2019

 

 

OCTOBER CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

John Grey, Daniel Gusftsaffson, Pippa Little, Arjunan Manuelpillai, Todd Mercer,

Abigail Elizabeth Ottley, Belinda Rimmer, Finlola Scott, Hilary Sideris,

Young Smith, Tanner.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN GREY

 

I Threw it Out

along with the fish heads
and the cornflakes packet
 

it ended up in one of those
green plastic bags
out on the sidewalk
on a Wednesday morning
with chicken bones
and rusty razors for company
 

the garbage truck
woke me up
so I heard it being crunched
by steel jaws
along with Styrofoam coffee cups
and TV dinner containers
 

followed by the silence
and a relief at knowing
that it
along with a pizza box
and two corn-less cobs
would no longer be
part of my life
 

to be honest,
I'm not sure
what it was
but everything's
fine here at the moment
so I'm not needing it
 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in That, Dunes Review, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Thin Air, Dalhousie Review and failbetter.

 

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DANIEL GUSTAFSSON

 

The Buried Ship

 

Right here 

The keel’s wedge was driven;                 

Here, where the moorlands

Were riven with light, mark now

The grooves of its graving, 

Prowing the limestone and loam. 

Still the bark 

Lies buried here, wrecked

On the bulwark of bracken,

Gunwales engulfed now by gorse. 

Craft of our foundered fathers,               

Landlocked from lippers and foam.  

A reliquary

Of dying arts, reckoned

Unsuited for service, stones

Still circle the vacant helm, 

A vast hull still hollows

The barrow.   

Still, though

Rafters are bare, let us repair 

To these ruins, make of this ramshackle

Ship-shape a home. Come here,

Castaways, as stewards,

Stubbornly setting the thwart-boards

In line. Rig up your staves 

For a scaffold; kneel down

Where speedwells aspire.       

Spurning back

With faces leeward, shore up  

The shanties and sea-words; 

Chant response to the guttering

Stars. Pray, though   

Pruning prevails now, saplings  

May steeple this clearing with spars, 

Main-mast emerge from the mire.            

 

Daniel Gustafsson is a bi-lingual poet, born in Sweden. Alyosha (Augur Press) and Karve (Axplock) were both published in 2016. A new book, Fordings, is forthcoming from Marble Poetry. Daniel lives in York.   www.poetgustafsson.wordpress.com

 

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PIPPA LITTLE

 

Blue Dusk

An antique horse marionette in a Prague junk shop

 

Taking a back street

is how I find you, looming

among gnarled spoons, imperial tureens.

 

Does it matter now

that snow is beginning, like feathers

or wedding roses, to fall for real,

 

and the Karlovy-Vary trains are leaving hourly

with soft exhalations of breath:

that I would offer anything,

 

the rest of my life,

this moment, now,

to ride you blue as bone through the knots

 

and mazes of this city, to be your echo of sparks

in clean, neon twilight

vanishing corner after corner? 

 

 

Grey Berber

 

He thinks he’s unobserved

in his lonely grace

circling the huge field

fence to fence -

 

he is a running cloud,

a fast flowing river,

ripples of mist or smoke.

I scent him on the wind,

 

imagine how the nap rises on his spine:

don’t want to bridle

or fetter him, just watch

and watch how life

 

loves him whole,

muscle and bone.

 

 

Apron

For P. R.-P.

 

Your friend the farmer

offers to mow you a space in his field

one windless, cloudless day

 

in this uncertain summer. So grasses and buttercups

become shorn velvet or in another light

box-fresh cotton.

 

You bring rugs and your companion cat.

The sun is ripe fruit in its dish of blue.

Life does its old glide from the east,

 

turns you half-furred, half-

born back into your own skin.

Safety is a pocket of an apron

Earth is wearing over her wild skirt.

 

Pippa Little is a poet, editor, reviewer and tutor. She lives in Northumberland and works as a Royal Literary Fellow at Newcastle University. Her second full collection, Twist (Arc Publicatons), was reviewed in the August, 2017 issue.

