bonfire

and, then, like vestals of modern times,

they will be offering it to the sky;

more than odor of burning leaves,

incense from departing summer. 

Executors and witnesses to the seasons’ change,

to which, inevitably, all of us are chained.    

The two eldest feed the funeral pile, 

properly dressed in dark clothes, while the youngest, 

indifferent and incomprehensible to the moment,  

feeds herself.    

The land will become bare and virgin,

sanctified and prepared for the miracle of spring.  

In the background, the sun, that gilded the day,

prepares itself for the retreat:

will make its journey to brothers beyond horizons,

remaining, however, its promise, never broken,

of eternal and daily reborn.

 

Edilson A. Ferreira, 77 years, is a Brazilian poet who writes in English rather than in Portuguese. Widely published in selected international journals in print and online, he began writing at age 67, after retiring as a bank employee. Nominated for The Pushcart Prize 2017, his first Poetry Collection, Lonely Sailor, One Hundred Poems, was launched in London, in November of 2018. He is always updating his works at www.edilsonmeloferreira.com. 

 

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NELS HANSON

 

Our Dog

 

The good landlord warned us before

we ever signed the lease a ghost lived

there, just a small gentle dog waiting

for its lost master to come home from

work after the fatal accident. First he

ran away, on his own searched towns

and country, until in the deepest glen

where once he fetched he rested. His

four legs churned, as if in something

like a dream he chased a giant rabbit.

Waking, he tracked the urgent scent

true as a buried bone, a road’s white

line, to his only owner’s green yard

and house. Experts with magic radio,

infrared, a priest, a shaman lighting

sage kept persuading him to move on

to another plane where the spirits of

dogs frisk happily across a meadow 

but he wouldn’t bark, sit up or obey.

The freckled Queensland blue heeler

slept out on the service porch, drank

slowly from a bowl with his painted

name we filled each week. At night

we heard him wandering and twice

starting up wood stairs, then turning

for his cloth basket by the dryer. He’s

our dog now, or maybe we belong to

him, and soon he’ll climb all the way

to a rug at the end of the double bed

or leave soft impressions in the quilt

as he circles to find his perfect place.

 

Nels Hanson grew up on a small farm in the San Joaquin Valley of California and has worked as a farmer, teacher and contract writer/editor. His fiction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award and Pushcart nominations in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016, and poems received a 2014 Pushcart nomination, Sharkpack Review’s 2014 Prospero Prize, and 2015 and 2016 Best of the Net nominations.

 

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DEIRDRE HINES

 

The Ministry of Moon

  (after Rick Barot)

 

I want to be the Minister for Cats. Because the sound

of purring reduces blood pressure, because felines undulate

like waves with the moon already inside them, because her

diversity gives hope for peaceful futures, because their

eyes are vesicae piscis: I want to be the Minister for Cats

because I'm tired of flags and soundbites about borders

 

that no self respecting cat takes heed of, but which every cat

smells as reproductive availability, because they wait until

moonrise to mate, the moment Oswald calls the 'hinge-moment'

which is both unearthly and rooted in the damp brown soil

we call earth and pretend not to be a part of. I want to be

the Minister for Cats, because they teach us how to see

 

because although they see in monochrome they don't act

upon it, because a mother cat will nurse an otter cub,

a squirrel, a pup, and make no difference. I want

to be the Minister for Cats, because I have seven

that sailed across gardens guarded by perfect lawns,

sticks and stones and locked kitchen doors against

 

the verbs of wild, because I have been re-reading

Joy Adamson and the story of Elsa and her cubs

Jespah, Little Elsa and Gopa gives hope

for interpsecies dialogue. Because of poachers

thinking they're big men and big women when

in reality they are the evolutionary mistake,

 

because of the elephants I was named after

and their tusks carved into sitting room trophies,

because of the last remaining places of the wild

in hedges, savannahs and rainforest jungle,

because we are all sentient and feel pain,

I want to be the Minister of Cats. Because of my

 

three abandoned kittens I fed every three hours

with kitten formula I turned from indifferent to

snarling mother. Because the hunter in me

wants to trek and snare the torturers

of all feline kind. Because I can change

the way we see the world from my Ministry of Moon.

 

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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BETH MCDONOUGH

 

Blackbird, first light
 

Intent. Dark at dawn's still-frosted grass,

bob-peck, bob-peck, she's focused on
what? I can't tell. Bird drills iron earth,
then hirples from this kitchen window's frame.
Fancies herself unseen.

That human lie. In these killing fields,
any blackbird, stark at white,
knows herself a striking target.
Note the other rime-bright feathered deaths,
sky burials, nearby where she gleans.

Bird does what bird must do
to stay alive in earth's hard times.
But in every freeze, or any sudden move,
bird-sense dictates she needs to watch her back.
A hundred others share her view.

 

 

Visitation

 

Some blattering mass wanted into your kitchen,

all clatterbang terror. A percussion attack.
Enough of an effort to almost crash in,
invade, brilliant in splinter-star glass,
shit-smeary and frisked with streaked blood.
 

