1. Everything 2. Sky 3. Pull 4. Crash 5. Dizzy |
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Category: Maps
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They and I,
O how far we have fallen!
Just to burn here.You can now order bind viaTuras Press
bind cover photograph is © Christian Caller, original artwork Bound / Boundless © Salma Ahmad Caller
from theIrish Times
I am a poet without a landscape, a woman poet without a narrative heritage. I began tracing the huge startling landscape of US and European women’s poetry while in college. I could not find its equivalent here in Ireland. bind reflects the facts of absence and fragmentation in my poetry landscape, and the absence of women poets in our cultural narrative. bind is a book-length poem loosely divided into chapters. These chapters act as boundaries within the action of the poem and provide gateways to differing aspects of the processes inherent in bind. The title of the book takes its name from the triple hyphenation that occurs…
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They and I,
O how far we have fallen!
Just to burn here.You can now order bind via Turas Press
bind cover photograph is © Christian Caller, original artwork Bound / Boundless © Salma Ahmad Caller
from the Irish Times
I am a poet without a landscape, a woman poet without a narrative heritage. I began tracing the huge startling landscape of US and European women’s poetry while in college. I could not find its equivalent here in Ireland. bind reflects the facts of absence and fragmentation in my poetry landscape, and the absence of women poets in our cultural narrative. bind is a book-length poem loosely divided into chapters. These chapters act as boundaries within the action of the poem and provide gateways to differing aspects of the processes inherent in bind. The title of the book takes its name from the triple hyphenation that occurs irregularly within the first chapter. bind explores movement, objects, and colours that occur in a no-place or a stasis, the fragmented landscape,
bind
if there are birds here,
they are of stone.
draughts of birds.
the flesh-bone-wing
of ‘bird’(from bind – Chapter One)
read more here
bind (Turas Press, 2018) was launched in Dublin on October the 8th 2018. I include here, with thanks, some details from artist Salma Caller’s response to the text. This is a note of thanks and appreciation to those people who have supported the book from the outset. Liz McSkeane, at Turas Press has written an introduction here She has taken me through the process beautifully, including a visit to the type-setter, discussions on the visual art aspect of the book, and at all times she has kept me up to speed with the process. Turas is a new press, I urge poets to explore the possibility of publishing there. Eavan Boland very kindly read the text and provided an endorsement for me. I have published the coda to the book and a short poem wing above. The book is not consciously oblique, it charts a progression through a territory that defies description. It might even be said that the book is very simple, although I have tested that theory!
Acknowledgments are due to the editors of Persian Sugar In Indian Tea, York Literary Review, Levure Litteraire #12, The Honest Ulsterman, The Penny Dreadful Journal and Compose Journal, who have all published excerpts from “bind”
Wing mercury pool shatters and, a-black-wing the challenge of wing. bird skims black ice bird skiffs the tree pool bone-blood the actual bird, the image of a bird the real thing of it, grasps onto a branch. the iron of its grasp
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Cuckoo
Before she was mine
she drank red wine and spirits
With class, in Egypt and Paris
An educated forties woman
From Wales, aquiline nose, my brother’s eyes
Stylish in scarves, tight belt, full skirts,
Intelligent. Conversation, politics.
A woman of intellect. Studious, serious
She pursued kingdoms of changeBut with each revolution comes sex
And she became history. Mine
Look, here I come.
Cuckoo, cuckoo
Before I arrived, my mother was beautiful.
After Alvy Carragher’s ‘Mother’
I have just read a poem:
‘Mother’ By Alvy Carragher
over and over:
“You said it was love at first sight”Mother, I don’t recall you saying that
On this couch where I now lie
where, as a child, I snuggled into your woven threads
of bosom and breathThe words, ‘I love you’? No
I would remember
Though I heard the scream
you held at arm’s length
Its tentacles tangled in our threaded embrace.
DNA
I come home from time to time
Motionless, I stand, glide down
Steel de-escalates underfoot
My eyes swivel, theatre bound
Air loses fresh, swoops up my nose
At the bottom, I step South,
Into tunnel, crowned blue and white
Ridged platform, yellow line
A rubbery wind shoots the breeze
My instincts bristle, on the rise
I guess the space where carriage will stop
Tube swoops in
My choice is good. Doors
Wheeze, release heaving crowd
cheek by jowel, shoulder, hip
I stand back, then
Squeeze and shove, shift as one
Teeter, grab a well sprung coil
We shunt and start
a broad church in communal lurch
a rhythm of common
I count the stations
Watch eyes doze, upright
Bodies twitch to ear plugged notes
Approaching, I crab, slide and twist
Mind the Gap
Turn right
Keep Left
Queue to tread and escalate
Inhale the light, sirens, petrol
Surface
flash an oyster, stride away
reassured of my DNA.
Lower Derries, Cavan
for Martin and Breda
The lake swarms, teeters the edge of evening shore
Low, the garden sky seethes, yellow and grey. Still,
We sit outside, nibble blue and white cheese
Pickle our lips with nasturtium seeds
Bite into blood red tomatoes, hand-picked from the vine
A yellow cucumber dressed in mustard and wine
Toast each other with homemade liquor
Beetroot and raspberry mixed with apple and pear
I settle on orange and elder flower
A course of wild pike smokes in black rising swirls
Cooked in a fresh branch of a fallen birch
Served with home-grown potatoes served with garlic
We chat of poetry and autumn spices.
