Tag: Blue Nib

“Safer Distances” and other poems by Jennifer Horgan

July 17th, 2020

If you were able

you’d go upstairs with me.
Dream your hips poised mum
jug-like

dipped towards the sun.
In some afternoon’s shuttered light
we’re choosing fabrics to be hung.

Your style,
your certainty, tugs the rope
of a French church bell.

You’re young again, words held
on winding steps in France.
In this dream I have, as then,

you’re sure-footed.
There’s ceramic grace in your descent
confident

decanting scant, satisfied goodbyes,
cascading floors,
myriad lives.

The wind snaps my back door shut
as I move about the kitchen.

I look over to where you’ve been.
Take in the disappointment of your seat.

Taxi

The driver’s words are tumours
fat and fibrous, with teeth
sure I’ve seen ‘em blacks fightin in our streets.
his mouth is a gargoyle spout
ink-snaked neck
moss on rivered stone
young voluptuous women
blown across his bones
Tell ya girl, soon Cork won’t be our own
Soon Cork won’t be our own.
Down the bend of the road, he shrinks to small talk
his trip up North
not noticing the cold tap run inside my tone.
Got the cataracts done
Got a deal
Living in a fog, and me behind the wheel!
Fright to god I didn’t get killed.
His eyes are clean; they’re clean
but there’s no light in them
they belong to a child
unsurprised by what’s been done to him.
By the time I leave,
I’m wishing him well.
Remembering again
what it means
this being human

Safer Distances

I’ve seen my city’s private parts, advertised on plywood signs
in block-lettered chalk
Adult Only Store Used-up girls inside, starting life in another country but still
I know them from somewhere
I’ve eyed the types, those grey-skinned soggy men, sunken-eyed from watching
body-parts unfurling

The ships that line our docks are tough but grieve to watch the washed-up
purchased lives they’ve lost
Born without footing across slime and muck, slipping up and down inside
our harbour walls
Freezing to death in backs of trucks, not surfacing long enough to breathe
and float and see

black- water swirling menses, spitting ragged blankets up, onto concrete blocks,
no longer fit to warm them
until summer dries them out, maybe days from now, maybe never, maybe lost
in the hacks and splutters
The muttered lines about safer distances between us, between me and these girls
on scratchy screens

inside stores I’ll never enter

 Riverrun                      
      after James Joyce                            
 
Riverrun
     past Eve and Adam
Drip and bubble
 on his tongue
River wash through
       stone and gravel
 Hot traintracks
 His schoolbag
Oh River Run
 Thank him for the gift
 he gave me
to celebrate my newborn son
 River protect
the London boy
 who praised me 
For just
 being there      
River run
 through his black hair
His wings so small
so tightly clipped
Riverrun a song of loss
Forever present on our lips 
    Riverrun
         past Eve and Adam
     Thalweg
 Land bend
  Delta
   Flood
Once 
upon a time
we left him stranded 
but the current’s changing
A change has come
Riverrun, from where
 he kissed him
 in some 
Underpass
Overpass
Armpit
 Ledge
Behind a wall
 Wedge of stone
River how you’ve
   always known
to carry Adam
Carry Eve
Carry every love you see
  River run, past Eve and Adam
Past songline 
Fault line 
Border 
Blood
Past tall orders
Boys 
born in armour
 Tense 
Protective
 On the run
Riverrun 
through tidal waves
Mudflats
Basins
Wider plains 
River find the mouths you need
Inside us 
Make them speak 
of ripples
Oxbows 
Currents 
Streams
 Forever carving
   Changing shape
Oh river run 
and river make
 Build new mountains 
                                   
His life’s at stake

                      None of this is helping
                         None of this is helping

I hate feeling      wanting to hit something           not you
something thick and unsuspecting    a giant block of ice maybe      
 maximum impact 
   Your words are GRATING            and I hate bloody zoom
pressing small hard LUMPS under my skin   Declaring the ugliness 
of life,
My life        how I’m living it      Telling me how many mothers 
are raped
Speaking to their pain, explain      invisibilised deaths at sea.
You turn words into verbs            even your words have energy  
I can’t summon.
You explain the wrongness of charity      Only solidarity, 
connectedness  
but I don’t feel it with you             hard blow to the ego
to feel rage and your language, your speaking to, Honouring, 
framing, your sensitive lens
None of it is helpful;        I’m not at all helped.  
Your naming of friends,  Libya  Syria  Ghana,
Reminds me     how I’ve never met them. My life is angled away 
from, what you call
                      the Global South