No-one you'd know. Just a whisk hint of doffed greys,
quick cast-off coats or cloak-whirling shades.
This, in one spilt second, now grandly expanded,
expansive in violence, was aimed right at you,
with both your arms steeped in the sink.

Then everything dropped. Noise. Images. Wind.
Air clutched at nothing, except emptied space.
A gap made larger by whatever had left.
You shuddered in the greenpale of shock,
caught the unflustered gaze of a hawk.

Sharp cut out white on a Matisse-blue sky,
hawk hooked his grip on a low rone.
Now you knew. Hawk saw,
watched you and whatever lost shape stayed.

Dead, scathed or escaped, unseen. Just prey.
 

Later, when you opened your door to that calm,
your foot so nearly faulted.
Still intact, six tiny claws clutching sky,

three perfect spuggiess*
laid out warm, in a just fluffed line.

 

     *Northeast England dialect: house sparrows.

 

Beth McDonough’s poetry appears in Magma, Causeway, Gutter and elsewhere; she reviews in DURA.  She swims year-round in the Firth of Tay, and forages close by. Lamping for pickled fish is published by 4Word.

 

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ROGER MITCHELL

 

Explaining

 

I’m always explaining, explaining

my poems, I mean their meaning,

or explaining why I wrote them

in the first place. Often, and frequently,

it is the first place I’m explaining,

as though that would explain why

I was there rather than beach combing.

That things seem to need so much

explaining might explain why so much

gets so little of it or gets only a part

of what, without even asking,

it asks for. It makes me wonder

what it would be like to be in a place

where everything was explained or,

by strange coincidence, or no

coincidence at all, cleared the decks

of all consternation and bemusement,

turned explanation itself into

a dense tautology of wonder.

 

Roger Mitchell's most recent book is Reason's Dream (Dos Madres Press). He has new or forthcoming work in Poetry East, Tar River Poetry, Stand (U.K.), Mudlark, Innisfree Poetry Journal. He now lives in Jay, N.Y.

 

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RONALD MORAN                                         

 

Journeying with a Poem

 

It is not that hard to figure out why

                    the first

and all subsequent readings seem

                   as if

that one poem came from a distant

                   way

of life, and that we are supposed

                   to read

it in a context unfamiliar to anyone

                   here,

 

perhaps in whatever galactic cluster

                   it left

and then had settled into the fertile

                   mind

of a new poet, studying how to write

                   poetry

in the Deep South, a sensuous poem

                   by one

overcome and embarrassed by his

                   seminar

 

leader and eight other bewildered

                   students,

and had to take their sneers, jokes

                   and

whatever young writers must endure

                   for making

a poem far from the norm, when it

                   could be

a product of the splintered and maybe

                   even

 

symptomatic aura of a culture trying

                   to give

traumatic birth to a poem, or whatever

                   name

fits, as if both the poet and the poem

                   are waiting

for a sign to keep going, just as long as

                   they are

willing to embrace what they hold as

                   dear.

 

Ronald Moran has published 13 books/chapbooks of poetry and has poems coming out soon in Tar River Poetry and The South Carolina Review.  His work is archived in two university libraries.

 

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ANGELA READMAN

 

The Ocean Room

 

I keep my oceans in a small room now. You’d have to wind through

a dozen empty arms to find it, shirts draped on a steaming horse by the fire

 

the windows a fog of stopped breath. The door groans, I slot in. Barefoot,

pebbles on flagstone, seal ribs building a cathedral of shadow on the walls.

 

I can’t remember the last time I swam, but I have this. Glass

fidgeted smooth by half-moons, a thousand laid frosts in my palm.

 

It’s an altar of jetsam, my heart, I suppose, all driftwood, snipped calf-licks

dull as wet straw - a curlew egg unborn. I let myself recall Him, his kiss, 

 

only here. Running a feather along a wrist, I light a candle and sniff.

Flickers of him shouldered the dusk, a shale of footsteps on my path. Coming,

 

going, coming to see his sons try on the water. It fit like a dead man’s suit.

My husband’s knife in his pocket, dripping apples, still folded, for now.

 

I polish his spectacles by the lamp, wash my hands in the light. And I drag

out the box again, the sealskin intact. Loose as a shadow laid over mine.

 

I crawl underneath it. That heft, slick as smiles, the bones and the breath

of love freckled, rolling over me one last time.

 

(‘her Rain Room’ is a line in ‘At Roane Head’, by Robin Robertson)

 

 

The Blow Torch

 

Turned up in a sack of screws and string, the blow 

torch, liver-spotted with rust. That flash of brass

 

in his father’s shed caught him, a candle spitting 

out the dark.  It was ours now,

 

who knew where to get paraffin? Anything  

about pumps, the virtue of not using a gun.

 

I placed it in a pot of vinegar, scrubbed the shaft

with steel wool. The sunshine of Sundays kneeled

 

in its belly, flashed the fringe of a small boy,

looking up, watching the seasons fat curl, fall

 

from stripped windows, frames blonde for an hour.

