2021

 

 

NOVEMBER CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

Jude Brigley, Bex Hainsworth, Michael Burton, Jenny Hockey, Dominic James,

Elizabeth McCarthy, Beth McDonough, Kenneth Pobo, Kerry Trautman,

Anuradha Vijayakrishnan, Melody Wang.

 

 

 

 

 

JUDE BRIGLEY

 

It’s just a park

 

It’s just a park they say – you must be

bored to walk its paths, it’s not that big.

Would you prefer the sea or deeper

 

woods? Untold the attentiveness from

treading soundlessly through grass or not

noted the channels in the veins of

 

leaves. Unheard the drop to papery

last rites; unregarded the wheeze of

wind that rocks the branches when clouds shift

 

speedily over the Garth making

its pointed head invisible. They

do not see the spread of Gnome's Hatstands,

 

measured over the moist banks, where the

musty smell sweats from bulbous glands. Mark

vain daffodils change to begonia,

 

lobelia, argyranthemum as

through cloisters of sweet chestnuts my foot

prints fade in summer’s blubbery rain.

 

In winter frost, from bare arms, glassy

fingers beckon and from the depths of

earth the silent sounds of burrows and

 

wriggle of shovelled soil in the

mole dark. But in spring, the rush of green

shimmers in sketchy benediction.

 

Small Coppers’ flicker past peripheral eyes,

caught in the mind like hawthorn seeds, that

start a count of throngs of bluebells,

 

flotillas of wood fungi, stand-offish

snowdrop families; whisk of fleet foxes,

sentinel of crows, the friction of

 

shadow-tails inviting scrutiny;

along with opportunist, creeping

buttercups colonising freely

 

this scrubby patch where wild things grow

untended, alert to sudden leavings.

 

 

Jude Brigley is Welsh. She has been a teacher, an editor and a performance poet. Now in her 70s she is writing more for the page. She has a chapbook, Labours and has been published in various magazines, most recently in Sylvia, Scissortail, Thimble and Otherwise Engaged.

 

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MICHAEL BURTON

 

The Funeral Forecast 

 

The early morning hours will remain warm 

much warmer than you truly feel 

before temperatures sharply decrease  

as you rise to begin your walk downstairs.  

                                                                 

Out the window conditions may be temperamental.  

Clouds will begin to enter from other regions. 

Take note of the differing weights of their greys,  

the depths of their droops down to earth. 

 

A strong westerly wind will press itself 

upon you as you slide your key from the front door lock. 

The flap of your tie will escape the collar of your coat.  

Be sure to wear your gloves for the long walk to church. 

 

A deep familiar marble chill will greet you where you sit, 

the kind you’d once have been made to sit through, 

trying all you can not to cross your arms, frown  

or think the impure thoughts that always seemed to come. 

 

The rain will start silent at first but soon will be heard  

even over the drone of organ music.  

Not a single of its scatters will sound the same. 

This will stop only once you’ve reached the graveyard. 

 

The afternoon will bring a stripe of sunlight along the grass. 

the clawed fingers of a three-year-old girl  

will cling to the wrinkles of her grandfather’s neck. 

He will hold her tight and steady as they turn from view. 

 

The sky will be its clearest when you are alone again. 

One small smudge of white will thin slowly into vapour.  

Overhead you will see even the tremors within a magpie’s wings. 

You will look further now and ask how long it will last this time. 

 

Michael Burton is from Lancashire in The UK and his poems have been published in The UK and in China where he lived until very recently. He also writes and performs under the name NotAnotherPoet in the spoken word/post-industrial punk rock band New Age of Decay  

 

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BEX HAINSWORTH

 

Footnotes for a Dissertation           

(1)
I am revisiting.
This is History’s history.
Four years ago, buying an anthology
of poetry from Beth Shalom,
the hurried clink of change
as the coach waited.

