Category: Magic

‘Hinges’ and other poems by Jax NTP

April 27th, 2020
hinges

it is easy to obsess over small objects
paperclips spoons and q-tips when self
grooming generates silence — virginal

trumps untamable — the renunciations
of dullness do not lead to desire
with upturned hands, razors, at rest

it is easiest to use sadness as a utensil
to push people away spiders construct
traps from their abdomen then devour

daily to recoup, silk protein recycled
gouaches in lowlight, design or debris
we all think we might be terrible

but we only reveal this before
asking someone to love us
a kind of undressing — it is easy

to section and peel a tangelo
even false origin stories expose
shame — a cerebral echo chamber

when self sculpture empties
mark the focal point as hinge
hemmed, at the center, coral

since microwave romances have deceptive expiration dates

i brush my teeth at his place now, but that’s not the point
scuba means self contained underwater breathing apparatus
he kisses me urgently mid chew ginger garlic fish sauce

in public, no pressure, no hesitation, and this is mos def not the point
chemistry is important since we cannot manufacture it out of raw necessity
Drake’s first line in Finesse is I want my babies to have your eyes

despite incoming or ongoing variables what is the function of “x” why tell
a stranger or a lover your problems when you can use it as a chance to
punish those around you — make haste and hail to the queen of non-sequiturs

on my critical thinking roster i can’t pronounce the name “FNU”
in countries where newborns are left post war now privileged
strangers greet them as “first name unknown” a haunting aqualung

nerve damage after dead relationships may result in tooth decay
when you are tasting: the first taste acclimates the palate, the second
establishes a foundation, and the third taste is to make a decision

since you’re an expert of creating a crisis out of empty nostalgia
can i get a metaphorical forklift for all my emotional baggage?
the accumulation of plaque cannot be resolved by few weeks of flossing

what is lost can be found in the biological studies of an oyster or was it an orchid
or was it of a clitoris — quick what’s a common fishing blunder? let me noodle
around with this for a while before i get back to you

the anatomy of beaches: 3 on west coast, 14 on east coast
your absence has reached comical heights Charlie Chaplin
himself would rise from the dead to have a laugh at us

is this my grave or my mother’s womb?

it upsets me when my mother thinks
my poetry is silly. the word “silly”
comes from the old english word “selig”
meaning happy, healthy, and prosperous.

in german, “selig” means to be blessed:
but consecrated and made holy with what?
when a title, silly, precedes the name
of a person, their identity, vigor, and

passion are reduced to the relevancy
of a car alarm. i failed to master french
and vietnamese. my mother has a myriad
of domesticated excuses to not speak

the english language. it complicates
the process of checking and rechecking
the meaning of words in results
to the drowning of palettes in sand

dunes of iodine soaked palm fronds.
a car alarm without a car is not just an alarm.
as mother calls poetry silly, she shucks
and drains the basket of mussels and oysters

in the sink, shucking and draining
with such a lonely authority, the way
a businesswoman shucks off her nightgown,
the way a flaccid regime shucks off

its totalitarian characteristics. my mother
is above logic, she cannot be subpoenaed,
even under oath in court she will not admit
to stating that my poetry is trivial. in the kitchen,

i read her a line from Marcel Proust, happiness
is beneficial for the body, but it is grief
that develops the powers of the mind
but she isn’t listening.
```
lessons in taxidermy

my armpits have been secreting scaled sadness
for months grommeting new ways to chew 
	linea alba fat tongue teeth grinder agenda
		sleep as prize for insomniacs somnambulists
consolation mantra safe alignments cold mala 
	beads rotates between index and middle silence
	betrays never thought i’d feel this kind of hesitation
		my hands on another girl its more than taxing
the way you take control ocean jasper too often
	longing arcs expose vagueness seek excitement
		in the mundane fingers on pulse fingering 
		when did withholding become attractive
knuckles hungry for pelvic bone quick terse
	confession sharper than indigenous peppermint 
		are tactile feedbacks are satisfying imps
		important lines lost between the years skin folds 
if emptiness is a pretense, a breached duality, an unearthing
	without dirt rebound is proof of grief interrupted here
		taxonomy of queen bees a dozen to please you
```
🌺 Link to ”a nesting of queer epiphanies in an invisible cat’s cradle” [PDF] Jax NTP

‘Hinges’ and other poems © Jax NTP

Jax NTP holds a Master in Fine Arts from California State University, Long Beach. NTP teaches critical thinking, literature, and composition at Golden West College, Irvine Valley College, and Cypress College. NTP edits fiction and poetry for The Offing Magazine, Indicia Lit, and By&By Poetry. NTP’s words have been featured in various publications including Berkeley Poetry Review, Apogee Journal, Hobart Literary Magazine, San Diego Reader, The Cordite Review, and Berfrois.
“Writing with Light” and other poems by Gerry Stewart

March 26th, 2020

Writing with Light

Finnish Photography Notes

Guided by imaginary intersections,
fumbling our heavy DSLRs,
we learned the rules
for rhythm and repetition,
aperture and cropping.

My notebook sketched
the tutor’s words in haste.
They resurface beyond the lens.

Organise your space.
I carve out this new home
without maps, using rough translations
and neighbourly advice.

Exaggerate the angles.
Each experience becomes bigger,
more muddled.
I focus along sightlines
to the extremes
until I can make sense
of the finer details.

Never cut away the long shadows.
If I cannot embrace
the long Finnish winter,
I can view its sharp oblique light,
from skis or over a hot cup of glöggi.*

Leave the house,
explore the parts of the world
where you don’t belong.
Blend in with the locals,
find what attracts you to strangers
in their silence, in their open faces.

Travel light.
My unnecessary luggage
and expectations are abandoned.

Arrive early, leave late.
Wait for the decisive moment
to speak those hesitant first Sanaa.

Don’t put the subject in the centre.
Yet even out of shot
I am always fully exposed.

*warmed mulled alcohol or fruit juice served in winter

Slow City Unwind

The Hidden Gardens, Pollokshields

Unseeing strangers blur,
heads down, rushing off.
The rain-mirrored street
a reminding nudge.

Signs offer no way out.
Brick walls. Cigarettes stubbed.
A black bag afternoon caught
in the branches of a stunted tree.

I enter through the sandstone gates.
Grasses bow below a horizon
of hazy tenements.
Stones scarred by workers long forgotten
hold the warmth of my hand.

Whiplash leaves rise
into a painted sky
the colour of seagulls’ wings.

Stake a claim, slow down.
My voice buries itself
among the pine needles
after a day of borrowed words.

I soak up through open pores
the unruffled sunset and rill song,
ease myself away from the current.
Rake away the debris of a hectic life.

Carved wood and soaring trees
rest the spirit, a sanctuary
to keep impulsive winds at bay.

Sap rush.
I translate the garden’s poems
and expand my roots.

From Scratch

A tangle of tree roots, moss
and clay-bound shade,
a gift of apple trees and berry bushes.
All day sun and space to roam.

I dreamt of this new garden more than the house.

The first year’s fruit exceeded
our ability to cope.
I simmered pot after pot
with a newborn in my arms,
every morning let my eldest
eat all the raspberries.

