2022

NOVEMBER

 

 

Bláithín Conneely Allain, Dorothy Baird, Robyn Bolam, L. J. Carber, Mike Cole,

Julie Maclean, Lynn Pattison, J. R. Solonche, Sue Spiers, Hannah Stone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

BLÁITHÍN CONNEELY ALLAIN

 

Doll

 

They call me doll.

I dangle along a dumpling rag

although an old woman now.

 

Come the night, I press its fluff

too tight, thread my darling’s hair,

sever her sewn lips and carefully

 

pluck the button eye, while other

eyes on me pry.  I am assigned

to Alzheimers, where I wander,

 

in nimble zigzags, daft

as a butterfly, and as I drift

I mouth my silent, wounded

 

words wondering what they

might decipher, but I remember

the dances, the crowded laughter

 

as they twist me on higher,

the masters screaming “faster”.

They pull my puppet limbs,

 

puncture my skin,  until I

the mannequin in the mirror,

white and dumb but dutiful

 

twirl again, then rinse myself raw

of all reminiscence.  The dawn

bruised in violets crosses my vision

 

and I half blind dress my

baby doll, smother her in kisses,

lay her where the flowers lull,

 

until foetal, I too slip

into her slumber.

 

Bláithín Conneely Allain is from the west of Ireland.  She lives between Ireland and Brittany in the north-west of France where she works as an actress. She has been writing poetry on and off since a child. She then decided to try to get one or two printed.   Her poems have been published in various reviews including, Acumen, New Ulster Poetry, Mad Swirl, The Sam Smith Journal, and Bareback Magazine.

 

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DOROTHY BAIRD

 

‘We are the world’

Thich Nhat Hanh 

 

We’re made of stardust and seagrass,

of wet leaves fallen from the birch tree

that plaster the old stone wall with their torn hearts;

of moss and stones and hidden snails

 

we’re made of atoms of wood-smoke, specs of

gannets diving into sand, nano particles

of seas that have swallowed too many sailors

and too much plastic. We’re composite,

like plasterboard: an aggregate of everything

and who are we to disagree?

 

Standing under the snow tree out of the wind,

I breathe your breath, absorb your warmth,

becoming the world, becoming you

 

 

The Bike

 

Half way along the beach, is a bike

lodged in sand and flayed by winds,

its one tyre twisted and open

 

like a slit tongue. Taking its time,

rust eats it, and its back wheel

is gone.

 

Not having anything else to do,

the bike listens to the sea. Oyster

catchers’ shrieks remind it

 

of its brakes on a sharp hill

and it dreams of the firmness of tarmac

spinning beneath it.

 

Set against these rocks and cliffs,

it could be an art exhibit

portraying the futility of travel

 

or hopes that go nowhere

or the cruelty of abandonment

we all feel at some point

 

its handlebars like a sign post

pointing forwards and backwards

like Janus at the turn of the year.

 

Dorothy Baird has two collections of poems published, Leaving the Nest (Two Ravens Press), and Mind the Gap (Indigo Dreams Publishing). Her poetry has been widely published in magazines and anthologies. She lives in Edinburgh where in addition to writing and leading workshops, she is a Human Givens psychotherapist. “The Bike” was published in Yes Arts Festival competition magazine 2017

 

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ROBYN BOLAM

 

No choice

 

A fur glove on the grass,

rich chestnut brown. Smooth,

soft, like the fallen fruit

he’d tried to eat.

 

He died under the plum tree,

its branches weighed low;

came, as night approached,

driven by thirst.

 

One neighbour spotted him:

another put out the poison

without telling me

and I found him

 

lying quietly in the warm,

late light, harming no-one.

None of us can choose

who we are born.

 

It’s a world of wonder and fear

we all come into, caught up in

our heritage, whatever that may be –

driven by our instincts,

 

by what our parents taught us

to survive; each of us

seeking a safe place

to live and thrive.    

 

Robyn Bolam, Hampshire Poet 2018-19, has published four poetry collections with Bloodaxe Books, the latest being Hyem (2017). Her selected poems, New Wings (2007), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. She compiled Eliza’s Babes: four centuries of women’s poetry in English. Currently, she is working on a new collection. www.robynbolam.com  

 

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L. J. CARBER

 

On Eating An Orange And Seeing God

 

I miss the big navels when they are not in season,

but almost any orange will do when I really want to see God.

 

But it must be done right, this seeing, this apprehension of the

Lord of the Universe, Lord of All the Worlds, both seen and

unseen….

