2024

 

 

NOVEMBER

 

 

Ruth Aylett, Belinda Cooke, Seth Crook, Deborah Diemont, Judy Dinnen, Julian Dobson, Michael Durack, Jeff Gallagher, Rosie Jackson, Sheila Jacob,

Charles Rammelkamp, Hannah Stone.

 

 

 

 

 

RUTH AYLETT

 

Questions for the New Year

 

Will you come into my kitchen

and fix the cupboard door

whose flakey catch lets it open at will?

 

Will you pick up stuff on my kitchen table,

move it about, so when I come home

things are not exactly where I left them?

 

Will you give me a hug, call me ‘kid’,

name with enthusiasm the new books

people gave you for Christmas?

 

No? What use are you, New Year,

if all you can give me is

a January grey as December?

 

Shining your pale light through

my window, whooshing your rain

against my walls, you say:

 

Things must change.

And they will.

 

Women’s football

 

No fifty-something bullet-heads,

no testosteroned young men

with faces pulled into hard lines,

but young women on an outing.

 

No effing and blinding here:

chanting in a higher register,

small girls in football shirts

with their adoring dads,

 

and you, my sons’ daughters,

dressed and scarfed in their

hope that you catch the passion

of their football childhoods.

 

Players tread the pitch more lightly,

slighter builds, pony-tails.

but the same quick-fire passes

and running into spaces,

 

the silent conversation of bodies

signalling plans, intentions.

Then when a goal is scored,

the loud speakers blast out

 a rumba dance. And we do.

 

Ruth Aylett lives and works in Edinburgh. Her poetry is widely published online and in print in magazines and anthologies. Her pamphlets Pretty in Pink (4Word) and Queen of Infinite Space (Maytree) were published in 2021. For more see https://ruthaylett.org

 

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BELINDA COOKE

 

Lovers’ Riff

 

Playing the guitar is difficult to master.

Try the easier stuff first? No, no. No!

The cheating game won’t get you there faster.

 

One finger misplaced just leads to disaster –

get that pinkie down on the fretboard! 

Playing the guitar is difficult to master.

 

You, cursing and swearing at your stratocaster –

I cannot play by ear but you’re good at that.

Cheating like that won’t get you there faster.

 

To see you now a tortured artist, at last, for

me, shows you cursed to perfection, it seems,

for playing the guitar is difficult to master.

 

Though love grows older, love grows colder,
it won’t fade away like morning dew, but 

I will always cheat to get me there faster –

 

leaving you, as always, to your torture, for 

who else, would stick it out to achieve success –

Though playing the guitar is difficult to master,

you’ll face all the pain to get you there faster.

 

Belinda Cooke’s seven collections includes Russian and Kazakh translation, in particular, Marina Tsvetaeva, and a memoir of her mother: From the Back of Beyond to Westland Row: a Mayo Woman’s Story (The High Window Press). Her, The Days of the Shorthanded Shovelists, is due out from Salmon (2025).

 

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SETH CROOK

 

The Wading Birds

 

show no awkwardness.
Implausibly fluid in their work,
their feet enact

 

a choreography of stop-and-go,
their reaching beaks
extend a tidal logic.

 

Always further along the shore from us:
as we stroll to where they won't be
(by the time we are),

 

as the water races
into where they won't be
(by the time it is).

 

Adepts of the Right Depth,
deep advocates 

of Shallowism.

 

What's That?

       after Objects 8 9 10/
       Tracy McKenna/
       1989/National Galleries of Scotland

 

Not used, but not thrown away:
kept in the Wotsit drawer.

Perhaps not quite intact, perhaps 

held together by weakening rubber bands.

 

Maybe something tiny is missing:
a catch holding batteries in place,
a bamboo base, a tin lid, a brass screw.

Years of dusty stillness and brief bulb-light 

 

outnumber years of use.
You seem to be guarding their existence:
spurning a bin-bag exit,
the garden spring bonfire,

 

the drop-off-sack at the charity shop.
But they're closer to guarding yours:
parts of the fraying bands around your life,
projects you remember,

 

intentions you still have,
the ongoing, the slow-but-going,
adding up to the one still going.

 

You won't let you go.

