August hauls deep green dreaming into the woods. Even the bracken is so high and thick I am up to my neck. I feel its lure – who doesn’t desire to trust in what’s sprung, the emerald caves, to lean in and be lost. So writes Carola Luther in one of the new poems we […]
Issue 24
2 Poems
The Peacock That lumbering train, tarpaulin wings brushing stone chips and dust, that heaving gush to the terrace, keeping vigil over flower pots and threats from the neighbouring desert—always making a song and dance about everything—a block of iridescence against the co-operative’s cream. The spit and crackle of tempering in daal. Heeng laps the morning […]
2 Poems
Goblincore We knew we weren’t right under our clothes — our tiny wings, our fur. We practiced eye contact on frogspawn at the bottom of the garden. There were hens and eggs lying under bushes in their shamble nests – the bubbled panes of glaire between our fingers, the yolk a golden toad on […]
4 Poems
Greylag Get out my way out the way gaan gaan gaan get out out the way out got to get out gaan gaan get out the way get out gaan got to get out got to get out vandaag today veranderen veranderen verander veranderen veranderen […]
You Are Safe Here
You Are Safe Here We’re in a basement, walls crumbling naked onto a cracked porcelain floor and a single candle wicks into flame, throwing silent blazes on the pockmarked face of our host, Lazaro. His crooked teeth gleam white in the flickering glow and lingering shadows dance on the faces of the two sidekicks […]
Ferlinghetti in Derry
Ferlinghetti in Derry In a wooden boat, like Colm Cille, Ferlinghetti searched the depths for monsters that might eat his men – German U-Boats fed on Tory Island cod. So, you can rhyme the city, if you will, with Ferlinghetti – Lieutenant Commander US Navy; skipper in the Splinter Fleet on the open, choppy […]
3 Poems
footprint sometimes sorrow looms for years dark cloud inching closer there’s time to prepare you’re braced for the blow sometimes sorrow comes out of the blue a clear sky never-dreamed of woe – you’re unprepared yet recognize your sorrow at once as Electra recognises Orestes by his footprint be it in mud or sand or […]
3 Poems
Sapphics for Elizabeth Lilburne 1649 Where is he whose patience can suffer one more sainted devil ministering independence? Don’t you think our interest equal? Tell us, did you imagine we would be so sottish or stupid as to bide, cook, sew, mend, seeing our peace & welfare broken down, trod underfoot by one who rocks […]
Gold Diggers Come Cheap
In my second year of training to qualify as a plastic surgeon, I signed up for a research secondment in Amsterdam. Jon insisted on picking me up from the airport. My flight arrived early, and I walked around feeling irrationally annoyed. The arrival area with its high ceilings was dry and chilly, chiller than Google […]
In Praise of Fire
When you stand in front of fire, your clothes absorb the heat and there is a whisper of time, shred thin as a wafer of ham, when the heat is pure pleasure, like the anticipation of an orgasm, before skin cells send a message to brain cells shrieking “Hot, hot!” The neurons fire back a […]
Madrid
Given I’ve been allowed this very special very personal access I can say that on my travels over you on top of and under and around you I have moved more or less continuously without following the least compass direction or straight line rather I’ve been on barely plottable curves natural curves on momentary […]
Object
For a woman of her age, Sally maintains a spirited social life. She has, since her return to Dublin, been part of a group of five that she met at work. Though she is the eldest in the group by twenty years, Sally thinks she does a good job of keeping up with the […]
Blooms Galore
Anne is implicated, folded into his black mood like dry ingredients into wet. Together they make a pudding. A black pudding. Not the delicious kind. Not figgy pie. David claims that Anne has an anger problem. He mopes on the couch. Innocent, and manipulative. Anne waters the garden. She likes to watch things grow. David’s […]
2 poems
OBVIOUS DAYS for Matt Bevis We made a happy home and there we pass our obvious days. Edward Lear They still have their surprises, but there’s nothing they conceal They’re preparing us for: not the new long poem I’m going to write Eventually, or something we’re going to do that’s different From what we […]
2 Poems
Medlock She sails her beech-mast from the woods to Cairo Mill, burrows into darkness under Sun Hill, resurfaces to rock the cemetery in the crook of an oxbow. Winter floods stirred her from her bed – she turned grave-robber, coal-hauler. Ran underground. She’s the night-sweat locked in the stadium’s cellar. You walk between feverfew […]
2 Poems
Saturn Devouring His Son painted at Quinta del Sordo (Deaf Man’s Villa) On Saturn, it is raining diamonds. Soot falls and Goya picks up his palette. He has a choice of four blacks: bone black, lamp black, ivory black and red black. A prophecy declares war on Justice. The very thing Saturn is warned will […]
3 Poems
Gucci Mane I keep diazepam in my car the way an ocean keeps a blue whale asleep like an iceberg
2 Poems
MOSS Scraping into the silence of another empty afternoon, the dogwalker, who never stops, hovers, explores, runs through power-washes. That unknown neighbour leans on the fence, weighs up, once overs the maze of Accrington brick, confirms – it’s nothing but residue after this dry spell and reckons on the amount of silver sand needed. Together […]