Before the ground has defrosted
our window is full of little pots,
dirt trailing everywhere.

My daughter sprinkles her seeds
with haphazard joy
while I painstakingly transplant seedlings.
Hers will flourish,
blessed with whim and wishes
while mine struggle to adapt.

We cut back thirty-year-old trees:
koivu, kuusi, tammi, pihlaja, punaherukka*:
logs for the fire, mulch,
sticks for childhood games.
Our patch feeds our Finnish life.

The sun traces the arteries of roots
across the unmown lawn,
awaiting autumn’s gift of leaves
to rake and rake and rake again.

A parcel of land:
fit for hide and seek,
treasure hunts and first steps,
cups of tea and doing nothing.
Our home.

*birch, spruce, oak, rowan, red currant

Moon of Winds

February / March

A thawing crack in spring’s resolve,
frost gathers along our ridges,
tight as white-knuckled lichen.

Uprooting gales
no longer push through us,
still we search for a finger-hold,
a bolt hole in the lull
of the rain-scrubbed city.

A thin shaving of new moon
blown into bent oak branches,
taunts us with a Cheshire cat smile,
hunger in its whiskers.

You can ease out your breath
among old brick, foundations
and familiar ground
but I struggle to release
my bone-serious grip.

Thunder Moon

July / August

The piebald moon darts
between our flashes
of galloping inspiration
and the rumbles of routine.

My comfort is found rewriting
and weeding plotlines,
the slow trust of my work
growing word by word,
seeding clouds with potential.

At the first signs of heavy,
threatening skies
your dark twin pulls you
out of alignment
slipping a knife-edge
between tight shoulder blades.

I sieve fragile strands of sunlight
into your open doubts
to recharge your reserves.

Counting on the preceding calm,
we test the air, anticipating
the next adventure or upheaval.
A welcomed foreboding.

Writing with Light and other poems © Gerry Stewart

Gerry Stewart was born in the US, but has lived in Europe for over 25 years in Norway, Greece, Scotland and now Finland. She is a poet, creative writing tutor, and editor. Her poetry has been widely published in the UK, Europe, and United States since 1997, including Black Mountain Review, Crannog, From Glasgow to Saturn, Hanging Loose, Hidden City Anthology, Island, Orbis, Poetry Quarterly, Poetry Salzburg Review, Pushing Out the Boat, Scrittura, Skylight 47, Southlight, and The London Magazine. Her collection Post-Holiday Blues was published by Flambard Press, UK in 2008. In 2005 she received a Scottish Arts Council New Writer’s Bursary for her unpublished novel Talking Italian in my Sleep which has been long-listed for several competitions.

Her writing blog can be found at http:/thistlewren.blogspot.fi/

“Curlew” and other poems by Rosalin Blue

December 8th, 2019

Lonesome Occupation

Up – up and away
in my little studio
under the sky
drawn back alone
– to write

That loneliness
is the room for concentration
bears the space for inspiration
strikes the key of motivation
to create origination
with insane illumination
and a wild determination,
the poetic flow in motion
— oh that cosmic emanation
for the sake of word-elation

Yet, it requires segregation
and at times I miss emotion
wishing for some conversation
and a mutual revelation.
So I leave my elevation
seeking true communication
and some closer stimulation
—far beyond my meditation
of obsessive rhyme-creation

And when that space inside
of emphatic animation
and ecstatic evocation
with the strange amalgamation
of expansion and sensation,
that poetic incantation
that orgasmic culmination
fills me up to saturation,
then I get the urgent notion
to fulfill my true vocation

And again I draw back
to my lonesome destination
up – up and away
in my little studio
under the sky

— to write

Under the Silvermoon

And how often am I looking up with longing gaze
to your window high above under the silvermoon
where your sweet body lies already in the warm duvets
when inside me with desire now the night awakes

In many hours when the moonlight travels through the dark
and the muse of poems binds me in a writing trance
my tender feeler-cells are all consumed
in longing for the touch from your gentle hands

And my senses wander further down along your flanks
until with yearning quiver – when my night is done
I quietly can nestle to your supple curves at last
and disappear in bliss to sleep under the silvermoon

— And my desire is waiting for another night.

Unterm Silbermond

Und wie oft sehe ich mit sehnsuchtsvollem Blick
hinauf zu Deinem Fenster unterm Silbermond,
wo schon Dein süßer Körper warm in Kissen ruht,
wenn voll Verlangen erst in mir die Nacht erwacht.

Zu mancher Stunde, wenn das Mondlicht durch das Dunkel zieht
und mich die Dichtermuse in den Schreibwahn bannt,
verzehren meine zarten Fühlerzellen sich
vor Sehnsucht nach Berührung Deiner sanften Hand

Und meine Sinne wandern weiter Deine Flanken lang
bis mit ersehntem Beben ich – wenn meine Nacht getan,
mich leis an Deine weichen Kurven schmiegen kann
und selig unterm Silbermond in Schlaf entschwinde –

— Und mein Verlangen wartet auf die nächste Nacht.

Curlew

You tell me
of the call of the curlew
Its curling cry haunting
through the bogland
How it weaved through
the mornings of your childhood
How it echoed through
the darkness of your nights

The curlew’s call has fallen silent
over the years gone by
The mottled messenger stolen
as the numbers of birds
migrating the wetlands
drained now and laid dry
have from hundreds plunged
sheer into near extinction

The curlew’s trilling song
the melody of coastlines
harmony of the island
has gone quiet with the winds
The seeker of the sand
leaves behind a land
void of music luring
the boy in the evening sun

You mourn the echoless silence
in the mornings of your prime
No slender legs stalking the plains
or stoking mud with curving bill
No curlew calling evermore
the empty coastline still
Nothing more than a memory
left behind at the end of dusk

Metal

After we invented the wheel
we learned how to melt the metals
from the rock, and the gold-rush
began, as we dug and drained
all the gleaming precious treasures
from the veins of the Earth,
forging jewels, coins and wealth,
hoarding them like magpies.

Red hot, like liquid fire flowing,
a crimson burning river glowing,
molten copper, iron, silver
slither smoothly through the grooves,
pouring into casting cauldrons,
shooting into foundry molds,
smouldering, steaming – zosh
the streaming gold is cast to form.

We made tools from the new metals
and axes for slaughtering trees
and arrowheads for felling animals.
We made ploughs to sow the seeds
and blades to cut the deeds
and steal the riches from the land
and rightful owners, and we cast
our wildest dreams into reality.

Then we made dooming cannonballs
to cast on human enemies
and iron bars to capture freedom.
Our bullets pierce through history,
reeling round the golden throne,
our babel titans slice the skies
and we’ve made drills to bore
the very bedrock of our waters.

Now hard and cold our steel-towns
gleam in the sunlight like blue ice.
The shimmery promise of gold
holds the core to precious pride.
But the price of power was high
and now the golden calf is sold!
And our hearts like bloody swords
from wealth and greed are growing cold

Beyond compare we hoard and kill
like magpies – merciless as steel.
And the glowing stream of gold
from liquid fire freezes cold
and our hearts become the stone
that once we dug out of the ground
from the gleaming veins of Earth –
blinded by the promise from Her core.