PPS
in response to Seamus Heaney’s ‘Post Script’
At risk of turning this into an ad for Ireland
You may want to travel to County Cavan
For there the wind is always up
With fierce intent, blowing spores of bloodied rock
Drenched in storm and moonlight
The place is a palimpsest of history
Legend layered on leaps of myth
Grey, slate skies reigned by crows and ravens
Caws of silence on black scrawny wings
No ocean glitters, there is no flaggy shore
But there are giants, Lugh and Lag
Who jumped a gorge in the name of love
And left a chasm, a land of relicts
tossed with glacial erratics
a carbuncle of a fossil. Rooted and ancient
You will feel rather than see Cuilche loom
A cannon of earth spraying bullets of cloud
It shoulders the head of the North, tempers the South
From where craggy rivulets of pale faces stare
scattered amongst the raggy sheep
seeking refuge behind old crannogs
Piles of stones
The flesh of the land is weak, porous
lime mixed with water
Its heathery purple blood floods lakes that rise
Where ghosts ascend in morning mists
Stride, muttering, into dark pine forests
The limestone rock provides not a glint of warmth
Trees grasp and clutch at bare knuckled earth
Expose neolithic tombs, funereal monuments
They too catch the heart off guard and blow it open.
The Road Taken It was dark as we crossed the cattle grid, pulled up the Barrack Hill, down the other side, around the mini roundabout, drove the N3 out of Cavan, Virginia, Kells, Navan, Dublin Spiralling the short-term parking, coming to a stop at the top, and flying. Then travellating to the station. The train stopped at Manchester Piccadilly, a fret of ornate iron and glass Suspended; industrial, opaque, white bulbs hang in the gloom of winter gloam. Groaning with Northern Asia, Derbyshire, an English winter Red stone red brick red stone red brick red stone Rows of town, city suburbs: Hawkeswood, Stockport, Hazelcroft and the Price is Right. We disappear into banks of soil and tunnel. Black electric light blasts into heaving peaks of green, velvet brown Soft to touch, sloping down. In the sky, a lisp of blue in leaden grey, a flash of Hope, followed by a thrumming cab, to a Sheffield HOME of blue uniforms, snug around a bosom of pinned identity. My mother in law’s tiny marbled legs attached to a nappy, a bib and tucker. A baby mother. A soft face slack with grace, a momentary greed of interest, forgotten in seconds… then repeated. Over again. Again. Soon, she tires of not remembering. I go on. Travelling on a train, to London. The carriage lights are dim. There are clicks of zips. Creaks of bags. Whispers of coats taken off folded. Murmur of pale blue light. Rain squeezes drops down the window pane. I snuggle down in the interim for the linger of journey, the in-between. Chesterfield, Derby, Leicester, St Pancras. I walk the marble floor that lays the way to Paris, passing cocktail bars, sumptuous shops, silver, gold, chains, and jewels, glamorous hair, bags and suits, leather, barrels of wine Down down down to the Northern line I wade through a tube of Londoners: a commuter, a son, a daughter, an old man, a student, a worker, a patient, a brother, a sister, an aunt, an uncle, a cousin, an only child, a father to you, mother: old woman, bright beads for eyes, swaddled in pads and yellow rage, hunched, slumped, lost for words, waiting. I take off my coat, sit down. You are my destination. The Road Taken and other poems © Kate Ennals
Kate Ennals is a poet and writer and has published material in a range of literary and online journals (Crannog, Skylight 47, Honest Ulsterman, Anomaly, The International Lakeview Journal, Boyne Berries, North West Words, The Blue Nib, Dodging the Rain plus many more). Her first collection of poetry At The Edge was published in 2015. Her second collection comes in 2018. In 2017, she won the Westport Arts Festival Poetry Competition. She has lived in Ireland for 25 years and currently runs poetry and writing workshops in County Cavan, and organises At The Edge, Cavan, a literary reading evening, funded by the Cavan Arts Office.
Before doing an MA in Writing at NUI Galway in 2012, Kate worked in UK local government and the Irish community sector for thirty years, supporting local groups to engage in local projects and initiatives. -
Granny Woman
The men leave us be; at times
like this they take themselves
out to the porch with pipes
and tin cups. Everyone truststhe granny woman. She knows
best, walks for miles when
there’s a baby coming, brings
her bag along. The bottlesof green-smelling whiskey,
fat leaves smooth and big
as her hand, rolled into jars,
rattle next to mud basesfor the poultice. She eases
the pains away, welcomes
every life into the wild world,
soothes swollen breasts so newyoung ones can feed. Now and then
she brews up roots and stems
for some silly girl with a problem.
I’d say the men on the porchnever know much about that.
Some must believe they’re lucky.
They never say anyhow. They don’t see
what we see: the other sideof the granny woman, when she
doesn’t bring joy, calm and a blessing,
when she carries pain in her bag,
cramps, red blood, and a flat relief.*Until the middle of the 20th century, it was typical for rural communities in the southern Appalachian region of the USA to include “granny women”. One role of these women was to act as midwives, using knowledge of folk remedies to assist in childbirth, and significantly but less extensively, with terminations and contraception. My great-grandmother was one of them, and granny magic/granny witchcraft is still practised today.