 

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ARJUNAN MANUELPILLAI

 

Friends 

the best thing  
about being young  

is everyone comes  
to your funeral. 

Ballied up, 
camouflaged    

bite marks  
and blood stains 

laughing  
as sad boys do  

with weed smoke  
and whiskey   

we tell them not to go -  
but boys  

will be boys, 
stashing shanks   

in belt buckles, 
dragging grief  

through the estate 
to a darkened exit, 

just as he’d want it - 
here they come   

white knuckles 
swab mouth, 

slide it through  
the ribcage, 

a shadow gasps 
as a fish,  

cut, a boy,  
mangled  

like dumped  
furniture,  

7 times,  
till colour drains. 
   
Two mothers  
meet at church,  

mourning makes such  
wonderful companions  

 

Arjunan Manuelpillai likes words. Many like Arji’s words. He is Jerwood/Arvon Mentee. He is also published in some poetry magazines.

 

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TODD MERCER

 

The Sexton’s Headstone

 

The monument company had a close-out sale

which the Sexton couldn’t pass up. Half-price,

fully inscribed except for the date right of the dash.

It’s polished to a high sheen and quickly erected

in the newly-purchased plot he’s landscaping.

The Sexton could see an arched trellis, growing roses here

on it. He already planted rhubarb and a pair of berry bushes

so if ever there are visitors, there’s a snack for their trouble.

That’s the most his boss will let him plant. Some poor schmo

or generations of them will need to run their mowers

through here. Theoretically on into perpetuity.

The Sexton’s sardonic co-worker snapped a photo

of him eating his lunch sandwich, leaning on the stone.

He’s nonchalant where others fear leaving. And whom

should he complain to if he couldn’t accept

the closeness of mortality. His Mom and Dad? Long gone.

No one’s granting exemptions. The stone was rock-bottom price

the carving was deep and clear. That’s the best he gets.

 

 

Calendar Amphibious

 

Calendar in his two-bedroom apartment

beside the freeway interchange,

watching late night T.V. sees amphibious cars.

One drives to a lake, then down in it,

switches to propeller power,

crosses to the far shore. It emerges,

find the blacktop, saving on road-miles.

He’s struggling with substantial debt

to his divorce attorney and Family Court,

but for a hot minute brainstormed

ways to buy one of those beauties.

Why aren’t all cars water-ready

in this day and age? They should be.

Here’s hoping there’s a ringer hiding

in his stamp collection, a rarity

that to sell for thousands. Not very likely.

Also good to play the lottery

to stretch the possibilities. Can’t win

if you don’t buy tickets. There’s this.

After losing his standing at home

from the string of screw-ups, etc.,

in the wake of legal bumbling,

imagine how sweet it would be

to roll in to pick up the kids

driving his boat-car. They’d be thrilled

to plunge through a few rivers

en route to Dad’s place from their Mother’s,

like they’re no barrier whatsoever.

Calendar in purgatory,

between lasting forms.

 

Todd Mercer was nominated for Best of the Net in 2018. His chapbook, Life-wish Maintenance is readable at Right Hand Pointing. Recent work appears in: Eunoia Review. The Lake, Mojave River Review, and Praxis.

 

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ABIGAIL ELIZABETH OTTLEY

 

Inside Out

    for ‘The Radium Girls’

 

Although her skin is unblemished, every hour —

every minute — a worm eats into her core

 

subverts the strength of her young woman’s limbs

consumes the salty sweetness of her flesh.

 

She is hollowed out a little at a time like

a peach or plum that seems wholesome.

 

Beneath her skin she crumbles and melts, 

is made ghostly from the inside out.

 

Some week days find her dressed in her best

hunched at her work dreaming princes.

 

Every minute she marks on each flat, bland face

time scrawls its name on her brow.

 

Carelessly she sucks the soft tip of her brush

creating the point that is needed.

 

Later — too late — in the arms of her beau

radiant and dying she will shine.