We are Receivers

Staring into the night
eyes fixed hard
on the bridge in the dim light
until the mind cannot understand
the image any longer

Repeating a word – repeat repeat
so often that to the ear
it loses its meaning
becoming a mantra
of higher consciousness

Chanting the Om
until we rise from lightless night
benighted mind filling
until aglow with the potential
that is the eternal light

Seeing the Ocean of love
and the breath halts
the heart spreads its wings
and the tongue
knows no words

We are receivers
of a brighter light
than our eye can ever see
nor our mind can ever conceive
But our hearts can feel

Quiet I stand
in the stillness of the Divine
the brightness of love
the silence of awe

Curlew and other poems © Rosalin Blue

Rosalin Blue is a cultural scientist, translator, and poet who began performing in 1995 in Hildesheim, Germany. Linked to the literary scene in Ireland since 2000, her poetic home is O Bhéal in Cork. She has performed in Cork City and County, Limerick, Galway, and Dublin, and at festivals like the Electric Picnic and the LINGO Spoken Word Festival. Blue’s poems have been published in Southword and the Five Words Volumes in Cork, Revival Poetry, Stanzas in Limerick, and in Crannóg Magazine, Galway. She has been included in two Cork Anthologies, On the Banks (2016) and A Journey Called Home (2018). Her poetry collection In the Consciousness of Earth was published by Lapwing, Belfast in 2012, and her translation of love-poetry by the German Expressionist August Stramm You. Lovepoems & Posthumous Love Poems came out in 2015. Find her on Youtube and facebook.

“Needlepoint” and other poems by Erin Vance

October 18th, 2019


Hiraeth 

In the turpentine afternoon
I wanted to beat my wings— hollow

so       hollow.
  
And in the rectal evening  I wanted to be a hummingbird.
A hum   
    m      
     ing
        bird.

In the frost-swept night 
I wished you a Lamb.

Soft like cotton balls and languid 
                              with musk.

Turn me into a violent fresco,      Lamb,
and touch me like hot bricks

in the wet dawn.

I wanted to be a leaf lodged in amber.
               — — An insulin needle.
  
And at the musk-soaked August’s end 
I wanted to be hollow
                    t r a n s l u c e n        t
a hum
    mingbird 

with — — insulin — — needle— — 
                legs
lodged in amber.

My hollow wings snap
                   ping 
In your lamb’s mouth,
                  turn me into a violet fresco,           Lamb, 
                      
                    touch me like 
                       hot 
                     bricks.

Confession

After Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, photographers of The Cottingley Fairies

When Frances followed the little thing
into the shallow beck
I stayed back, watching her stockings
sag in the water, flapping at her ankles
like bloated second skins.

Frances batted her eyelashes
and the imp trusted her.
Confession: I wished to catch it
and place it in a box
like a little pet in a spider-silk dress,
pull it out at parties to flutter and tease
and spit.

When Frances giggled as its wings
tickled her rosebud cheek—
I confess; I wanted to hold
its gossamer body in my palm,
knowing that I could practically crush it
with my breath.

The waters of the beck leaked into my shoe
the cold water like tiny, elfin teeth
biting my toes. A gasp and— oh!
the thing is dead.
caught under Frances’ fat palm;
she slipped on a patch of moss like an oil slick.

The photos may be fake, but the fairies—
They were real.

Weren’t they, Frances?

Sister, Speak

I wonder where you are
where our home is
now that the skeletons of our earliness
belong to the birds

I wonder if the ground where we placed you
is infected with your dreaming

I sit in your closet
empty now, but the ghosts of your
dresses hang around me
like rainbows dripping lifeless from the gallows

I used to lay in your bed
wanted to feel everything you’d touched
for our skin cells to feed the same microorganisms

I’d lay in the dirt and imagine I was you
but when ants started up my neck I couldn’t help
but twitch awake and run back inside

Mirrors

Mother, can I have the velvet box of milk teeth
that you keep in your nightstand?
Every night I dream my teeth are falling out.
I think they miss me.

Mother, what is the combination to my middle school locker?
I rescued a bird fourteen years ago
and hid it with my gym clothes
I think it’s getting hungry.

Mother, can you braid my hair one last time before I cut it off?
Will you keep a lock of it for a day
when I am not picking up my phone
and you have bad news?

Mother, will you help me down?
This tree is much taller than I expected and this branch
is much thinner and I am much older
than I’d planned.

Mother, will you remind me
to wash between my toes and to take my glasses off
before I fall asleep
even when you don’t remember
who I am?

Needlepoint

When we were young,
Still slippery and mosslike,
Our father embroidered sparrows
Onto the backs of our necks
He held the whiskey bottle in his free hand
And like a mean waterfall the
Blue threads cut through our skin.

For our tenth birthday
Our father bought us stallions,
And after an afternoon of riding,
He added to the hieroglyphs on our necks;
Pomegranates that made our throats
Look like bloody gaps with yellow teeth.

We were fourteen when we stopped dreaming
One morning we woke up together
Our minds empty, our hands steady,
And we clutched the bone-handles of our
Hairbrushes, counting to one hundred
In each others’ hair
Careful not to pull a single stitch.

We worked like machinery and every five years
Father took the needle and we took turns sitting
At the oak table while he stitched
His memories into our skins.

Hatching

For Stacey Walyuchow

When I was six years old,
I played Odette in a Kindergarten production
of swan lake.

My movements were decidedly more
like that of a magpie
and my understudy was called in

after I broke my ankle tripping
over a gold watch.
I cried and watched the birds outside my room.

They played and threw acorns
danced and drew shapes in the dirt
I opened the window and called to them

in my best outside voice.
One by one they jumped onto the sill
and teetered on the threshold

of my world and theirs, their heads
cocked their eyes shifting their feet
twitching until they jumped hopped skipped

into my bed.

Needlepoint and other poems © Erin Vance

Erin Emily Ann Vance holds an MA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Calgary and studies Irish Folklore and Ethnology at University College Dublin. She is the author of five poetry chapbooks, including The Sorceress Who Left too Soon: Poems After Remedios Varo (Coven Editions) and Unsuitable (APEP Publications). Her writing has appeared in Contemporary Verse 2, EVENT Magazine, Augur Magazine, Arc Poetry Magazine, Canthius, and more. Her first novel, Advice for Taxidermists and Amateur Beekeepers will be published in Fall 2019 by Stonehouse Gothic.

Learn more at erinvance.ca.