*This poem was first published in the anthology The Chronicles of Eve (Paper Swans Press, 2016)
Meeting Tink in a bar in Heaven
(for Tara)
When I sleep, she still exists.
Her face peach-bright
and more than just a pinch of skin.My friend is a tattooed hologram who hugs
me tight and tells me she’s glad to see meand how she’s sorry I can’t be a bridesmaid
as her wedding won’t be going ahead.I won’t tell her when she left he changed his mind.
Most people do, when you go the way she did.And she says she can’t wait for my wedding,
her corset is laced and her boots are shined.She’s bringing her favourite lover, a leather-and-tartan
skirted sprite, curved in at the waist and out at the hip;this one makes her feel more alive than ever.
I’ve been here all this time, she says, as music
blasts through black-light clouds – not a harp in sight –and tells me how I’d love her new friends
because they are absolute angels.*This poem was first published at Clear Poetry, and in Kate’s pamphlet You’ve never seen a doomsday like it (Indigo Dreams, 2017)
Following the River Exe on a Wednesday afternoon
My son fixates on sailboats.
We both dream of riding the currentsout to open sea, so we breathe
in midday shadows, meditating
on the shimmer of the aqua
air. I tap his temples, wisp lavenderunder his nose; I hold his hand
until he finds his peace. We walk
along the pavement, heading east.
This is not like our river: tamedby industry, churned with purpose.
This river remembers smugglers,
the density of salt.The boy tilts his head,
squints and smiles, while the pale sun turns
blue waves to a shiver.*This poem was first published at Clear Poetry, and in Kate’s pamphlet The Density of Salt (Indigo Dreams, 2016).
The names of things unseen
for Ethan
You discover new spots on our adventures:
Abergele, Deganwy, Prestatyn, Colwyn Bay,
Betws-y-Coed, Llandudno Pier, Conwy Castle.
You and your brothers – pirates and knights –
duelling, peering into dungeons, or racing
to the edge of the jellyfish-dotted sea.You pack your bag, almost overflowing:
a boomerang, a hacky sack, a water gun
shaped like a shark, an eye-patch and wooden swords,
bunched into place with books, knitting,
paper, pens (for the rainy days),
and a candle, painted in wax with your name.Your friends teach you bits of an ancient tongue:
trenau, gwylan, “pen, ysgwyddau, coesau, traed”,
then you explore my dictionary to find
the names of things unseen, but read, and dreamed –
tylwyth teg, môr-forwyn, coblyn, draig –
wrap words like cowry shells to take back home.*This poem was first published at And Other Poems, and in Kate’s pamphlet The names of things unseen (one-sixth of Caboodle published by Prolebooks, 2015).
Donkeyskin
She and I did our best with what we had,
spent years hunched in flea-dirt fur,
unlearned the cadence of our voices.She and I understood emptying bins
of apple cores, ‘leave it for the cleaner’
among echoes of twinsets and ties.She and I hid our black eyeliner, tubes
of Red 107 lipstick, silver dresses—wore
them on gloom-heavy Sundays, alone.She and I married a second-rate prince
who watched us through the keyhole,
enchanted by bare feet, wet lips.She and I crouch beneath long shadows
expecting a father who won’t stay gone—
bellies full of venison, hands gripping stone.*This poem was first published in Dying Dahlia Review, and in Kate’s pamphlet Losing interest in the sound of petrichor (The Black Light Engine Room Press, 2018)
Shorn
for Gráinne Ní Mháille
The gossips claim there’s power
in her long red locks,but she wants to swing a sword
and feel the earth roll away
beneath her feet.‘You’ll meet your death, girl,’ her father
says, ‘those waves of hair will catchin the wheel, in the rigging, and break
your sweet pale neck.’ But there’s no fearin her, our saving grace.
She pulls the knife
from its place beneath her cloaks,drags it across the plaited red gold
and meets her fate above the coastalrocks as she drops dead scarlet rope
into the sea: she is less of a girl.She will become our Queen.
*This poem was first published in The Copperfield Review, and in Kate’s pamphlet Deadly, Delicate (Picaroon Poetry, 2016).
Kate Garrett is a writer and editor. She is the founding/managing editor of Three Drops from a Cauldron, Picaroon Poetry, Lonesome October Lit, and the charity webzine and anthology Bonnie’s Crew. Her own poetry has been widely published, nominated for a Pushcart Prize and longlisted for a Saboteur Award, and she is the author of several pamphlets: most recently You’ve never seen a doomsday like it (Indigo Dreams, 2017) and Losing interest in the sound of petrichor (The Black Light Engine Room, 2018). Kate was born in southern Ohio, but moved to the UK in 1999, where she still lives in Sheffield with her husband, five children, and a sleepy cat.Related Links
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Big Brother Is Watching.
