She looked at me, turned,
hopped ahead, turned back,
jumped into the grass.
Then she lunged up,
snatched a dragonfly
right out of the air.
Don is a biomedical researcher living in Pittsburgh, PA. His poetry has appeared online at TuckMagazine.com, Uppagus Magazine, Vox Populi Sphere, and others, in print in Hanging Loose (1972) and Neurology, and in several print anthologies including in both English and Farsi in Persian Sugar in English Tea, Volumes I and III.
My face is the side
the Earth always sees
It knows not this body
battered by collisions nor
this heart whose craters are
hundreds of meters deep
a testament to the
bombardments it has suffered
Bojana Stojcic is a teacher from Serbia, living in Germany. Her poems and flash pieces have been published in Rust + Moth, Anti-Heroin Chic, Barren Magazine, Spelk, XRAY, The Opiate, and elsewhere. She blogs at Coffee and Confessions to Go and is currently working on a collection of flash fiction/prose poetry.
You take all life from your
immense, fathomless,
median disc.
Asteroidia,
spangle tipped in salt
to the end of your arms
red spotted markers.
No brittle stars or
basket stars but true
Asteroidia.
And in your watery sky
environment you flourish,
live, die, regenerate,
shine brighter than any
celestial form.
Margaret grew up in Cheshire where she still lives. Margaret’s poems and short stories have been published in several anthologies and magazines and online journals including most recently: Schooldays, Best of British, Flash, I love you, Patches of Light, Torrid Literature Journal, The Foxglove Journal, The Wilfred Owen Association Journal. Margaret also writes plays. Her monologue ‘Our Brian’ was longlisted for BBC Radio 4’s ‘Opening Lines’. In 2017 her play ‘Ruthless’ was longlisted for the Top Five Competition at Bolton’s Octagon Theatre. Her play The Bus Stop was performed at The Old Sawmill in Congleton in May 2019 and will be performed at Buxton Fringe Festival in July this year. Margaret hosts the Poetry and Prose Open Mic at The Petersgate Tap in Stockport. Keep in touch: www.margaretholbrookwrites.weebly.com
I woke with an old sense
of entering a clearing
as a boat breasts a strait of reeds
from one lake to another
with no notion of the vastness
in front, behind; a settler
thinking himself still, feet
either side of a century,
belongings mere ideas again,
a scattering of atoms, a constellation;
rainfall, each drop still pure
after its million collisions.
Ted Mc Carthy is a poet and translator living in Clones, Ireland. His work has appeared in magazines in Ireland, the UK, Germany, the USA, Canada and Australia. He has had two collections published, ‘November Wedding’, and ‘Beverly Downs’. His work can be found on www.tedmccarthyspoetry.weebly.com.
My blood moon
he used to call me
because i blushed
every time
his shadow
descended
upon my slopes
He’d point
his face toward me
and howl
Bojana Stojcic is a teacher from Serbia, living in Germany. Her poems and flash pieces have been published in Rust + Moth, Anti-Heroin Chic, Barren Magazine, Spelk, XRAY, The Opiate, and elsewhere. She blogs at Coffee and Confessions to Go and is currently working on a collection of flash fiction/prose poetry.
I took my problems to my old friend, the sea.
He watched me with his flashing eyes
And spoke to me with seven foaming lips.
I poured out my problems
And he poured them right back again.
Now that I’m sitting, like a stone on a rock,
Now the beach-huts are deserted,
And all the lovers have gone home,
He’s still there;
He’s still there;
The still small voice
Of endless noise,
Wearing at my loneliness.
Edward Alport is a proud Essex Boy and occupies his time as a teacher, gardener and writer for children. He has had poetry published in a variety of webzines and magazines. When he has nothing better to do he posts snarky micropoems on Twitter as @cross_mouse.
And if at times there seems to be
no more to it than this
return with muddied boots to the locked car
(groping for comfort under coats, cold nose to cold
nose, the same old words you won’t
or don’t believe)
then love is always the path we saved for another
day, the tunnel winding, whisper-filled,
under a sun-rug of November trees.
Also (and always) love is the lit sky, shorn
of its restless weathers,
falling
forever
into everlasting.