Erin’s social profiles

website www.erinvance.ca
@erinemilyann

“Fireflies” and other poems by Christine A. Brooks

October 6th, 2019


house of beauty

just three houses down 
from my 
pale green house
a magnificent dark red house
sat 
regally
on a throne of both beauty &
possibility
on a street that never quite
fit in
with the rest of the city

it was a dead end, 
in a time & place undefined by class 
middle, less than that,
but 
all otherwise, the same
—more or less

except #44

it was the only house on the street
with a fence around the front

how rich they must be, I thought
to be able to have a fence
in the front

a small white sign with
black writing hung & 
swung from a black post
behind that fence
with scrolled letters

Willie Mae’s
House of Beauty

my mother would send me
if I was lucky, with 2 quarters
to buy us each a candy bar
that Willie Mae
would stock on a small shelf
in her makeshift waiting room
in her basement

I would look at myself in her big
mirror that sat in front of her 2
chairs,
that spun around

soaking in the smells of hair products, so different than my
own & listen to the women
talk about their lives
that somehow existed
outside
the House of Beauty

their hair so curly & beautiful
made my own
brown, flat hair feel lifeless
and 
vanilla

she would explain to me why
she could not make mine, look
like theirs,
but still,
every time I walked down her
backstairs
quarters in hand
I dreamed that she could make
my hair kinky & shiny
while I talked & twirled 

because
in the House of Beauty
anything was possible

or so I wanted to believe.


nothingness

I was drunk when they came
for me,
to keep me safe from myself,
he said 
but that was a goddam
lie & everyone knew it

broken knuckles, bruised 
beaten, wrapped tightly but
the silicone pink bracelet twisted
and rubbed under my cast

pushed, taunted & reminded
that I was no one
no one that could fight
no one that could win
and
no one that mattered much
to anyone 

neighbors peeked out, 
porch lights flicked on
I could see them 
from my place, 
face down on the hood of the
dirty police car
click click
went the handcuffs

it was summer not so long ago
really, but a lifetime for
her and many
but that didn’t matter either

nothing did 
or ever would again
not in any way that mattered
anymore


Newbury Street


my Papa smoked a pipe &
 watched hockey with the sound
off, in another
room
from where I played    quietly
with my Lincoln Logs

Nana, who was supposed to die
long before I came around,
had the doctors been right about
her throat cancer

sat in the corner, surrounded by various
clocks 
that ticked on

knitting & clucking trying to keep her
mouth moist somehow since her body
stopped making saliva 

she made gawumpki’s
he gave butterfly kisses &

we lived with them one
summer, so very long
ago 

most days I had a bellyache

nervous, she’s just nervous
my mother would say

    dismissing my pain, probably
to dismiss her own

it didn’t matter though &
eventually we moved, but my
bellyache stayed


A Date with the Lord   
  
the morning I met the 
Lord was exactly as I 
imagined
it would
be. 
 
the air,
    both, briny & candied
plump with salt from the
Irish Sea & 
sweet from the
River Liffey
tickled as I inhaled
but that did not stop me from
breathing in
    life.
 
 
some, even most,
— maybe,
would not find it
pleasant or pleasing, but
for me it was
perfection,
on an early summer Dublin morning,
before businesses opened, but not before business
happened, 
 
    with horse drawn carriages & guitar players
& those offering blessings of good fortune,
wishing me well,
after several donations. 
 
I paid the price,
   I owed
maybe even, a little more than that
which pleased us both
  —equally. 
 
God bless you said more than money could buy
   maybe
I’m hungry, she said, although
she looked neither the kind
 of person to offer a blessing that had the chance of
sticking, or someone whose dinner plate was
empty often
 
but, I had seen her before,
believed her then, that blessing 
so, I dropped another heavy coin into her
   cup, clanging
& shuffled along Dawson Street
because,
     it mattered not
 
I had a date with the Lord after-all & had no time to
 wonder
if the woman I never thought I would see again
—but did
could grant the wish offered up to
Eire.
 
finally, I had come upon the Mansion House
more than what
it seemed, initially
set back without the warmth
& cool of thick mossy blades
of emerald patchwork
 
still though, warm enough
welcoming enough, although no
mat said so, and the giant
brass, doorbell that rang to the
unknown, still, did
not dissuade me from my
date with the Lord. 
 
I had an appointment
    after all. 
 
my clothes, comfortable but
not my finest, reminded 
me, without knowledge or
preconceived notions that
   I was,
home
in a place that accepted me
as is. 
 
and in that moment,
those moments, 
as we sipped tea
& the outside came to life 
I was
     —happy.



Fireflies

I recall them, 
as beacons of hope & faith 
 from my childhood

buzzing and banging,
gently
 against the glass walls of my
Nana’s mason jar
lighting the way, selflessly
 just for a moment, a heartbeat 
 tick between the tock
contained. 

I unscrew the lid,
 set them free, and 
watch
them blink into the hush
of the late summer’s night. 

I recall them,
these memories 

  not as the embers
they were - hovering, clanking
 against the mental box I
 put them in, 
 As they feverishly try to burn
  down 
  my construction paper 
childhood. 
 

I recall them, as 
 — fireflies


"Fireflies" and other poems are © Christine A. Brooks

Christine A. Brooks is a graduate of Western New England University with her B.A. in Literature and her M.F.A. from Bay Path University in Creative Nonfiction. A series of poems, The Ugly Five, are in the 2018 summer issue of Door Is A Jar Magazine and her poem, The Writer, is in the June, 2018 issue of The Cabinet of Heed Literary Magazine. Three poems, Puff, Sister and Grapes are in the 5th issue of The Mystic Blue Review. Her vignette, Finding God, is in in the December 2018 issue of Riggwelter Press, and her series of vignettes, Small Packages, was named a semifinalist at Gazing Grain Press in August 2018. Her essay, What I Learned from Being Accidentally Celibate for Five Years was recently featured in HuffPost, MSN, Yahoo and Daily Mail UK. Her book of poems, The Cigar Box Poems, is due out in late 2019.

Christine A. Brooks links

“You Really think I wanted him” and other poems by Melvina King

September 8th, 2019

You really think I wanted him

You’ve heard the American accent slip from
my tongue and I can bet I know what you want to talk about
before you ask why I wanted Trump,
so you can bask in your
feelings of politically superiority
take a look at me don’t just focus on my
accent and use it as your entrance for your
political inquisition or bashing of me,

Take a deep look at me and ask yourself
should I ask her why she wanted Trump,
should I ignore the obvious answer or
ask?

You are probably confused as to what I’m egging at
and what I want to say since you may not
have figured out it out yet–

I am a black person,
you may be aware
of my history in America and
if you’re not, I suggest you do your own work,
educate yourself on it, people like me have been
marginalized since before the founding of America
and to this present day.

So, I don’t think it’s wise nor intelligent to let
our first conversation be about
why I supported someone
who supports marginalizing me–

I know many people who, like me, didn’t vote for
this maniacal, KKK-endorsed, GOP-endorsed, phobia-spewing-psycho
but unfortunately, there were
a few, like very few, coon black people who are in a sunken place,
like Kanye West who voted for and support him.

But, I didn’t choose him
due to knowing that my chances of being treated like garbage by the police,
being called racial slurs, being given poor medical treatment,
looked down upon because of
my skin color, dealing with defending my west African immigrant family,
seeing/being on the receiving end of Institutional racism is going to continue
till God knows when.

So when you ask me that question
you’re wasting my time assuming that I wanted
continuity of the same battle I’ve fought since day one.