I wanted to push off into the crashing,
Batter against bridges
Be swept away by currents
You preferred the shore
No sharks on shore
No undertows to rip away your red tide sister
I wasn’t allowed to kayak without you,
And you weren’t willing to hold all my fire
Even with all that water, my flames are still reckless
We were both cradled by waves,
Rocked by the sound of seagulls,
Ate our sandwiches out of plastic buckets
Last month I fumbled every fiery part of me into the open mouth of a kayak for the first time in years,
Held the paddle in both hands, still pretending like I know what I’m doing,
Each stroke splatters lake water onto my face, it gets into my mouth, I am smiling so big
You own a kayak of your own now,
Step into it with much more grace than the hot coals on my feet could ever manage,
There’s a hook for your fishing rod and quiet patience to sit in
We fished together once,
I spend the whole morning casting the line; my flame soaring with it,
Warning all the fish to stay away I suppose,
You cast the line once
And pull back a fish,
My fire burns all the more furiously,
Lighting up the dock just enough
For you to throw the fish back by my light.
You cut the spurs of your fish hooks,
They slide out more easily, you say.
Catch and release.
I take waves in the face just to see my flames tumble,
My throat stings from the salt that gets in while I smile,
I dig my toes in as a brace for the crash
Brother,
I am scared to turn around
I don’t know what waves would hit if I’m not looking,
If I did turn, I know I would see you on shore,
With a flame just as steady and bright as before.
Meredith, New Hampshire
This town
Smells like
Sunscreen
So many little grubby hands
Dripped with ice cream
I can almost see them now
Gearing up for summer
This town
Smells like
Books that haven’t been read yet
They sit on the shelves
Waiting for gentle hands
Dripped with ice cream
To peel them apart one by one
In the scalding sun
This town
Smells like
Anxiety
That might just be
Me though.
Maybe I should
Get some ice cream,
My hands aren’t quite sticky enough
For this place.
I’m the foreigner
With soft,
Clean hands,
I don’t quite fit,
The door handles all slip a bit
Under my tentative grip.A Proper Poem
Today I wrote
A proper letter
On proper paper
With a proper pen.
I put it in
A proper package
With a proper book
To go along.
I drove to the
Proper post office
And obeyed every
Proper posting
Along the way.
I pulled into the
Proper post office
With a
Properly pleased smile
On my proud face.
I promptly got out of
My proper car,
Walked up to the
Proper post office
And it was
Positively closed.
untitledI wonder if my lover
Makes art about me
If he turns to his creation
And says
This is for her,
Never to see, but it’s hers non-the less
I wonder if there’s
Art that I don’t know is mine.
Lover,
This is for you,
It says,
You make me smile,
Even from so far away,
And maybe, just maybe,
Your smile is that soft and
Your voice is that kind and
It is not a trick
Of the distance.
This is for you,
Never to see, but it’s yours non-the less.
I held my anger
So tightly
So long
That my knuckles split
And dripped blood onto the carpet.
Today I opened my hands and found
Nothing
I looked at you and felt
Nothing
Maybe I’ve always felt
Nothing
And it scared me,
I’m supposed to feel something,
Right?
We kissed and your tongue tasted like
Nothing
I tried to flavor it with all the ways I’d seen
Movie couples kiss
But from beginning to end I felt
Empty.
I tried to fill it with all the songs you played,
How can something that sounds so beautiful be
Nothing?
But you didn’t write the music
It belongs to someone else.
You threw a grenade into a pit of
Nothing,
There was so much room for
The explosion.
But no matter how big the bang
Silence will always follow.
And I am grateful for the
Silence.
I reached into the nothing
And plucked out the songs I like.Overheard At Church On Easter
We had
I saw
Crocuses today
And frogs
Calling
Peeping
He is risen
Peeping.
A Proper Poem and other poems are © Abigail Dufresne
Abigail Dufresne is a twenty-one year old poet, actress, and costume designer from Rhode Island with training in acting, design, movement, and devised theatre from Shakespeare and Company, The Stella Adler Studio of Acting, and The University of Rhode Island. At this point in her career Abigail finds herself drawn mostly to devised theatre and Shakespeare for the opportunities these provide to engage with both poetry and acting within the same medium. She looks forward to exploring how these disciplines can also live within other forms of art. -
Glendalough Sonnet
Rain and relatives, relatives and rain.
In Glendalough’s monastic town
a jackdaw baby thrusts his downy head
out of a round tower putlock and raises
an ungodly yellow beak to squawk
at gawking tourists snapping cellphones,
the spines of their umbrellas dripping
on the ancient bullaun stones
where monks once mixed their potions
and the holywell was rich in lithium
which turned out to be a great cure
for the occasional pilgrim who, like me,
suffered from the watery weather
or a sodden slough of Celtic despond.
Angela Patten © The Cumberland Review 2015
Inchigeelagh Getaway
Gaeilge, Inse Geimhleach, meaning “Island of the Hostages”
The land is a sponge sodden
with salt water and rain,
the mossed path a tangle
of Herb Robert and buttercup.
Giant leaves of gunnera
and the green spears of rushes
stand guard around the pond.
Laburnum hangs its head
like a girl drying her yellow hair.