 

 

My Mother Lives Inside My Head

 

An age ago she first moved in — unpacked her books

her cheap souvenirs, her fast-fading Kodak-colour memories

 

her long-sleeved print blouses in easy-wash fabrics

worn with loose cut pants soft-soled shoes

 

she came with a few things like her plasma TV

and her CD collection — Popular Songs from the Forties

 

fresh-faced tenors, O Sole Mio,

the concerts of André Rieu.

 

She brought with her also her life-sized baby doll

that looks for all the world as if its sleeping.

 

Its Moses basket reposes on the sofa.

Visitors are sometimes taken in.

 

With all these things and more she came

requiring that I give them houseroom.

 

I empty bedroom cupboards, lay fresh lining in my drawers,

sweep dust and old friends from my shelves.

 

Many of my books have refugee status.

Others wait in boxes for storage.

 

Yet others, fearing the charity shop,

sit care-worn anxious on the stairs.

 

Since my mother moved in I find it much harder 

to take adequate rest when I need it.

 

I notice how her sleeplessness, her litany

of ailments, is always more troubling than mine.

 

I am ageing too but she chooses not to see

how these days my energies dwindle.

 

My birthdays are marked by mail order gifts.

She seldom gives me anything I want.

 

Still we get on well enough, my mother and I.

I try to keep my temper.

 

It’s never easy. She whines and wheedles.

Often I will fail.

 

Hunched behind my eyes, she picks at my secrets. She is

imperious with her hooked, crooked finger.

 

My mother lives inside my head.

She wishes it was hers.

 

Abigail Elizabeth Ottley writes poetry and short fiction from her home in Penzance. She has been widely published in magazines, journals and anthologies including Ink, Sweat & Tears, Words with JAM, Atrium and The Blue Nib. Two poems are shortly to appear in The Atlanta Review. 

 

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BELINDA RIMMER

 

A Child ...

 

rigid on the pavement

outside my kitchen window

in a sudden burst of rain.

Blue dye from her dress –

bluer than cold skin,

bluer than sky – 

starts running down her legs

and collecting on the pavement. 

She dabs herself with a tissue

until it's too soggy to stem the flood.

She reaches down

with her hands,

feathers the blue into wings.

Her mother comes splashing

up the road all kisses and slaps,

and 

where do you think you've been?

For days after

I can't stop thinking

about the blue dress,

the patches of pure white,

washed of sin.

 

 

Art Lessons

 

We sewed ourselves into long aprons, drew back our sleeves,

dived into the cardboard bin with its plastic lining.

We lost our hands in the farting brown clay.

It sent tingles through our blood, strengthened our bones,

made us burn; woke something in us.

We squidged it through our fingers,

flicked it at walls, left it to bake on window ledges,

rolled it into slugs to crawl over tables.

We modelled penises, flaccid and erect,

boobs with misshapen nipples,

and vaginas looking like roosters' wattles.

We stuffed it under our nails,

smeared it on our white blouses and lips.

We carried it in our pockets to trade for sweets at break,

or left it to melt in the roofs of our mouths, a taste of warm rain.

 

Belinda Rimmer's poems are widely published. In 2017, she won the Poetry in Motion Competition to turn her poem into an award-winning film. In 2018, she came second in the Ambit Poetry Competition. She is a joint winner of the Indigo-First Pamphlet Competition, 2018, with her pamphlet, Touching Sharks in Monaco.  http://www.belindarimmer.com

 

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FINOLA SCOTT

 

 Planes over Guernica

       Lanzarote, Spring, 1937

 

The artist hides in a cave

doesn't sketch bison hunts.

His feet crackle on black gravel,

rust red rock above his head.

 

He goes where lava

sizzled into sea, hauls

strange fish from nooks, catches

scent of rosemary, scuffle of lizards.

A rabbit listens for stoats, a yellow butterfly

in a spider's web.

 

He creeps like a cloud over

the blistered isle, sits in star dark,

tastes wind from Africa,

waits for Franco to finish.