 

First I feel how firm the orange is, rolling it in my hands,

the hands of an artist, the hands of a poet, and now the stiff

and cracked hands of an old man--

then I slice it in half and look at its flesh, its brightness,

its moistness, its color--

if the insides beckon, urging my mouth to bite,

I first cut each half into half and then slowly, carefully--

as all rituals demand-- I put one of the cut pieces between

my longing lips and gradually, with a sort of grace, bite

into the flesh of the sacrificial fruit.

 

I feel the juice flow down my throat and recall the taste of

every orange I ever had, even in my childhood—or so it

seems, with this little miracle of eating an orange.

 

As I finish absorbing, still slowly and gracefully, its flesh,

the last bit of what had been one of the myriad wonders

of the world, I look at the ragged pieces of orange peel

and I see poetry-- or God-- it’s really the same thing,

isn’t it?

 

Nolo Segundo, pen name of L.J. Carber, 75, has poetry published since 2017 in over 100 literary journals/anthologies in 7 countries and two trade books: The Enormity of Existence [2020] and Of Ether and Earth [2021]. A retired teacher [America, Japan, Taiwan, Cambodia], he was nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2022 by Spirit Fire Review.

 

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MIKE COLE

 

Upon Reading the Novel Hamnet*

 

I don’t know what drove Shakespeare.

Certainly it was partly the money he needed

to send home to Anne (or, if you prefer, Agnes)

and the children,

both before and after the contagion

took Hamnet

one of the twins,

 

and it may have been,

       probably was,

that exhilaration,

       better than a few cups

       of the Queen’s wine,

of applause

and cheers when Evil was

somehow extinguished

or at the least made

the most poetic fun of,

 

or even more likely

his inescapable entanglement

in the iambic river

in which he swam,

sometimes aflame

with revelation,

but just as often arduously,

up higher

toward its source

in the heart of the home

of the constellations.

 

         *Hamnet, by Maggie O’Farrell, fictionalizes the life

           of William Shakespeare’s family at the time of his

           son Hamnet’s death from the Plague in 1596. 

 

Mike Cole has published poems beginning in 1970 (in Beyond Baroaque) and with his most recent publication 2021 (in diaphanous micro), with a few dozen other magazine publications and appearances in two anthologies in the years between. He lives in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California.

 

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JULIE MACLEAN

 

Origami Postcards to Japan

trains come out

of the clouds in all directions

raining upon us

 

later we take tea

as flood water reaches the rafters

you look so surprised

 

when your head opens

herons fly out as thoughts

on the wing of a question

 

at the museum 

blue and white striped children

stare at the clock stopped at 8.15

 

of a thousand paper cranes 

two make a nest on my pyjamas 

in the Comfort Hotel

 

my bath presents many views—

a bullet train

explodes a deer on the track

 

a couple makes love

in the rising fog

of an argument

 

wives in kimono

file to the festival

of broken needles

 

an electric hummingbird

pecks the reflection

of a million drowned feet

Julie Maclean has published seven poetry collections. Her latest, Spirit (Ginninderra Press, 2022.) A full manuscript, shortlisted for the Crashaw Prize (Salt) won the Geoff Stevens Memorial Poetry Prize ('When I Saw Jimi', Indigo Dreams, 2013). Her work appears in POETRY (Chicago), EVENT (Canada) and The Best Australian Poetry, among others. www.juliemacleanwriter.com 

 

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LYNN PATTISON

 

I’d have painted him in Altenburg, crossing the garden with geese

 

                    “His (Lorenz’s) method involved empathizing with animals, often

using anthropomorphization to imagine their mental states.”

                                                --Wikipedia

 

Leading them through parlor, barn, garden,

love-drawn to his nidifugous goslings, according

each the same heart and motive as his own, Konrad learned

 

the nature of imprinting and studied

the effects of crossbreeding. His graylag geese taught

him eugenics, the war and the camps taught him otherwise.

 

He erased a couple of years from his vita,

restarted. The past dogged his name though

he asked forgiveness, explained how, late, he’d understood.

 

Would I want to paint him now, broods

of little honkers at his heels, that way he had of reading

his heart in their eyes, now that I know he did not extend

 

the same to some in his own species?

I’ve seen police rescue ducklings from drains,

gentle them back to a distraught hen’s side— later

 

shame, or shoot, or suffocate a man

who begged for mercy with no apparent qualm,

seen them claim in court they understood now.