Also, do not look down on me because Trump was elected
I get looked down upon enough
Which I don’t need any more of and you’re
pretty much showing me that you’re ignorant
you’re generalizing an entire
country off of MAGA fools
MAGA meaning the “Make America Great Again”
racist, bigoted, phobia ridden deplorables
or sunken place sellouts.

Your annoying ignorant question
forces me to deal with mental trauma/frustration
that I’d rather not deal with
the trauma that occurs every time
a news story pops into my feed that’s
riddled with cases of hate crimes or actions
plus legislative changes that seek to
continually disenfranchise people
these stories leave me pissed
And even more annoyed/scared of white Americans

Because overt white supremacy is back in style and no longer in hiding
In the good ole USA and its from all different angles
whether it be from conservatives or so-called liberals.

I know you may have been misled by the funneled American news that you get
but really, my black skin wasn’t a clue that I didn’t vote for him nor support him?
Instead,
ask that question to the over 60% of white American men and 52% of white American women
(small percentage for the women but still over 50%)
Cause, in case you didn’t know, or you forgot, White Americans still are carrying around that trunk of racism no matter how liberal or progressive they may say they are, or aren’t, checking their racist family and friends to not be continually swallowed up by racism.
Btw, 94% of black women in America tried to save y’all.

Belief

I no longer believe in the truths of men
they’re the over made-up friend who you
think is flawless, then see her real
face in the morning and it’s like, oh girl.
They’re the couch that you think is so
perfect then when you sit on it the spring
pops you in the butt.
They’re the table you think is so stable,
then it crashes after you stand on it to hang
some decorations.
They’re the beach umbrella that you
thought was so secure in the sand
that blows to the wind as you sunbathe.
They’re the 50 cent lemonade that
the kids assured you is so good,
but tastes tart and watery as hell.
They’re the shining star that
you realize is
actually an airplane.
They’re the $1,000 you think you won,
but is actually a promo for buying
windows.
They’re the movie that you’ve been waiting
a year for then, after watching you’re
like wtf I waited for that?
They’re the $20 cover club that you’re friend told
you was gonna be bumping,
that ends up being full of crickets.
They’re the shirt that looked so good in the ad,
then when you try it on,
You look bad in it.
They’re basically the hypes that we fall for,
That lead us to irritating annoying disappointments.

Spill your Mind

Open your Mind tell me what’s inside
tell me your everything
don’t worry nothing’s too obscure or weird,
let me see the dreamy, hopeful, happiest, darkest, deepest, wildest and saddest parts
tell me what you can’t tell others, you know the things that you bury deep inside
let me see your mind in its most vulnerable state,
spill all its contents into my lap so I can look at it more closely and sifter through it
so I can find aches, pains, worries, confusions, likes, dislikes, and most of all gems,
I promise I won’t move anything around or out of place
I’ll put them back where they belong,
I’ll handle with care your knowledge, emotions, thoughts, abilities, disabilities and memories
I promise I won’t mess with your mind
You can trust me,
So, let down your guard,
Let me find in your mind what makes a person like you my kind.

Muse

I want to be your muse
Your inspiration
The woman who brings out the genius in you
The woman who makes you produce provocative and envelope-pushing work
The woman who makes you crazy like Picasso and bizarre like Dali
The woman who makes you flamboyant like Fela and abstract like Basquiat
The woman who makes you bombastic like Hemingway then shy like Lautrec
The woman who makes you flirty like Yeats and calm like Coltrane
I want to be your muse the woman who lets you be unafraid to be whomever

You Really think I wanted him and other poems are © Melvina King

Melvina King is a poet originally from Philadelphia, PA but currently studying at the graduate level in Dublin, Ireland. Due to wanting a change in life, and a breath of fresh air she decided to move to Europe to experience living elsewhere. Writing poetry is something that she’s enjoyed since childhood. Back in Philadelphia, she frequents the open mic circuit. Poetry has allowed her to communicate her thoughts, educate others and let go of her feelings. She writes about her experiences as a black woman in this world, being from a West African immigrant family, her interactions with men/people, travelling and from how she sees the world. The themes that are explored her work include oppression, love, race, Pan-Africanism, self-esteem, sexual assault and identity.

“Chattel” and other poems by Kushal Poddar

September 1st, 2019

Panther Unbound

My blind uncle asks if it is a fountain.
“Ah, a fountain!” he says.
“No, a dog licking!” I smile.
We both know we fool around a lot.

I turn the shower off and rub his back.

My mother broke my air-gun against my spine
when I failed to sum up success
with the correlatives given.
I walk with my eyes cast downwards
unless your eyes are shut blind.

I towel my uncle to sun.
“Tell me a story” he says, and I retort,
“So this one by Louis De Bernieres…”

We both know I lie.
I make this tale on my life as a panther unbound.

The Wise Rusts

Meanwhile in Texas,
a callidus gun takes us
to a street led hoodwinked
towards its end –
bricks over bricks, more bricks
opaque and thick.

They report – five demised
last night.
One rebirths as a shepherd,
one as a notorious skirt chaser,
one a sheep, one a chef.
One never returns.

A gun buried, rusts its way back
to the nidus, a reason still stuck
in its bullet-tiny hole boring for
an end of all rationale.

The shepherd is required to sing,
the beau needs to hum,
the sheep intones grass,
the chef croons a requiem.
The one not recurred holds the rust
to his heart. To oblivion.

Chattel

Even your boy street sweeper who writes you by a pet name
on a secluded corner with his warm piss and, believe me,
love smells like an empty bladder
has no inkling why you appear no more in your corroded balcony,
cannot imagine you on the same plane with a melancholic eagle.

In the pane of an airplane
sun bursts, mushrooms, implodes in orange bloom clouds.

You fear for a moment-
You are a land and the man
who promised you steady earnings in the middle east
will colonize your territories soon.

Somewhere below and behind
the sweeper boy imagines you in a well-thumbed magazine
and then not there,
not in the things he can touch or experience.

Chattel was recently published at International Times

Nothing Political About This

While we cross the jungle moon rises-
our country’s election over,
the paths all swept for the mines.

Our car screeches to a sudden motionlessness.
in a limbo, time and space both shaping into
twin headlights’ lit cones.

Someone or some gang has laid
some enormous logs on the road
to block the veins and choke the hearts.

A rabbit leaps from existence
to nothingness. Our driver lights a joint.
We wait and wait. Nothing happens

as if we are a mistake; we are insignificant;
we are cursed to survive
while the violence licks the village past this darkness.

Kushal Poddar edited the online magazine Words Surfacing. Authored, The Circus Came To My Island (Spare Change Press, Ohio), A Place For Your Ghost Animals (Ripple Effect Publishing, Colorado Springs), Understanding The Neighborhood (BRP, Australia), Scratches Within (Barbara Maat, Florida), Kleptomaniac’s Book of Unoriginal Poems (BRP, Australia) and Eternity Restoration Project- Selected and New Poems (Hawakal Publishers, India)

Kushal’s Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/KushalTheWriter/
Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe

“Cloud Forest” and other poems by Ellen Chia

April 13th, 2019

Cloud Forest

On montane roofs,
Veil-thin sojourners
Serpentine through green
Flightless birds —
Myriad crowns perching
One-legged, spreading
Multi-tiered wings
Plush with plumes now
Dripping fresh
With the gilded bath.