 

Seth Crook taught philosophy at universities in the US for a number of years, He also loves sea slugs.  His poems have been widely published, in such places as Magma, The Rialto, Poetry Salzburg Review, Pennine Platform, Gutter, Poetry Scotland, Causeway, The Interpreter's House. His concrete poetry frequently appears in Streetcake and he has a pamphlet of concrete poems Chalked On The Path (Dreich Press). “The Wading Birds” was first published in Ismisms (Dreich Press)

 

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DEBORAH DIEMONT 

 

Courtyard with Siamese Cat

 

I’d changed location from a table in the sun

to tame the heat, and I felt how one tiny change

can shift perspective to a large degree;

 

once under the striped umbrella, I could see

a dark-eared, creamy cat roll on the grass,

beside the empty fountain, as if placed

 

just then, and starkly, where before it hadn’t been.

I wanted to get close. Of course, I guessed,

At your approach, the cat will run.

 

*

 

It’s peaceful here and I would love to live

above the bookstore and come outside each day

to drink an espresso and to freely smoke

 

on glittered stones, under a godlike tree,

its pruned arms still naked from the winter;

and I’d get up to stretch and walk the yard

 

with its red flowers and bronze-green sculptures—

this one seems to be some kind of anchor.

The Siamese would be long gone, but I’d remember.

 

The Shells

Rufino Tamayo, 1929

 

Two seashells; one light bulb; five cigarettes

are logical. The bulb’s wiry white heart—

its upside-down, curved circuit—is precise.

What looks to be a corncob angles back

as if a tunnel. Walls glow pink. And blue

suggests a window.

 

What’s more:

 

A golden cord.

Perhaps it draws the shade or draws a line.

But if you say it’s random, how can I,

my daughter, prove, in an insulated room,

what cold, immortal music you would hear

were you to hold a shell up to your ear?

 

Deborah Diemont received the 2017 Wil Mills fellowship for her sonnet collection, Diverting Angels. Her poems have been in Measure, New American Writing, The Yale Review and elsewhere. In 2023, her poems and translations were read at Syracuse Stage in conjunction with the bilingual Spanish-English play, "Espejos: Clean."

 

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JUDY DINNEN

 

Mappa Mundi

 

Our world is round,

round as an ugly,

round as a dinnerplate,

enigmatic as hope,

judicious as a frame.

 

Some days it is blue,

others opaque and grey

but diving into its depths,
we see the browns of solidity
the greys of future days
the stripes and fur of beast
red and blood of mortal wound

glare and flare of pride and pomp.

 

Some have painted it with head and hands,
others with strange beast and prey.

Many put their city there

central to every whim and need

so the world bows in obeisance
finds master, king or lady there.

Or centre their religion’s stake

the holy spot where faiths jostle.

 

They were not maps of measure,

no sextant, theodolite,

careful highways and rivers
read by satnav, driver,
walker or modern seeker.

 

Those were maps of story
maps of once upon a time,
of beauty, connection and thought,
of wild winds, weird creatures,
fears, threat and menace.

Maps that excite and fascinate,

teach and intrigue historians,

map lovers, artists and poets.

 

Judy Dinnen, poet from Herefordshire, is a lover of small spaces, cups of tea, wide landscapes and story-telling people. Her poems have been published in anthologies and resource books. Poetryspace recently published her book of poems, stories and creative writing prompts relating to hospital chaplaincy.

 

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JULIAN DOBSON

           

Flourish

 

A curve and curl on a wish sent, name

signed. Call it extravagant. Take

that line for a walk. To the park: here’s a kid,

 

look at me, look at me! Bright pink wellies,

splashing in puddles, no idea how to stop.

Her brother, giggling, first time he’s noticed

 

a duckling. His gran, seeing him, seeing it,

knowing it might be her last. Take that line:

let it weave through birch sap, bud,

 

bark soaking afternoon sun. Trace it through

roots, or water: a hand trailed from a boat,

ripples brushing low willow. The silver

 

plink of an almost-seen fish, as if there’ll

always be fish. Geese southbound at sunset. There

I was, forgetting that ache again. Flourishing.

 

Julian Dobson lives in Sheffield. His poetry has appeared in numerous online and print journals, most recently in The Rialto, Stand and Black Nore Review.

 

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MICHAEL DURACK

 

Love and the New Musical Express

(1967-1969)

 

High teens,  late ‘60s, our eyes and ears on the pop charts -

Beatles and Stones, Monkees and Hollies, Four Tops, Manfred Mann.

To all intents and purposes a man’s world, but hey!

For every Boy Named Sue

a girl called Jesamine or Eloise or Elenore.

For every brother who ain’t heavy

a Jennifer Eccles, a Carrie-Ann or a (Sorry) Suzanne.

For every Man of the World

a Georgy Girl, a Rosie, a Judy in Disguise.