Seventy-eight years ago, the hurried clink
of wedding rings dropping
into wooden crates like loose change.
Someone, who did not survive, turns back
to the railway tracks,
to the coach that would not wait,
her poetry scrawled on the inside walls
with bloodied fingernails.

(2)
I am not Jewish.
By some genealogical
and geographical accident,
I was born unchosen.
The Nordic look I inherited from my father
was favoured, passed over.

I have seen the carcasses
of concrete bunkers on the beaches
of Wissant and Cap Gris Nez,
and stood beneath Michael’s sword
painted in gold above an unused doorway
in Moscow’s Cathedral Square,
but I am yet to visit the vast graveyard
between the bookends of Europe.

 

(3)
My mother’s great-uncle was one
of the first British soldiers into Belsen.
The water there gave him dysentery and he wrote
to his sister from his hospital bed:
“Half the inmates were walking skeletons
and it was common to see one drop dead.”

I work late most nights.
From my bedroom window
all the stars seem to have six points
and have become a ghastly yellow.
I dream names which rattle like stones,
Treblinka, Majdanek, Theresienstadt,
and wake at dawn, feeling the burn
of a bullet in my arm.

(4)
I... I... I!
But this cannot be a testimony.
I understand that I do not understand.
I am arrogant in my death-ignorance.
Perhaps I have no right to write after Auschwitz.
Perhaps silence is just another lie.

 

Bex Hainsworth was born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, and currently teaches English in Leicester. She won the HQ Prize as part of the East Riding Festival of Words and her poetry has been published following commendations in the Welsh Poetry, Ware Poets, Beaver Trust, and AUB Poetry competitions.

 

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JENNY HOCKEY

 

Symptoms

 

I see you have retrieved your banjo

from the attic, put Django Reinhardt

on the turntable. Not Brahms

 

as advised — are wearing your beret

shaped like an isosceles triangle

pulled well down over your ears,

 

making of the baseline

a footpath between your temples.

That, my Pumpkin, is why

 

I’m hunkered under the table

tranquillising the dog and checking

our mortage repayments,

 

why I’m heeding my mother’s advice

and wishing I’d taken more note 

the night she heard the Hot Club de France.  

 

‘Never swing dance to gypsy jazz,’ she said

— ‘not with a man who hides his ears

in a beret of dubious size.’

 

I think we both know it’s time

for Dr Kleinzahler’s special pills.

 

Jenny Hockey is a Sheffield poet. Her work has appeared in The North, Magma, The Frogmore Papers, Orbis and Dreamcatcher. New Writing North awarded her a New Poets Bursary in 2013 and Oversteps Books published her debut collection, ‘Going to bed with the moon’ in 2019 (jennyhockeypoetry.co.uk. familyhistoryandwar.com)

 

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DOMINIC JAMES

 

Days of Forward and Back

 

When I rehearse our days of forward and back,

see back is done, forward mere imagining,

I find no track can make us friends, though rack

my brains: be this the verse, the end of things?

 

When love, hate, white and black, don’t meet where yin
and yang, the opposites attract and each
other’s heart cleaves-to, as midnight hangs-in
the noon’s high-water mark – we fail our reach.

 

Without the dawn, night has no end for us
and darkness without cease loses direction,
substance-less, it nothing makes to lift a curse
that keeps us from our shared redemption.

 

Time is spinning plates, as my theme unwraps
its bitter sweets, runs late; the plates collapse.

 

Dominic James lives with his partner, Helen, near the source of the River Thames in Glos. A long-time short story writer, he has concentrated on verse over the past dozen years and supports the usual poetic venues – pubs, libraries and bookshops – from Whitstable to the Wirral.  Recently published with Poetry Salzburg Review and Lone Stars, his collection, Pilgrim Station, is available from SPM Publications. http://djamespoetic.blogspot.com/

 

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ELIZABETH MCCARTHY

Lost Words

 

One day you’re living your life like every other day before it

and suddenly it changes

where nothing is the same.