In the plumage larders,
The green birds set to
Spin their sugary fares,
While at it,
Gazillions of their
Tiny lungs
Are humming the
Three billion-year-old gift;
Coursing far and wide
Through life’s tributaries,
Even of those
Who wish to silence
The gift
With their acute myopia.

Current

The Asian openbill stork alights
Amid the wheeling terns,
Then drifts along
On the hyacinth raft –
The raft by now
A seasoned drifter;
Growing organically
And by fortuitous mergers
On this placid
Cloud-mottled river.

That makes three drifters
On this course of the river
Giving ourselves over to
The current of the moment –
My thought self
Long embarked with the stork
On the raft.

The Balcony Wall

The alliance, one of an
Indefatigable nature
Forged between
Time and Weathering
Has rendered its coat
What was once a gleaming
Eggshell white into
A variegated sooty black.

Cracked peels
Like cartographers shape
Tattered maps
Of its worst battered regions –
Laying bare
Raw cemented pasts to
The potted ferns;
Their frondy tips tracing,
Seeking sense
The genesis of these elements
Now breathing.

The Island

Enter a southerly wind,
A whiff of saltiness
And from the recesses
A stealthy seepage …
Then wave
After wave,

Recollections lap up
Against the shore
Of the room –
Now an island skirting
With long-tail boats
And wooden stilt houses
Perch on pebbly beaches

Where a hog resident
Forages with impunity
Right into its hills
Overlooking routes
Promising sightings of
Pink dolphins (I remember
our host prostrating to give
thanks at the Naga Goddess
shrine after the sighting of
a pod deemed auspicious by
locals).

I bask in my island room –
Relishing the sea salt
On my cupid’s bow,
Giving myself
Over to the lulling
Rustling of coconut palms
When a flower crab
Scuttles from my gaze
Into the shadowy depths…
Do excuse me,

I must get going,
There are nooks yet
To explore:
The wind is like
A postman bringing
Summons of dues.

A Bangkokian’s Consolation

An April morning,
A pewter-grey
Volvo 240 sedan
Lingers in the shade
Of a Golden Shower tree
Now at the zenith
Of its bloom.

There’s still time
Before igniting
The infernal
Tarmac regime;
Enduring to and fro
The crawly
Lengthy hours
Of fumes and jams
Alongside the
Metal herd –
Huddled in the
Urban cauldron
Simmering
Rage and anxieties.

Yes, these are moments
To be solitary still,
For the windscreen
To indulge in
The tree’s silhouette;
To drink in the
Sprawling sinuous branches
Where floral clusters
Droop like ponderous grapes,

Where their petals now
Dust the roof and bonnet
Like gilded butterflies
Frozen in time.

Ellen Chia enjoys going on solitary walks in woodlands and along beaches where Nature’s treasure trove impels her to document her findings and impressions using the language of poetry. Her works have been published and are forthcoming in The Ekphrastic Review, NatureWriting, The Honest Ulsterman, Zingara Poetry Review and The Tiger Moth Review.

Image: Ellen Chia & ‘Giken’

“mia council casa es tu council casa” and other poems by Ali Whitelock

October 31st, 2018

i am the sea

			that january.     
			prestwick beach.

		the sea heaves.  swallows herself down 
	like cough syrup in thick slow gulps. we’d sat on this rock 
just two days before, both of us with our backs to the world 
		staring out across and into 
			the thickness. 

		i counted a thousand and one seagulls that day 
	watched them huddle together, balance like storks 
on a single orange leg the other nestled up in the warmth 
	of their soft white bellies as they, with uncharacteristic
		patience, waited for the rain that would surely fall

		and when the wind whipped up, andrew
	jumped from our rock pulled his emerald green kite
from his rucksack tore off down the desolate beach his kite ploughing 
	a trench in the sand behind him, eager for the gust that would
		lift it to where it wanted to be 
			
		and every few seconds he’d turn around 
	and run backwards untangling cords and calling out across
the increasing distance between us, ‘c’mon on ali! c’mon!’  and i heeded
	his call, jumped from our rock and ran as fast as i could
		in jeans frozen stiff as though they’d 
			been pegged on the line 

			in an overnight frost and i shrieked 
		with the gladness of finally being here with him— 
	and no black clouds could ever threaten this day for us.  and he kept on
running and turning, turning and untangling till finally a gust obliged and
	his emerald green kite soared skywards and free—as free as we are 
		ourselves if only we’ll listen.
		
		we’d parked the car just up there by mancini’s 
	snack van, closed for the winter now, its magnum ice-cream posters,
faded and neglected, flap listlessly in the wind and the menu promising 
	hot chips and curry sauce hangs on the outside wall,
		saturated by rains gone by forcing

		words to fade, corners to curl and brown 
	moisture spots to appear in the most unappetising of ways. 
we’d laid our picnic out on this rock, poured tea from our tartan thermos 
	ate buttered rolls, dunked mcvitties chocolate digestives and talked and
		talked till the sun slipped off her shoes, turned out the light 
			and slithered into the black dreams 
				of the irish sea.

			and days later with him already 
		too long gone i am sitting on our rock with my back to the world.  
	the sea heaves still. i watch her swallow the sadness rising 
		in her throat, as broken hearted waves throw themselves 
			at the feet of a shore that really couldn’t 
				care one way or the other.  