Water gushes under culverts
over rocks, tap-tapping on the roof
of the sunroom like a timid visitor.Through rain-streaked windows
I can see our hosts raise their heads
to look upward as the tempo
intensifies to an irascible hammering;
almost hear the ebb and flow
of their soft voices
from where I stand hidden
under a canopy of dripping roses
and dangling fuschia blossoms.A clattering sound as three
runaway sheep hoof it down the lane
like boys going over the wall
to mitch from school.
Tomorrow they will have to return,
tails between their legs.But for now they are part
of a thrilling spectacle as they trundle
three abreast into the green gap
between the high ditches.The other sheep graze the wet grass,
their plaintive bawling
from the nearby field
like the call-and-response
of a gospel choir
singing the praises of
another doomed rebellion.Angela Patten © Saint Katherine Review 2018
Ravens
In Norse mythology the twin ravens,
Thought and Memory, flew about
the world, collecting news for Odin
who had given them the gift of speech.Did they work together as a team—
one forward-thinking, looking out
for bloody rumor, thin whisper,
foul-smelling allegation, while the other
mouthed words and phrases,
recited names, reiterated everything?Did they return together, grigged
with gossip for the dinner table?
Or did Thought sometimes muddle
Memory with unanswerable questions—
Can Memory be trusted?
Does Thought delude itself?
Do we only live as long as Memory
wraps us in its wings?Odin feared they might not return,
knowing their taste for decomposing flesh,
what that vertiginous perspective
might reveal—a new god with a dove
that whispers in his ear, some new
dark truth delivered from the air.Angela Patten © Sequestrum Journal of Literature and the Arts 2017
Crowtime
“It is said that crows, like other corvids, recognize themselves in mirrors
and this is thought to show intelligence.” (Scientific American)The last light of a winter’s day—
thousands of winged forms
flap past my windows—pins
pulled by a powerful magnet.The sky is black with crows
crying in cracked voices of their plans
to steal what is left of the light,
to gather their feathered shapes
into a solid-color jigsaw puzzle
of land and lake and sky
that will click into place
only when the last bird
flies into its jagged aperture
and darkness falls.Like the crows, my father
showed up night after night
to take his place in an ancient ritual.
To play his fiddle, not by standing out
but by fitting in with the other men,
those dark-suited bus-drivers and conductors
who brought to the session
all their quirks and oddities—
Mr. Ward with his head thrown back,
the accordion at rest on his round belly—
Mr. Keogh with his albino eyes,
long fingers sawing the fiddle—
and young Tony in short trousers
tootling away on the tin whistle.Now my father too is part of that
collective darkness, the puzzle
that the crows remake each night.
That dawn, like a wayward child,
scatters joyfully each morning.Angela Patten © Sequestrum Journal of Literature and the Arts 2017
The Pancake Artist
She only cooked them once a year
on Shrove Tuesday so we didn’t dwell
on the looming Lenten fast
as we raced home after school
to see her lift down the big black frying-pan
and heat it over the blue gas burner
until the fat spat and sizzled.She’d hoist the milk jug full of batter,
pour a creamy stream into the pan,
tilting and tipping it to a seamless circle.
We hovered famished at her elbow
as the humps and craters formed—
brown sienna over khaki, burnt
umber over buttermilk. It was allin the timing. One flick of her gifted wrist
and she’d landed it like a fish
on your plate. You rolled it with sugar,
a squeeze of lemon, scarfed it down.Then it was back to the end of the queue
until your turn returned again.
No rest for her aching shoulders
until we were all contented sinners,
licking our lips, as full as eggs.Angela Patten © LiveEncounters 2017
Tracks
After surgery the stitch-marks
look like bird-feet walking up my arm.
But what strange bird has left
its bone-white prints
embedded in my wrist like needle-tracks?
Perhaps it was the raven,
that faux-sorrowful funeral director,
walking beak-forward, gloved hands
folded behind his back, who walks the
twin trajectories of a railway line
that leads to a long-defunct station
where I might meet myself returning
from the beach with two scabbed knees,
embossed inoculations against disease,
the weals of ancient injuries like medals
from the battlefields of childhood,
and my mother’s crowsfeet
inching toward my eyes.Angela Patten © Cultural Center of Cape Cod 2016 Poetry Prize
Glendalough Sonnet and other poems © Angela Patten
Angela Patten is author of three poetry collections, In Praise of Usefulness (Wind Ridge Books), Reliquaries and Still Listening, both from Salmon Poetry, Ireland, and a prose memoir, High Tea at a Low Table (Wind Ridge Books). She was winner of the 2016 National Poetry Prize from the Cape Cod Cultural Center and her work has appeared in a variety of literary journals. Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, she now lives in Burlington, Vermont, where she is a Senior Lecturer in the University of Vermont English Department. -
Valentine
It was you, wasn’t it?
Sent me a box of genitalia?
Not two but twenty-four ripe ovaries
with six enormous stamens each engorged with pollen
thrusting purple-veined through curvy lips and downy inner folds
around a fleshy pistil glistening with a film of moisture round the swollen tip
all bursting from a flushed, moist, hirsute declivity and smelling…
as if freshly showered?
Thank you for the flowers.
I won’t read too much into it.
Code
Dovebber, Jaduary ad Barch
the datiodal afflictiod bakes its rouds.