 

You run out of words to describe the cup of coffee

you are drinking

as you sit at the kitchen table, or

maybe,

you forget the color of your daughter’s hair.

 

Everything is there but not there,

 and you are living

in the not there        but know the there exists without you.

 

Would you have wished you’d known beforehand that this day

would come,

or is it just as well you didn’t know?

 

If you’d known maybe you could have flown to Costa Rica

walked in lush shade forests where coffee beans grow

sipped your coffee there as you listened to the coffee warbler

sing his slow, soft, sweet whistled trill.

 

You could have combed your daughter’s hair every night before

she went to sleep

and learned the many styles of braids,

one for each school day.

 

She could have had a French braid day, Dutch day,

plait day, lace and ladder day.

 

Maybe then when you heard a warbler sing

and held a golden braided rope

you’d always know the words        

for a cup of coffee

and the color of your daughter’s hair.

 

Elizabeth McCarthy lives in an old farmhouse in northern Vermont with her husband where they raised two children, several generations of free roaming hens, and made numerous attempts at keeping honey bees alive through cold winters and visits from marauding bears. She retired from teaching in 2018, and turned to poetry in March of 2020 when the pandemic caused a windfall of time.

 

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BETH MCDONOUGH

 

Untravelling
 

Arcing all ways, snaring lost dunes,
that path's now rooted by giant pines.
And today it runs itself.
 

In pissing rain and hammered hail,

stick-flinging fast lab owners stay elsewhere.
No joggers dodge any mountain biked descents.

Now is the fest of shield bug walks,
of red squirrelled escapes from the dodgy fox.

All backed by a raucous pheasant soundtrack.

Grass of Parnassus' stir begins,
toughened bell heather remembers it's spring.

Somewhere deep under, webs twitch-think bolets.
 

Just as no-one wanders up track,
predator news is perhaps in that branch – snapped
to warn woods how the humans return.

 

 

Stitching up the moon

Allow no-one to teach you how to knit

dark intricate tales round the moon.
You need to find its dandelion soft light,
remember to like your whole circle friend.
 

Take no instruction on how to cast on
worried strings to the full or new moon.
Open your ears to night's silence,
accept all the orbiting hours.

Although you have earned every right
to tassel strange worries to phases,
try not to rest under that blanket,

never sleep by that pattern again.

 

Beth McDonough's poetry is widely anthologised and published in Magma, Gutter and elsewhere. Her first solo pamphlet Lamping for pickled fish is published by 4Word.Fairly soon, her site-specific poem will be installed on the Corbenic Poetry Path. She swims year round in the Tay, foraging close by.

 

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KENNETH POBO

 

Fire Escape

     Painting by Alice Neel, 1948

 

Shadows fall against

our apartment, against us. 

We’re as fixed as clothes

 

hanging on sagging lines. 

Like them, wind moves us. 

This is not a place for flowers. 

 

We often yell.  Night mostly

ends that, but not the secrets,

the lovers who meet where

 

they think no one can hear or see. 

It may as well be two cats. 

A condom and a rusted

 

coffee can dropped from

a few floors up.  The sun

catches it all in the morning-- 

 

when our shadows flash

on bedroom walls, cracked

plaster covering us like open sores.    

 

 

Tale Of Two Funerals

 

When my friend Edgar dies, people sing show tunes.  At the gravesite.  Carol Channing returns from an engagement in Heaven to lead them in “Hello Dolly.”  I hadn’t realized that tiny pebbles can harmonize with grass. After I die, eternity feels like a door that opens way too slowly.  I probably won’t like my new silk home.   I’m envious until oak roots take my envy up to the sun where it burns away.  A cloud, sporting a top hat and cane, starts to cha-cha until breaking apart.