Previously published in Pittsburgh Quarterly Magazine. Editor Fred Shaw


eventually you will turn fifty

and this will be the day you will lose your mind.
you will produce honey and certain insects 
will be attracted to you 
you will put on a dab of hollywood red lipstick 
this will be the same colour you discovered 
when you were ten in the cardboard mushroom 
carton that doubled as your mother’s make-up box 
and when you emerged from the bathroom wearing 
the lipstick your father told you you looked like a fucking 
whore and it will surprise you that actually
he was wrong 
you will put on a black frock which never 
used to but now clings to the rolls you seem 
to have developed over-night these rolls
will make you appear more womanly and you will not mind this one bit
you will start to take more time over your hair 
buy a pair of earrings in the jewellery shop
that is closing down they will match your lipstick 
and you will look beautiful because your hair 
will fall over one eye and this will make you look sultry 
you will even consider putting on the MAC eyeshadow 
you bought seven years ago and never opened 
it may still be good a man you do not know 
will tell you your earrings make the green 
of your eyes look very nice and you will laugh 
and look away as though you are shy though 
you will hope the lens of his camera is still 
upon you 
you will have spent twenty years with the same partner 
this partner will love you more and better than anyone 
ever could including your own mother who loves you very much 
eventually your earrings and lipstick will cause your partner 
substantial discomfort though he will not say anything 
about it because he will know that turning 
fifty sometimes means that things might change 
and he will know that all he can do is wait to see if anything 
is still standing once the high pressure 
system has moved through and although he is not a buddhist 
he will accept the river of life will sometimes 
burst its banks that water will rise in kitchens 
and the insurers will need to be called in to assess the damage
to the european appliances and you will know something 
inside you is dying now that the tub of fresh double cream 
that has sat happily at 3 degrees in the refrigerator 
of your life is now on the turn you will meet a man 
you did not expect to meet you will want to spend 
many nights with him you will make up many excuses 
as to why you are coming home late you will ask your girlfriend
who is also very good at lying to join you in your dreich den
of dishonesty and she will agree to act as your alibi 
should your partner of twenty years decide 
to call her one night to confirm you are with her 
on the evenings you are not home your partner 
of twenty years will eat dinner on his own 
and he will cling wrap yours so when you come home 
he can microwave it for you so you can have a hot meal
he will know that things are now very different 
and he will know exactly what is different
but he will not say anything about it because 
he will not want to make you feel you cannot behave 
in the way you find you suddenly need to behave
he will notice you are now shaving your legs 
having your bikini line waxed and sometimes 
your nails painted fire engine red and he will not believe 
the outrageous lies you are telling him 
but he will not call you on them and this will 
make you think you are getting away with them 
and even though he is not a buddhist he will 
not show you any rage rather he will love 
you all the more because he will understand 
that you what need right now is love 
and one morning when you will have stuffed 
your liver so full of your own lies that it sits 
swollen like that of a french goose 
he will ask you gently if you want to talk about 
what’s going on and still you will tell him everything 
is fine and keep on with your lies till you are now choking 
on them   
eventually you will be home for dinner less and less 
and your lies will increase more and more 
and one night you will send him a text saying 
you will be back later than usual maybe even the next day
and your lie for this one will be very original and completely 
unbelievable but you are now so addicted 
to your lies like a kid on nothing but smarties and mars bars 
and tob-le-fucking-rones that you just keep right on shovelling 
your refined sugar onto the fire of your truth and your partner 
of twenty years will text you back simply saying ‘OK’
cause he knows you need to go through what you need 
to go through and he will eat dinner alone that night along 
with all the other nights and he will wash the dishes 
and watch the evening news and he will miss that you are not there 
shouting at the telly when the liberals come on and he will 
put the hot water bottle on your side of the bed 
and cling wrap your dinner because he understands 
the importance of a warm bed and a hot meal 
when you finally come home.


Previously published by Beautiful Losers Magazine, Editor Lee Ellis 
& Wakefield Press, Editor Julia Beaven


mia council casa es tu council casa

	i live out of sydney these days it is close 
to the beach though we are not wealthy.  
Some days there are whales other days dolphins 
occasional jellies and never dead babies i like visiting 
the art gallery in the city it takes me one hour 
to drive there i park at the expensive 
multi-storey it is a $10 flat rate on a sunday
after parking i cut through hyde park past the statue 
of robert burns standing alone and too far away 
from scotland we are both foreigners here of the acceptable 
kind. i like the location of the gift shop 
it is right next to the entry which is also the exit
i always go to the gift shop first they have handbags 
made of unshaved cow and earrings like hot air balloons 
and a dimly lit section at the back with mysterious 
art books in thick polythene covers the thickness 
of the polythene indicates their seriousness 
and the price and there is an arsehole in there wearing 
jesus sandals though he bears no resemblance 
to jesus and the arsehole says to a random 
woman (who turns out to be an arsehole too) he took a holiday 
in paris once on the left bank some thirty 
years back when it really was something and if hitler 
was alive today this whole thing with the syrian refugees 
would not be happening and the female arsehole agrees 
then the jesus sandalled arsehole says what’s going 
on over there is nothing but a european invasion 
and the subject of the little boy’s body on bodrum 
beach comes up and i have been there on holidays 
some thirty years back when it really was something 
the hotel was right next door to the doctor’s surgery 
bent black clad women came daily clacked rosary 
beads on milk crates in full view of fat tourists 
bathing topless on hotel loungers ordering 
chips and cokes they did not need from kadir 
the turkish waiter who brought me proper chai 
in a glass and taught me how to say 
‘tomorrow i am going to instanbul’.
After the little boy’s body got washed 
up on the sand australia offered synthetic 
duvets fake chai lattes and empty promises 
to twelve thousand of the five million 
in camps who cry themselves to sleep at night
and i have calculated this on my iPhone and it works
out to be a teardrop in the ocean to the closest 
decimal point australia i have offered 
more hope to more cockatoos more safety 
to kookaburras more gum leaves to koalas
than the crumbs you are flicking 
from your all you can eat buffet 
it is time to feed the birds australia 
tuppence a fucking bag sure what does it cost 
to pipe in a haggis share some tatties and neeps 
raise a glass to their health mia council 
casa es tu council casa australia the world’s
eyes are rolling in your general direction 
and right now you look like some kind of jesus 
sandalled arsehole sitting on the veranda 
of your ocean front property with your deep pockets 
and short arms pretending you don’t even know 
it’s your turn to buy the next round at the bar.

Previously published in Other Terrain Journal, Senior Poetry Editor Anne Casey
& Wakefield Press, Editor Julia Beaven