Wad grib afterdood you sedse
a cledched fist roud your epiglottis.
Baligd greblid, it hags id there
squeezig ad squeezig. Or baybe
you swallowed a dailbrush?Do, you thindk, do – bore
like Hober Sibsod by the biddit.
I cad still breathe. You turd
the heatig up to baxibub, buscles achig
udtil dext bordig you fide
you’ve betaborphosed
idto a woolly babboth –eyes streabig, dose ruddig,
gradba recobbeddig vitabid C
or baduka huddy. Feed a code, she dags
but you cad odely taste Barbite
ad TCP – there’s a cebedt bixer
codvedtiod id your siduses
ad dow your ears have god fuddy,rushig ad gurglig like a Badhattad
sewer. Your braid turded to bush
you draba queed it, sdortig ad sdeezig
od the screed which idforbs you
you are cobbod. You have
dasopharydgitis, rhidopharydgitis,
acute coryza or a code:ad idfectiod which affects pribarily
the dose…the bost frequedt disease
id hubads, the average adult codtracts
two to three addually. These idfectiods
have beed with hubadity sidce adtiquity.
There is do cure. You are biserable
as sid. You are hubad.
Code – first published in Magma 66, Winter 2016, Eds. John Canfield and Ella Frears (www.magmapoetry.com)
Crabtree to Gascoigne, 1641
So, our dear Horrocks is gone. Twenty-two. I must repeat
what I find so hard to accept: that such a bright star
should be lost to us so young. After all we shared,
I shall never now shake his hand.That November Sunday he, the better astronomer,
noted his observations there and then. I was too overcome
to touch a pen. I shall make amends.Tonight though, at my window, the cosmos
he proved vaster and more ordered than we thought
seems emptier – a mere expanse.My lenses mist.
Would he have planned to visit had he felt unwell,
or been ill for long? No. He was in health, for all we knew.Which, in the end, was what? Something of the spheres,
their transit centuries hence. But of tomorrow –
of accidents round corners, stalking maladies, guests
with knives – nothing. Nothing about our inner storms
or numbered days. More of the heavenly bodies
than of ours.Thus I am plagued by fears: that to fathom the skies
without first grasping our own profound cosmologies
is perverse. That to see – not as prophets but mathematicians,
the year, the day, the hour – so far ahead, is to spy
on God.These fears I want his reason to reject.
But since my telescope cannot bring him closer,
it leaves me cold. I have no heart for work. No instrument,
good Sir, to measure loss.Jeremiah Horrocks [1619-1641], of Toxteth, first recorded the transit of Venus and predicted future transits, including 8th June 2004. ‘The Keats of English astronomy’ died the day before he was to meet his mentee William Crabtree [1610-1644] of Salford. Their friend William Gascoigne [1612-1644], of Leeds, invented the micrometer.
Crabtree to Gascoigne, 1641 – from Eleven Wonders (Graft Poetry 2011, Ed. Nicholas Bielby www.graftpoetry.co.uk)
Unattributed sampler Bankfield Regimental Museum, Halifax In memory of ELIZABETH HITCHEN, Who died November 26, this battle was begun in 1841. The house was quiet and you must learn to be, Grandmamma whispered, measuring the lines. Your little sister’s gone Aged 13 months to be with God. I was just five but could already read THEY WILL BE MISST A VACANT PLACE AT TABLE AND AT TIME OF PRAYER. What shall we put up there I asked,in the big space? Lord knows, my love – God will decide she said, then smiled. Me, probably. AT HOME AT CHURCH MORN NOON AND NIGHT she printed carefully MISST ALL THE TIME AND EVERY WHERE. With the next letter, G – she stopped. When you’re a big girl, you can do the rest. Next day she showed me cross-stitch and I sewed IN MEMORY until my eyes hurt. Eight years slipped by AND ALSO ASSENETH WHO DIED when I was thirteen FEB 8 1849. That night I satin-stitched an urn, an altar, half a rose. AGED 19 MONTHS. The cloth was grey by then with childish sweat, pinpricks of blood and also tears AND ALSO HANNAH two years on THE GRANDMOTHER OF THE ABOVE. I found the last lines of the verse she had left off and marked them up, but couldn’t frame – until I’d lived as long again – to add ‘on’ to the G ON BUT NOT LOST OH THIS WE KNOW – my nephew feverish, I had to end this tale. Thread by thread I drew our family back AND ALSO EMILY MY NIECE WHO DIED AGED 4 YEARS AND 4 MONTHS AND ALSO JOHN their Father WHO DIED 1865 AGED 28 AND ALSO AZUBAH WHO DIED AGED 18 YEARS and all so young. WE KNOW WE TRUST I persevered THE BOUNDLESS LOVE stitching my fingers numb oF GOD HE DOETH ill John’s son was ill, fighting for breath aged 4. If I could break the spell I told myself and stitch one living name – my own – with some date soon perhaps all would be WELL HIS WILL BE DONE WE SAY AND KISS his eyes his hands his fingernails God will decide my needle vain to stop his CHASTENING ROD claiming one more AND ALSO for this field of crosses MICHAEL HITCHEN WHO DIED JUNE 5 1872 AGED 4 and AND 10 MONTHS.'Valentine', 'Unattributed Sampler', 'When I was six', 'Waltz' - from Without a Dog (Graft Poetry 2008, Ed. Nicholas Bielby www.graftpoetry.co.uk)
Image courtesy of Angela Clare, Collections and Exhibitions Officer at Calderdale Museums Service, Bankfield Museum, Halifax Waltz
Married fifty years today, Ted and Edie
take the floor not needing onlookers, but pleased
for those who want to watch their Anniversary Waltz.