I handed my husband the torch in silence.

 

He cut the cord off a lamp and wired in a bulb.  

I stood beside him in our dim lounge, staring

 

at the lamp. For a speck of forever I stood like that,

burning to ask if we dared switch it on.

 

Angela Readman's poetry collection The Book of Tides is published by Nine Arches. Her chapbook, Cooking with Marilyn- poems on Marilyn Monroe was published by Blueprint Poetry in 2020. She also writes fiction, her novel Something like Breathing was published by And Other Stories in 2019.

 

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MAGGIE REED

 

Ablation, things you may not know:

 

That there are two magpies nesting above the walkway

between Car Park B and the main entrance.

That no smoking is allowed anywhere on site.

 

That the Premiere Classe hotel is only 5 minutes’ drive away,

that it is really a motel. That it is not

what anyone would call Premiere Classe.

 

That according to Google it can take between

15 minutes and four hours to perform an ablation.

 

That it is easy to pull the cord out of the paper trousers they give you,

that giving a demonstration beforehand might help avoid this.

That it takes time to thread the cord back into the waistband.

 

That walking up the stairs in this hospital makes you feel like

a member of staff. That taking the lift is frowned upon

and that not taking it makes you feel you are doing a good thing.

 

That our nurse, Susannah, has three children who had to be rescued

last week from a burning bus just outside London;

that she did a 13 hour shift the next day.

 

That the hospital offers patients in recovery sweet tea and biscuits,

that Simply M&S is also on site and there is a market stall

outside the main entrance selling fresh fruit and veg.

 

That while you were out in the Lab, I couldn’t do any puzzles

in the ‘I’ newspaper. That afterwards when you were in recovery

we finished them all together.

 

That if you sit up too soon after lying on your back for nine hours you could feel faint;

that it takes a doctor to realise what’s wrong, to lie you back down,

hold your legs in the air, recommend a drip.

 

That this hospital holds heroes, husbands, hostages, homemakers

in the same calm, sanitised and resigned manner.

That death comes and goes through the revolving doors.

 

 

Screen Time

What’s on your mind, Maggie?

 

Newsfeed

Richard Baker read the news that the Beatles had disbanded with an expression that looked like he had eaten a lemon.

Messenger

I flew down the lane on my bike, came off on the bend, grit in my knee, the smell of TCP and my brother was late for his tea.

Explore            

In the big barn: two rusty tractors, dusty hay bales, hammocks of sheep’s skin, sacks of animal feed that tasted like cornflakes.

Shortcuts                     

I got found out in the cross-country race. Miss Hedley warned me not to get in with the bad lasses in the village.

Suggested pages

I read nearly all Enid Blyton’s stories. When we swapped books after the holidays, I discovered My Friend Flicka.

Progress 43%                          

Mr Hacker had marks for: accuracy, attendance, neatness, progress. I scored just below average in everything.

Notifications

Bath night: Tuesdays and Fridays

Bottle-filling: Sep – Dec Mondays, Jan – Mar Fridays

Prep duty: Oct 5^th, Nov 18^th

Messages

‘Will the person who left a full handprint of mud on the mirror of the downstairs girls’ toilet report to matron immediately.’

Friend Requests

I gave Liz from the year below some of my tuck when she forgot to bring hers; she asked me to be her best friend.

Create

I got 9/10 for my first pencil drawing of an oystercatcher. I made up stories, told them to Karen in the dorm after lights out.

Saved

I don’t know what my brother said after I fell in the sheep dip but when I got home, Mum smiled.

 

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Maggie Reed, originally from Cumbria, now lives in the Malverns, Worcestershire. She has been published in The North magazine, Orbis, Three Drops from a Cauldron, Poetry Birmingham, Unpsychology, The Lake, The Beach Hut and Message in a Bottle, as well as numerous anthologies, including the forthcoming Places of Poetry. “Ablation, things you may not know” was the winning poem in the Poem and a Pint competition September 2019, judged by Carrie Etter. Published online at: http://www.apoemandapint.co.uk/

 

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DAVID SPICER

 

Fashion Statements

 

We wear masks to complement our outfits.                           

Ann reports, wears a black mask and black suit.

 

This suits her on black days that mask our grey moods.

Protestors wear camo masks and camo guns.

 

They’re gunning for the guv, who wears no camo.

Cops wear clear shields to match their bike windshields.

 

The clear shields don’t shield them against the virus.

My vet wears a white mask with her white jacket.

 

She treats my white cat in her white mobile truck.

Animal activists wear animal masks.

 

The masks hide their inner spirit animal.

I wear a smiley-face mask to hide my frown

 

of fear that other smiley-face masks hide.

The prez wears no mask, to complement no soul.

 

David Spicer has published over seven hundred poems. Nominated for a Best of the Net three times and a Pushcart twice, he is author of six chapbooks and four full-length collections, the latest two American Maniac (Hekate) and Confessional (Cyberwit.net). His fifth, Mad Sestina King, is forthcoming from FutureCycle Press.

 

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