there is no sound when it snows 

like when you pull your tam o’shanter 
down over your ears and i know this muffled 
silence so well it is there always 
in the forest at the end of our road 
where conifer boughs layered with thick snow sway 
like fat babies just fed their heads 
lolling on the brink of nodding off and the train 
to london whizzes past twice a day punctuating 
the silence with two giant exclamation 
marks triggering tremors causing snow 
to loosen and waltz from boughs with a whispering swoosh 
and there were times i was on that train 
mum would drop me at the station in the village
then race back through the forest 
to wave as my train sped past and as the forest 
approached i’d wave through the window 
though the train went so fast i could never 
quite see her––but i knew that she was there. 
the air is iced and sharp here and i breathe 
it willingly stick my tongue in the air 
catch snowflakes that flit i swallow 
their flesh drink down their blood 
till i am the snowflake the snowflake is me.  
i lived here once. in this icy silence
the place i live now is hot and there are days 
i could weep for the boughs of my forest 
and the north wind that gusts and near blows 
the toorie off my glengarry this hot place i live is australia
the land is dry and cracked here 
much like the skin on the heels of my feet 
that were never like that when i lived in scotland
i’ve got my father’s feet they say heels 
that need softening in the bath for a fortnight 
before you could even begin to take the cheese 
grater to them and only then will the thick skin 
come away crumbly like the mature scottish 
cheddar i’ve never enough money to buy in the supermarket 
things have changed since i came to this hot 
place i’ve forgotten a lot about scotland 
sure that’s what i came here for in the first 
place but i have my reminders all around 
me now indeed as i lay here on my bed 
on this hot january afternoon wilting 
from the searing heat and not a breath 
of air to be had my dog eared copy of antonia 
fraser’s ‘mary queen of scots’ jams my sash 
window open since the cord of the sash snapped 
and sent the upper case hurtling to the sill 
like the guillotines that have taken the french 
heads off more people than i care to remember
and i have my postcard on the wall 
the one of the highland cow my brother 
sent me from his camping trip on skye – 
‘come back ali’ it reads ‘before you forget 
how good this air truly tastes.’ and i read 
that card daily and it too is dog-eared 
for i peel it from the wall each morning 
and stick it back with the same lump of blu 
tac i’ve been using for the last as many years 
i can’t move in this heat 
all i can do is lay here on my now damp cotton 
sheets damp from the sweat i’ve been leaking 
as hot winds torch and burnt dust swirls forcing 
locals into bars with promises of half price 
cocktails served in coconut shells at times 
of day not made for drinking 
i moved into this weatherboard cottage 
with hardly a thing it was the first place 
i’d lived in australia with a garden––i should 
say yard––they call gardens yards down here 
yards make me think of barbed wire fences 
broken concrete slabs and gnashing
guard dogs on choke chains that near sever 
their wind pipes rushing strangers that come too close 
the day i moved in i sat in my new garden 
overgrown with something green and curly
––chokoes the neighbour advised––whatever 
the fuck chokoes are i looked them up ‘native 
to mexico though particularly easy to grow 
in the australian YARD’ and this house 
came with a fish-pond baking in full sun 
naked of algae and the loneliest most bored looking 
goldfish i have ever seen he barely moves 
does not dart nor scoot unlike the darting
scooting goldfish of my youth won at fairgrounds 
knocking the heads off clowns with a coconut
i call this goldfish gordon for no other 
reason than it starts with a g 
sometimes i sit under my chokoe vine 
and stare at him once in a while he swims 
half heartedly from one end of his blistering 
pond to the other humiliated by mosquitoes 
landing on fairy feet pricking the surface 
of his pond there was a time he must have eaten them––
i don’t see him so much as place his lips 
to the surface now all he does is hang 
with all the the weight of the depressed 
man who care barely lift his head 
off the pillow and i get to thinking 
all this gold fish has probably ever
known is life in this simmering pond 
but me i’ve known something different
i’ve seen my frosted breath hang in the stillest
of air and my lips have kissed the chill 
of snow that brings a silence money 
couldn’t buy you so i’ll lay here 
on my damp sheets a wee while longer 
and i’ll dream of scotland and mary 
queen of scots and two-man tents on skye 
where toories are taken in gale force winds 
and goldfish are not boiled alive in some scalding 
pond 
sure this hot country is no place for a goldfish 
this hot country is no place for me.

Previously published by Red Room Company, Editor Kristy Wan
& Wakefield Press, Editor Julia Beaven

and my heart crumples like a coke can

you never ate fusilli nor farfalle nor spaghettini. you did not like all that italian shite. you liked chocolate eclairs penguin biscuits beef with string in gravy and custard with steamed pudding which is like a fruitcake. a long time ago we wished you would die. you loved tractors and bob-cats. a bob-cat is the australian name for a digger. one winter you dug a hole in a field with your bob-cat cut off the electricity supply to the entire village burst the mains water pipe. the water froze children skated on it wayward cars skidded into badgers and lambs born in unseasonal snow. your father was a farmer. he gave you your love of tractors. and potatoes. he skimped on other sorts of love. once you gifted a plough to mum. and a socket set. another time a cement mixer. you smoked and drank. grouse mostly. embassy regals. one time you moved a washing machine for a neighbour. you bought old tractors and renovated them sold them in the classifieds. although you could not spell it you were an entrepreneur. your legs went thin. the nutritionist said all you had to do was drink complan. you used to wash your car a lot. the celebrant at your funeral said you would be on your way to heaven in a gleaming vehicle. nobody laughed. you were not religious. i do not believe in heaven. your brother in canada rings me a lot since you died. he told me you were coeliac. it is unrelated to motor neurone disease. you were seventy fucking two. david bowie sixty nine. alan rickman the same. your adam’s apple stopped moving. i realise i too will stop breathing one day. at your funeral your sort-of-wife asked for donations to the disease you didn’t know you had. i don’t know if anyone donated. nine days before you died i visited you at your pebble dashed house, sat beside you on your tan leather couch, watched upside down chaffinches feed on the bird nuts hanging from the hills hoist in your front garden. a hills hoist is australian. in scotland it is a whirly jig. i have been away too long. you tried to make your way to the bathroom on your zimmer frame. you fell in the hall way. i didn’t know how to get you up. i lay beside you on the carpet. you kept apologising. there was nothing to apologise for. the nutritionist was wrong. you died the tuesday after valentine’s day. valentine’s day was on the friday. stephen hawking had motor neurone disease too. his is different to the kind you had. there are four different kinds. yours was diagnosed the day you died. you were already dead. stephen hawkins liked cosmological stuff and the big bang. you liked tractors. when i think of how much you liked tractors, my heart crumples like a coke can.

Previously published in The Neighbourhood Paper (Sydney, Australia), Editor Mark Mordue
& Wakefield Press, Editor Julia Beaven.

Ali Whitelock is a Scottish poet and writer living on the south coast of Sydney with her French chain-smoking husband. Her debut poetry collection and my heart crumples like a coke can has just been released by Wakefield Press, Adelaide, and her memoir, Poking seaweed with a stick and running away from the smell was launched to critical acclaim in Australia and the UK in 2010. Her poems have appeared in The Moth Magazine, The American Journal of Poetry, Gutter Magazine, NorthWords Now, The Poets’ Republic, The Red Room Company, Beautiful Losers Magazine, Backstory Journal, Other Terrain Journal, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Canberra Times, Bareknuckle Poet, The Bangor Literary Journal, The Glasgow Review of Books, Neighbourhood Paper, The Hunter Writers’ Centre ‘Grieve’ Volume 6 Anthology, The Pittsburgh Quarterly Magazine and The University of Wisconsin’s Forty Voices Strong: An Anthology of Contemporary Scottish Poetry. She is currently working on her second poetry collection and her second memoir.

‘Everything’ and other poems by Evelyn Moloney

October 16th, 2018

1. Everything

It’s truly
a chaotic thing
to suddenly see

starlight,
heaven and
everything

in someone’s eyes

2. Sky

The sky spilled sadness
into paper cups

and

lilac clouds
soaked up the dreams of
a thousand
grey
print press people

with their coffee stained sleeves,
keyboard click steps
and empty minds

3. Pull

I wish I could pull
all the sad out of you
out through your chest

I’d fill up
the empty spaces
with flowers

chrysanthemum cardiac tissue
your whole heart
plastered in
every
pretty petal

As if I could bandage
an entire botanical garden
of happy
blooming
in your bloodstream

4. Crash

Oh my poor whole world
is crashing down
in stinging purple spark explosions
and
salty little girl tears
that I can hear
the sound
of
each time I’ve ever wished
on pastel birthday cake candles

distorted,
flooding

rushing like icy water,
wish wish wish

5. Dizzy

My world
is
always sunset
and dizzy—

colours flash quicker
when I close my eyes

I like to catch
falling things
or
floating things
—maybe dandelion seeds

I will always trail my hands
across
every wooden beam

and write wishes in the dust
asking voices you can’t hear

for answers, I don’t need

Everything is © Evelyn Moloney

Evelyn Moloney is a twenty-year-old art student living in Madrid. She has worked in four cities in twelve months all across Europe and can speak three languages fluently. She was part of 2012’s published writers under Fighting Words.