They bring their language from another world
of sweethearts, long engagements and apprenticeships
in which they practised drawing and respecting
boundaries, making choices at every turn
yet making believe there was no other way.
If asked, they’d say theirs was no mystery, just years
of graft, of grasping drifts and judging distances,
steering a course through fractured families, neighbours,
nations – weaving meaning into remnant spaces –
station platforms, backyards, beaches – patterning
the long and short sides of their years until they learned
to keep in step, beating time, being alive together.
Now warmed by applause they cross the boards
and, holding and yet not quite being held,
teach us the grace of gentle intimacy. They wear
the clothes they walked here in, but in the light confetti
of the mirrorball the years fall from them
and they twirl their wedding finery, still points
at the centre of a dancing world.When I was six
Lotus shoes (early 1900s), The Tolson Museum
they broke my ankles and bound my feet.
They said it wouldn’t hurt when they put me to sleep
but when I woke it did and when I tried to stand
I fell and gashed my face and lay and screamed
and a nurse and my maid Suyin came running
and said don’t cry, with your tiny feet
you’ll be the envy of Szechuan.
Dressing my face,
nurse said I’d be lucky not to have a scar –
but when they unwound the bandages and saw
my feet, blue-black as a typhoon, the shape and smell
of rotting vegetables, I said o you want that then ,
is that what you want and they looked away,
busying themselves as I lay, listening to their feet.You will be beautiful my father said, as if
it were an order and I said was I not that already
had I not been a perfect baby then and he said
you know that isn’t what I mean and me
this is the twentieth century not the tenth and him
the more you argue the more you prove my case.
What case, I said, what case?
I looked at mother
who was silent. Later she said why didn’t I paint
or practise holding my fan, looking ladylike…
that I should be grateful for a life of ease,
only having to bow and look serene.
But she did not look at me then, or when, married
at fifteen, I told her the day they broke my feet
still seemed like yesterday.You’re lucky, says Suyin, brazen now,
you can sit around all day and think
how beautiful you’ll be – you are…. as she walks
away. You are not meant to walk but glide
they say, but I can only shuffle. My husband grunts
he married a lady not a labourer and anyway
he likes me better lying down.
Opium helps,
but sometimes I wake myself screaming
you said it wouldn’t hurt when you put me to sleep
and to my father, truly deaf now, what case, what case
and to my mother ladylike and to my husband
off somewhere and Suyin, in her own oblivion.
Tears run into my ears, along a faint scar.When I was Six and other poems are © Julia Deakin
DIGITAL CAMERA Julia Deakin is a UK-based poet with three full-length collections, each praised by nationally renowned poets. ‘Crafted, tender poems, written with passion and purpose,’ said Simon Armitage of Without a Dog (Graft, 2008). Anne Stevenson enjoyed its ‘mature wit and wisdom’. ‘Real linguistic inventiveness’ said Ian McMillan. ‘Bold, irreverent and wickedly funny,’ said Alison Brackenbury of her Poetry Business Competition winner The Half-Mile-High-Club.
Eleven Wonders (Graft 2012) Michael Symmons Roberts judged ‘powerful, assured, elegant. Her formal skill and inventiveness make this a rich and eclectic collection. Those who, like me, have admired her individual poems in the past, will be struck by their cumulative strength and range.’
A compelling reader, she has featured twice on Poetry Please and won numerous prizes. Her fourth collection, Sleepless (Valley Press) will be published in October 2018.
-
burnt offerings
swilling cinders
of eucalypt forests burning up
and down the coast
tinged with hints of fear
singed possum hairs lifting into
clear blue air
an earthquake in Italy shakes me awake
a mother crying somewhere
volcanic embers cycling into
smoke of broken promises
women’s choices smouldering
charred remains of exiles’ lives
democracy doused with lies
and set on fire
headless horsemen prancing in the coals
blackened souls stirring
soot from scorched relics
ashes to ashesand my mother in a box too small
to hold her all
laid in a field with all the others
when she could have flown
with the four winds
so I could taste again
the sharp tang of her loss
married to the restlately everything tastes of ash
(First published in apt literary journal on 3 July 2017, with sincere thanks to Editor-in-Chief, Clarissa Halston.)
where the lost things go
we sat upon a golden bow
my little bird and i
indivisibly apart
we dived into the sky
and to the purple-hearted dark
an ocean we did cry
for all the lost things
gathered there
in rooms beyond the eye
the aie, the I, the eye(First published in where the lost things go (Salmon Poetry 2017), with eternal gratitude to Jessie Lendennie, Publisher and tireless campaigner for women poets.)