I’m left    in no doubt      I’m not good.     I am not good.  
Not like you, whose mascara is too 
thick to look nice,         your hair still wet and dripping
There is no time, no time, no time    your hair still wet and dripping
I want everything to be better         the privilege that’s 
mine is layered and sickening.
But    none of this, nothing about this, or you,   is helping. 

© Jennifer Horgan

‘She’ and other poems by Ceinwen E. Cariad Haydon

June 5th, 2018

You must not

I did, I did.
And, afterwards
wind whips, rain falls.
I cannot see beyond
waterfalls sheeting down
from miserable eyes,
sluicing nose, cheeks, chin
and feel etched trails
of aged laughter lines,
awash with running snot.

I slap my face,
to blot out inner pain.
Fingerprints mark shame,
sting of secret sin
secreted on my skin,
stigmata aflame.
Lust chose me,
I chose you.
I did, I did.

You must not.

Haunted

I didn’t see young Icarus fall
from the sky that day,
I didn’t see the rays of sun
melt his wings away.

And I didn’t see his strong white bones
stripped of flesh by gannets.
Nor did I hear his last faint cry,
nor did I see the fret shroud down,
nor did I ask the reason why
he ever tried to fly so high.

But I did dream a resting place,
but I did dream a mountain stream,
but I did dream a place to lie,
but I did dream he waxed again,
but I did dream he kissed my face,
but I did dream he melted me.

And I remember words he sang
and I remember smelling young
and I remember tasting sweat
and I remember sharing breath
and I remember touching down

as I remember how he drowned.

She

after Mark Doty Ineradicable Music

She gestated words for years.
I lack a birthing bed, she said
and to find one was her heart’s desire,
a place to labour hard. She who’s stirring.

Could she trance herself
to write? And even as
she dreams and wavers,
whispering poetic lines,

the newborn secrets of her heart,
she knows her voice comes
lyrical and stronger
if she dares to speak aloud.

And though years were wasted,
to have kept silent and denied
she longed to scribe her verse
would have been so much worse.

Had she been cursed to muteness
or deaf to those inspired beats
that leave her spellbound,
craving more creation, she would die.

sci-fi nightmare

suns dawned in rivers
stars stippled mudbanks
waterfalls drenched skies
red grass called hither
worms crawled up my flanks
skulls flew empty by

mountains dove down cliffs
wide eyes swallowed air
ears waxed to silence
my feet would not shift
scree slopes stopped to stare
bones talked chalk nonsense

colours crazed to black
monsters talked secrets
my clothes were all wrong
thoughts began to crack
devils took my debts
to hell I was flung

Was That Me?

Sometimes, I feel I live on 
                                        in remainder time.
There have been so many lives, all mine; 
                                                                different days with different casts 
                                                                                                                   of actors on the stage. 
Looking back, 
                     confusion often reigned.
My days, 
             like beads of wood or glass or precious stones,
                                                                                  adorned my costumes,
held me moment-tight
                                  until things changed again, again and then again.
And yet, 
            each bead mundane or bright
                                                         is threaded on a single string.
With each new play, new role, new time,
how did I dress my body?
                               How did I learn my lines?
                                                                          
                                                          
                                           All my lives are mine and mine. 
                                                    But who or what am I?

Ceinwen E. Cariad Haydon lives in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, and writes short stories and poetry. She has been published in web magazines and print anthologies. These include Fiction on the Web, Literally Stories, Alliterati, Stepaway, Poets Speak (whilst they still can), Three Drops from the Cauldron, Snakeskin, Obsessed with Pipework, The Linnet’s Wing, Blue Nib, Picaroon, Amaryllis, Algebra of Owls, Write to be Counted, The Lake, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Riggwelter, Poetry Shed, Southbank Poetry, Smeuse Bandit Fiction and Atrium and with work coming up in Marauder, Prole and The Curlew.