 

Lynn Pattison’s work appeared, most recently, at The Ekphrastic Review, Slipstream, and Moon City Review, and earlier, in Smartish Pace, and The Ekphrastic Review. Her chapbook, Matryoshka Houses (Kelsay Press) debuted in 2020. Her book is Light That Sounds Like Music, (Mayapple Press). Her work has been included in several anthologies.

 

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J. R. SOLONCHE 

 

In The Hardware Store

 

I went into Brett’s True Value,

not because I needed anything

but I just needed to kill some

time. Besides I like walking

around hardware stores. I like

looking at stuff, and I like the

smell of hardware. I actually

found something to buy, a can

of spray dry lubricant. I love

the oxymoron of it – spray dry

lubricant. Anyway, I asked the

young lady at the register if she

liked poetry. She had bleached

hair – half bleached hair – half

no hair – heavy black stuff around

the eyes – a lot of piercings, so

I knew she would say yes. Yes,

I love poetry. I write poetry, she

said. I knew she would say that.

I gave her a copy of Coming To,

which I carry around with me.

I’d like to see your poems, I said.

Here’s my email address. Okay,

she said. Do you want justice

or mercy? I said. I don’t know.

What’s the difference? she said.

Well, never mind, I said. Just

keep writing. I’m sure she is.

 

Nominated for the National Book Award and twice-nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, J.R. Solonche is the author of twenty-six books of poetry and co-author of another. He lives in the Hudson Valley.

 

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SUE SPIERS

 

Tarbela

 

take one mountain range

melt snow

turn it into Indus

leave for a million years

until it has threaded

between foothills

and made valleys

through a country

 

stopper a ravine

with concrete engineering

that won’t buckle

clear out villages

that are to be submerged

 

funnel water

to pound out hydroelectricity

pipe water to cultivate fields

where once

people existed on arid slopes

thirsted

were drowned

by brutal torrents

 

wait for the monsoon

and let it trickle

overspill

gallop

into the barren river-bed

that leads

sea

      w

         a

              r

                  d

 

 

The dam’s capacity is almost 14 km³, and constructed in 1976 after the Pakistan/India partition where previous water supplies became Indian property.

 

Sue Spiers lives in Hampshire. She works with Winchester Poetry Festival and spoken word groups Winchester Muse and T’Articulation. Her poems have appeared in The High Window, The Lake, Ink, Sweat & Tears and in print at Acumen, Prole, The North, South and Obsessed With Pipework.  Sue tweets @spiropoetry.

 

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HANNAH STONE

 

South-westerly

 

When the barn roof thrusts

its black zigzag ridges above

the pillows of coiled bracken,

laced together with bramble curls,

I know why wind is so strenuous,

how it hungers to find straight boundaries

to temper its Moebius strip of restlessness.

 

I see how wind is offended by the linear,

shows us how it is all about curves

from coastline fractals, to the hunched back of hawthorn,

each stone rounded in the meandering wall,

all things rigid subverted by movement,

how the path with its small rock pools for footholds twists.

How it despairs that we have not yet learned its lessons.

 

 

Aqua Alta in La Serenissima

 

When Maurio and Filippo drove the wooden stakes

into the floor of the lagoon,

your bones were still soft. You kicked off satin dancing slippers

to dip toes pink as peeled shrimps

into the green depths of the Canale Grande.

Canaletto dipped into your eyes for his water colours.

Now you are just one of i vecchi, sitting stiffly in rows,

your facades faded and flaking. You just want to repose

with a rug spread over bony thighs; chide Carlotta

for being tardy with your espresso,

and as for the dottore who refuses you the corretto

needed to warm your marrow –

there’s plenty you would say to him,

when you’ve cleared your throat.

Just let him catch your rheumy eye.

Once, your ankles were as delicate as Palladian pilasters,

your breasts marble mounds. You chose which suitor

lubricated your easy hips.

After your climacteric, your limbs swelled

into something altogether more baroque,

and your joints are seizing up.

Now, the water laps at your admired knees.

O tempora, o mores! What a way to end your days!

 

Hannah Stone is the author of Lodestone (Stairwell Books, 2016), Missing Miles (Indigo Dream Publishing, 2017), Swn y Morloi (Maytree Press, 2019) and several collaborations, including Fit to Bust with Pamela Scobie (Runcible Spoon, 2020). She convenes the poets/composers forum for Leeds Lieder, curates Nowt but Verse for Leeds Library, is poet-theologian in Virtual Residence for Leeds Church Institute and editor of the literary journal Dream Catcher. Contact her on hannahstone14@hotmail.com for readings, workshops or book purchases

 

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