Between ebb and flow
Mist rolls off moss-green hills
Where wind-wild ponies thunder
Manes flying as they chase
Their seaward brothers
Locked in eternal contest
On this deserted grey milePast the little stone churchyard
Long-forgotten graves spilling
Stones onto the sodden bog
A soft snore from behind
My two angels sleeping
Thirteen thousand milesFrom all they have ever known
Running our own race
To make the best
Of spaces like this
A rainbow rises along the horizon
And I recognise herCome for my mother
Locked in her own
Immortal struggle
The sister returned
So I know it won’t
Be long nowAnd I cry a little at
The unbearable beauty
Of these diastoles
When we are all
Suspended
Here in a heartbeatBetween heaven and earth
(First published in where the lost things go (Salmon Poetry 2017), with eternal gratitude to Jessie Lendennie, Publisher and tireless campaigner for women poets.)
Metaphoric rise
A brief history of incidents surrounding the emergence of POTUS#45
i. rousting
hot wind howls through a hollow log
tawny tumbleweed trundles
over downtrodden plainsii. ravening
on a sunlit lawn
a plump slug streaks forward
eyes on stalksiii. a new religion
branches bowed with bloated fruit
nod to the gilded idol
dark clouds fall in behindiv. aftermath
a squat lizard basks
on a sickle-hacked trail
black legs flail from his lipsv. in the bay
beacon dimmed and tablet fractured
the lady endures
her robes about her feetvi. paradox lost
a fiery sunrise
heralds stormy days to come
ice shifts at the poles(First published in The Irish Times newspaper on 20 January 2017, with sincere thanks to Martin Doyle, Books Editor. Subsequently published in where the lost things go (Salmon Poetry, 2017), with eternal gratitude to Jessie Lendennie, Publisher and tireless campaigner for women poets.)
In memoriam II: The draper
“The town is dead
Nothing but the wind
Howling down Main Street
And a calf bawling
Outside The Fiddlers”My mother’s words, not mine
In a letter, kept in a drawer
These long years
She had a way with words
My motherThat’s why they came
The faithful of her following
Leaning in to her over the counter
For an encouraging word
Or the promise of a novenaLong before we had
Local radio
Our town had my mother
Harbinger of the death notices
And the funeral arrangementsBestower of colloquial wisdom
Bearer of news on all things
Great and small
Who was home
And who hadn’t comeWho had got the Civil Service job
And by what bit of pull
The Councillor’s niece
Smug in her new navy suit
Oblivious to the circulating countersuit“Would you ever think of coming home?”
Her words would catch me
Unawares
Lips poised at the edge
Of a steaming mugIgniting a spitfire
Of resentment each time
Then draping me for days
I’d wear it like a horsehair shirt
All the way backUntil the sunshine and the hustle
Had worn it threadbare
This extra bit of baggage
In every emigrant’s case
Their mother’s broken heartI never thought to ask her
“Would you want me to…?
So I could look out at the rain
Circumnavigating the empty street
And shiver at the wind
Whipping in under the door…?”I don’t miss that question now
On my annual pilgrimage ‘home’
My father never asks it
Like me, I know he feels it
Hanging in the air
Alongside her absenceI miss my mother
And her way with words(First published in The Irish Times newspaper on 31 January 2016, with heartfelt thanks to Ciara Kenny, Editor, Irish Abroad. Subsequently published in where the lost things go (Salmon Poetry 2017), with eternal gratitude to Jessie Lendennie, Publisher and tireless campaigner for women poets.)
burnt offerings and other poems are © Anne Casey
Anne Casey’s poetry has appeared internationally in newspapers, magazines, journals, books, broadcasts, podcasts, recordings and a major art exhibition. Salmon Poetry published her debut collection, where the lost things go in 2017. She won the Glen Phillips Novice Writer Award in 2017 and has been shortlisted for prizes including Cuirt International Poetry Prize, Eyewear Books Poetry Prize and Bedford International Writing Competition, among others. Originally from west Clare, now living in Sydney, Anne is Co-Editor of Other Terrain and Backstory literary journals (Swinburne University, Melbourne). -
Vintage ghosts of
joy and sadness
a saccharine statement
the highest expression of the autopoetic force
the incarnation and withdrawal of a God
declaration of hither swarms
accretion of the torrential becoming
instances emancipated from
all anxieties and frustrations
in the anagogic phase
made dizzy by the hybris
a regular pulsating
metre of recurrence
This is not a method
O blacklist of preeminence
louder than life itself
countdown sequence
of aired mysterious booms
natural coction
the shadow of a shadow of an
obtainable new order
to bathe in the splendor
of lathe and labyrinth
as momentum grows
that bold and legitimate certainty
of endlessly repeating variations
and recollections that
erect their desire to exist
like a new sensation
articulating lifelong repeal
In this mode and vague notion
of a stay in your placeism
event horizon
a derangement of senses
dragging the echo
from the culvert
from the book of common prayer
eschewing the copula
almost like the pace of a dream
ordered fragments of a
disordered devotion
a space we can enter
the bareness of time’s passing
This is not a method and other poems are © Rus Khomutoff
Rus Khomutoff is a neo surrealist poet in Brooklyn, NY. My poetry has been featured in Erbacce, Fifth Day journal and Burning House Press. In 2017 he published an ebook called Immaculate Days.
Chris Murray 