 

 

Pilgrimage

 

Head south, out of Glasgow, follow signs Eaglesham, Fenwick, out away.

        Don’t stop at the tea room. Catch the sun.

 

Turn off, keep turning off. It’s the moor road you need. In the shadow of Balygeoch is a car-park. It’ll be busy.

        That’s not the one.

 

The road gets narrower, air colder, sounds clearer, lapwing plentiful, cries plaintive. The sky is wide and high. The smell of coconut gorse.

        You’d better wear wellies.

 

Out across the marsh, over barbed wire, through reed beds. Yellow flags of iris signal, bog cotton flutters. The land turns its back. Clegs and midge welcome you.

         Almost there.

 

Finola Scott's poems are widely published including in Ink, Sweat & Tears; Lighthouse and Fenland Reed.  Red Squirrel will publish her debut pamphlet in October. Stanza Poetry Festival commissioned her work for multimedia installations and postcards. Her poems can be read on Facebook at Finola Scott Poems. “Planes over Guernica” was previously published in Ink, Sweat & Tears Jan '18, “Pilgrimage” was previously published by The Ofi Press winter '15.

 

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HILARY SIDERIS

 

Etudes

    after Temple Grandin

 

She practices

piano while I rip

 

The Boston Globe

to pieces, ball them up,

 

study how they uncurl.

I scrape the lilies off her

 

wallpaper, shred my plaid

jumper. Why can’t I say

 

my name? It’s the Fifties,

doctors don’t know,

 

the blame’s on her. He says

I should be put away.

 

She hears me hum

the notes she plays.

 

Hilary Sideris has recently published poems in The American Journal of Poetry, Bellevue Literary Review, Free State Review, Gravel, The Lake, Main Street Rag, Rhino, Salamander, and Southern Poetry Review. She is the author of Most Likely to Die (Poets Wear Prada 2014), The Inclination to Make Waves (Big Wonderful 2016), Un Amore Veloce (Kelsay 2019) and The Silent B (Dos Madres 2019).  Sideris has a B.A. in English literature from Indiana University and an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She lives in Brooklyn.

 

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YOUNG SMITH

 

Cadaver

 

In his rubber apron, the coroner’s man

divides her body on a table.

 

With a flashing saw, he splits her sternum.

With the twist of a handle, he parts her ribs.

 

But inside her breast, he finds no heart,

no lungs, no spleen, no stomach.

 

Instead, there is a cardboard box,

and inside the box, a book of matches.

 

Under the head of each match, along its paper throat,

is the name of a street where the woman once lived.

 

Stripping off his gloves, he strikes each match in turn,

lets it burn through the letters of a lost address.

 

The smoke from these words curls blue on the ceiling—

gathers the shapes of narrow kitchens, of children’s cruel eyes—

 

and as the man in the apron breathes these figures,

he is opened with the scalpel of a stranger’s regrets.

 

Young Smith’s poems have appeared in Poetry, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Iowa Review, Pleiades, Crazyhorse, The Harvard Divinity Bulletin, American Literary Review, Arts & Letters, and other publications. He is author of the collection, In a City You Will Never Visit, published by Greencup Books. He is an associate professor of English at Eastern Kentucky University, where he is a core faculty member with the Bluegrass Writers Studio, a low-residency MFA program.

 

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TANNER

 

Acing an Interview

 

the phone rings.

you recognise the number.

it’s the shop you just had an interview at.

 

you were afraid of this.

 

you told them you’d love overtime,

you told them you’d work every weekend if you could,

you told them yes, of course I’ll take the shop keys,

and run the place for you

while you’re off on your trollies

for a sales assistant wage.

 

no wonder they want to hire you!

 

and you put your ringing phone

at the bottom of your smelliest drawer,

go into another room and hide, 

thinking, who’s stupider

you

or the people who believe the lies

they make you tell?

 

Tanner: “I be 35 and work in a shop. The End.”

 

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