For every Matthew and Son

a Delilah, a Bernadette,  a (Walk Away) Renee.

For every Son of Hickory Hollers Tramp,

a Daughter of Darkness, a Lady Madonna, a Lily the Pink.

For every Mighty Quinn  

a Ruby Tuesday, a Pamela Pamela, an Eleanor Rigby.

 

Back in the real world, remote from that hit parade

we gambled our emotions in the lottery of love.

For every John and Danny

a Mary, a Martha, a Phyllis, a Sheila.

For every Mike or Barry

a Kitty, a Freida, a Margaret, an Anne.

Girls in their teenage glory whose allure was off the charts;

a treasure trove of memories, a trail of broken hearts.

 

Michael Durack lives in Co. Tipperary, Ireland. He is the author of a memoir in prose and poems, Saved to Memory: Lost to View (2016) and three poetry collections, Where It Began (2017), Flip Sides (2020) and This Deluge of Words (2023) published by Revival Press.

 

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JEFF GALLAGHER

 

Under Stones

 

From these old bricks on the patio

crawls a fat slug

who used to slam me against the stairs -

and with it, a recurring ache that ripples

along the lower back

as I deftly shovel the Beast into space

and out of sight

 

From hefted breeze blocks by the shed

springs a spider

whose fingers prise apart my shorts

checking I am ‘suitably attired’

for beating with a shoe -

and buried deep in the compost of youth,

a tapeworm feeds

 

From ancient geology shunted aside

slides a nest of lives

scurrying in fear and mute surprise

and dutifully squashed by the bully’s boot,

or the snap of a knobbled claw

emerging from its black gowned shell

dusted with chalk

 

I help you lift the heavy pot that

houses the bay tree,

proudly fixed on its earthenware base -

rooted, secure, defying the seasons,

hugging the side of the house -

your instructions urge my anxious eyes

not to look down

 

A creeping terror beneath our feet

crawls from each crevice  -

but working together, we let the rain

wash away the dead, and feel the sun

dissolve the past kept under stones -

debris now dumped on forgotten land

where nothing grows

 

“From America” (in memory of Amelia Earhart)

 

She has been here before - but only

in the company of a man who led

while she followed, watching the moves,

learning to step out alone - and now

 

ascending unsteadily on angel wings

she heads for the ocean, contending

with strong winds, the ice in prejudice,

a woman’s mechanical problems.

 

There are no Brylcreemed beaux to

hold open doors or glide with her

softly across this turbulent dance floor

while singing of red wine and roses -

 

only the thrum and clatter of the stub

of metal and the rough male hug

of overalls as she sits hunched

in the Titanic ballroom of the sky.

 

A copy of the Telegraph-Journal

is her introduction, her dance card

a ruffled clutch of scrawled notes,

her partner a stuttering novice as

 

she dreams of Paris and springtime,

following Lindbergh - but exhausted

after fifteen cold hours of waltzing

with yoke and joystick and nodding

 

excuse-mes to the sea and clouds,

she glides gracefully to earth, to a

land even greener than Kansas,

a Radio City orchestra of cattle

 

and a question recalled from that

first coming out: a young man

smiling at her oil smeared cheeks

and asking “Have you come far?”

 

Jeff Gallagher is originally from Manchester.  For many years he taught English and Latin. More than 100 of his poems have featured in various publications. He has written and published numerous plays for children which have been performed in many locations from Cornwall to the Kyle of Lochalsh. He has also appeared in an Oscar-winning movie.

 

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ROSIE JACKSON

 

John Donne Arriving in Heaven

 

He knew it would be a melting, looking back

at the world as a place of icicles and clouds,

lilies of passion unmooring their tangled roots.

 

Knew that with the rungs of prayer and reason

knocked away, the subtle knot undone,

he would step into this delicate permanence,

 

the light cleansing, as protracted evening sun

perfects a field of harvest corn.

Expected such radiance that finds no flaws

 

in all that’s happened, no severity,

only the mercy of a paradise always autumn,

its joy possessed, ripe, perfect, complete.

 

But this is less the arrival he foresaw

than an undoing of distances, a shedding

of himself to become who he already was,

 

not gaining union but losing the illusion

he was separate, was ever other than this one:

the hand that set all things in motion,

 

spread this equal light, made on a whim

the stars, the schoolboys, the unruly sun.

All love a dream of this. And now, as he takes on

 

the bliss, the infinite bliss his little deaths

on earth struggled to reach, he finds his words

at last translated to their proper tongue. 