 

Kenneth Pobo is the author of twenty-one chapbooks and nine full-length collections.  Recent books include Bend of Quiet (Blue Light Press), Loplop in a Red City (Circling Rivers), and Uneven Steven (Assure Press). Opening is forthcoming from Rectos Y Versos Editions. Lavender Fire, Lavender Rose is forthcoming from Brick/House Books. 

 

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KERRY TRAUTMAN

 

Absorbing Milk from an Overturned Glass       

                                      

I can read my poems aloud to my babies.

Or sing to them—

right at their glinting globe eyes—

assuming their gelatin brains make

some kind of sense of it all,

signals bouncing through the gel

from peach hunk to grape half,

forming ideas about rhythm and

the various uses for lips and tongues.

As they age, though, I am wary of

the wisdom beyond their stares—

doubting my tales of Santa or Jesus,

or craning their necks to see tears

on my cheeks before I crush them

against my hunched shoulders.

I want to know them—

to be able to choose a book

from the shelf, confident it is one

they will love, will gasp for.

To be able to place a plate of food

in front of their forked fists

that sets their saliva glimmering.

To be able to welcome their aging brains

into my outstretched arms

like a peony’s fluttered petals

roiling with parties of ants.

Like table linen, rushed,

absorbing milk from an overturned glass.

To know them, but without

threat of reciprocation.

 

Kerry Trautman is a poetry editor for Red Fez, and her work has appeared in various anthologies and journals. Her books are: Things That Come in Boxes (King Craft Press 2012,) To Have Hoped (Finishing Line Press 2015,) Artifacts (NightBallet Press 2017,) and To be Nonchalantly Alive (Kelsay Books 2020.) “Absorbing Milk from an Overturned Glass” was previously published in Journey to Crone, Chuffed Buff Books 2012.

 

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ANURADHA VIJAYAKRISHNAN

 

Picture of a woman

 

--As she bends over a book, deck of cards, pressed

flower, ink spot, bloodstain, poems or a puzzle.

On the floor or the table or in a heap

on the bed. As she remains

still as water in a wineglass or a lake

concealed within a forest far up on an old

mountain. Still as a summer leaf on a windless afternoon

soaked in sleep. Behind her on the wall

a slight shadow – shy ghost, a thought, bubble of sorrow

breathed out as she turns a page, erases, arranges

forgets or simply waits. Still as a wall clock.

For someone or no one. As light

passes through her glass body, illumines her every

blood cell, tints arteries purple and veins green.

As her reflection copies her stillness, as she becomes

what you carry in your heart.

 

 

Anuradha Vijayakrishnan is an Indian writer living in UAE. Her work has appeared in Kenyon Review, Magma, Everyday Poets, CVV2 and The Madras Courier, and was recently featured in the Yearbook of Indian poetry in English (2020).

 

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MELODY WANG

 

Escargot

 

The madame could hardly believe a year had passed as pungent
            aromas of morning coffee evaporated into the musk of midnight

transgressions ad infinitum: uroboric cycles, unquestioned

 

flouncy hat quivering, she strides into the French café, coolly

ignores fellow patrons’ stares, flips through the flimsy laminated

menu of this sophisticated cuisine promising escape, escape!

 

enticed by a too-bright photo of escargot, she points and orders, impatient

for the fragrant symphony sure to please the most proper palates and yield

           only satisfaction. Her order is ready. The maître d' shuffles in, sets down heavy

 

plates and recoils back to the shadows. The madame, near salivating, 

ogles the fragrant, steaming dish, then lifts tiny garish spoon to take in well-

deserved tenderness afloat in garlicky, buttery pools — in that moment

 

she can only picture her quiet childhood garden, endless
            summer days that brimmed with kindness and light and snails

had yet to know the essence of salt

 

Melody Wang currently resides in sunny Southern California with her dear husband. In her free time, she dabbles in piano composition and also enjoys hiking, baking, and playing with her dogs. She is a reader for Sledgehammer Lit and can be found on Twitter @MelodyOfMusings.

 

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