 

Lattice

 

Little by little, I am trying to undo things.

I used to want to belong.

Now I leave knots loose, poems unfinished,

 

windows open.

The real links between people are less visible.

There is lattice work between the living and the dead.

 

Everything we do is written somewhere,

but not in stone. Not in ink.

My life has become a kind of erasure.

 

Run a red line through me.

I am weary of certainty.

Give me undoing.

 

Give me the making that is also a rubbing out. 

 

Rosie Jackson lives in Devon. Her latest collection is Love Leans over the Table (Two Rivers Press, 2023). Widely published, Rosie has won many awards, including Commended in the National Poetry Competition 2022 and 1st prize Teignmouth 2021. Moniza Alvi: ‘These are rare, nourishing poems, open, vulnerable and spiritually aware.’ www.rosiejackson.org.uk

 

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SHEILA JACOB

 

Confronting The Enemy In War And Peace

 

i

 

He tells it like a Boy’s Own story:

leaps astride his motor bike,

zips down lanes near the farm at Pontyclun.

Mam waves a hanky, Dad cheers.

Go, son, go, you’re a grown man now.

He revs the engine, grips handlebars,

carries messages in his saddle bag.

Despatch rider, Royal Signals,

roaring through Normandy, salt-breeze

in the sail of his swerve

round dust-cloud corners.

Tyres squeal as he skids, straightens,

vroom vrooms up an icy hillside

somewhere in the Ardennes –

Only a goddam Limey would try this –

hands over a sealed package,

leaves the last zap of combat

to U.S. troops at the Battle of the Bulge.

 

ii

 

In unsung nightmares, the chafe of rope drags him back, discards him on a street in a German town. The War has ended. He’s helping keep the peace, enters a house, sees the father strung from the ceiling. Mother and daughter hang in separate rooms, blood drying on their skirts. The intruder blocks his path –smirks, dares him to shoot.

 

He cradles the barrel of his Sten gun. He’s read the instructions, knows how to pull the trigger,

 

pulls the trigger.               

 

Sheila Jacob lives in N.E. Wales with her husband. She has been writing poetry on a regular basis since 2013. Her poems have been published in various magazines, webzines and anthologies. Her debut pamphlet, Spotlit Under Street Lamps, was published by Yaffle Press in July 2024.

 

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CHARLES RAMMELKAMP

 

Epigraph in Search of a Poem
            “Know what I’ve discovered? It’s a lot easier

 to ask a woman’s forgiveness than her permission.” - Dennis Lehane, World Gone By

Perfect! I thought.
What is this poem going to be about?
Or who?

 

It’s a novel about gangsters.
The guy who gets this advice from his boss?
His wife has just had a baby.
They’re in the maternity ward.
The guy’s just been ordered to kill somebody.
He winds up dead himself.

 

So maybe we need to focus on forgiveness,
in this poem. What is “forgivable”?
What isn’t?
Something about the nature of transgression.

 

Or maybe just men and women, of course,
a story, a memory from youth,
people I knew who saw their girlfriends
as the sheriff in a western.
It never ended well.

Laws to break. Rough justice.
 

Or maybe I’ll just tuck this sentence
into the back pocket of inspiration,
wait for the perfect scenario,
the ideal observation.

 

Maybe it’s too messy for images.
I need the poem’s permission to continue.

 

Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore, where he lives, and edits The Potomac, an online literary journal. http://thepotomacjournal.com. His photographs, poetry and fiction have appeared in many literary journals. His latest book is a collection of poems called Mata Hari: Eye of the Day (Apprentice House, Loyola University), and another poetry collection, American Zeitgeist, is forthcoming from Apprentice House.

 

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HANNAH STONE

 

Poem starting with a line from Fleur Adcock’s ‘An April Bat’

(In memory of Rosemary Mitchell)

 

‘Birds, we used to send each other:

A woodpecker, a jay…’

 

From the place where you are now

you’ve sent this little owl

whose home we trespassed in, on moorland walks.

We’d sit on bences in the shooters’ hut.

avoiding rorscharch splat of droppings;

drink coffee from a flask and speculate

about who slept above our heads.

 

There’s mystery about where you are now,

the week after your funeral, but here he is,

an avian epiphany, perched on the gate,

inviting me to crush the shocking pain,

and unexpected loss in pellets of

extruded waste, as he does, and to share

the view of his domain of sunlit hills.

 

Hannah Stone is the author of Lodestone (Stairwell Books, 2016), Missing Miles (Indigo Dreams 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 Leider, 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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