Anthony Watts has been writing ‘seriously’ for about 40 years. He has won 26 First Prizes in poetry competitions and was longlisted for the National Poetry Competition 2014. His poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies, including Poetry Salzburg Review, The Rialto and Riggwelter. His fifth collection, Stiles, is due to be published by Paekakariki Press. His home is in rural Somerset and his main interests are poetry, music, walking and binge thinking – activities which he finds can be happily combined.
A stain fading from the ceiling as I watch,
A shadow cast by a patch of sunlight,
Two pictures canted at the same angle,
Tell of a life, calm, but out of kilter.
The sound of a dripping tap, suddenly stilled,
Of hollow footsteps on a concrete floor,
Or paper rustling in a silent room,
Tell of a life, good at keeping secrets
The scent of lavender by the kitchen door
Or roses in an empty vase
And chocolate and raspberries by the fireplace
Do not tell me of pain and desperation.
Edward Alport is a proud Essex Boy and occupies his time as a teacher, gardener and writer for children. He has had poetry published in a variety of webzines and magazines. When he has nothing better to do he posts snarky micropoems on Twitter as @cross_mouse.
Rebecca Gethin lives in Devon. She was a winner in the first Coast to Coast to Coast pamphlet competition with Messages. A pamphlet about endangered creatures called Vanishings is due to be published by Palewell Press in 2020. Two pamphlets were published in 2017: A Sprig of Rowan by Three Drops Press and All the Time in the World by Cinnamon Press who previously published a collection and two novels. She has been a Hawthornden Fellow and undertook a residency at Brisons Veor in 2018. Find more at www.rebeccagethin.wordpress.com.
1
Note by quivering note, the guitar
uncoffins its soul.
Something ascending into deathlessness
pieces together a passion, while outside
the wind is strumming, drumming on the stone house.
Under dark beams, the firefly notes
assemble for a last assault. The orchestra
splits the gloom like a flare,
crashes crimson seas over black rocks.
The guitar scuttles after, among pools
of silence, picking up the pieces.
2
Sad lovely girl in my arms –
If we could be
at one with the wind and the music – no
clocks to watch, buses to catch. . .
The wind has gone
wherever a wind goes when it isn’t blowing;
the music sleeps,
curled like a mouse in the cassette
while our twin-spooled togetherness
awaits
its next occasion
(filed
secretly
between two lives).
Anthony Watts has been writing ‘seriously’ for about 40 years. He has won 26 First Prizes in poetry competitions and was longlisted for the National Poetry Competition 2014. His poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies, including Poetry Salzburg Review, The Rialto and Riggwelter. His fifth collection, Stiles, is due to be published by Paekakariki Press. His home is in rural Somerset and his main interests are poetry, music, walking and binge thinking – activities which he finds can be happily combined.
Step over guarding thorns,
the outstretched claws of brambles,
their plump dark jewels gone now.
Breathe the heavy scent of the viburnum
and tuck a sprig of pink into your mitten
to sweeten day’s cruel frost.
Stop. Listen
to mavis and sparrow all branch-tangled
heralding winter’s early dusk.
Ease past the dog rose, its bareness held
until all is green, all is spring. Head out
and round between the shining birches
calling to the moon.
Nearly there. Don’t stop
to watch as hinds tiptoe or heron stalk the Moss.
There’ll be time.
Makar of the Fed of Writers (Scotland) Finola Scott’s work is on posters, tapestries and postcards. Her poems are widely published in anthologies and magazines including New Writing Scotland, The Lighthouse and Fenland Reed. Her work was commissioned by Stanza Poetry Festival for a multi-media installation. Much Left Unsaid, her pamphlet, is published by Red Squirrel Press. Poems, pictures and events can be found at Finola Scott Poems.
Now is the time to admit what I saw at midwinter.
The young oaks were leaning in around their mother,
while a gnarled old door opened the way in her trunk.
From inside, light was streaming and all the other trees,
raised and shook their branches as if praising something.
Now is the time to admit what I saw at midsummer.
The holly was rising tall as any cathedral, form shifting,
into a huge crowned figure, who stretched his limbs,
then set off on a progress around the whole forest.
All other trees knelt down and bowed their heads in respect.
Now is the time to admit what I don’t know about.
The birch sisters who whisper heroic couplets at the boundaries
baffle me. I cannot speak ash, or hornbeam or blackthorn.
All I know is that the trees go about their business,
they do important work, while I wonder and wait.
Alison Jones is a teacher, and writer with work published in a variety of places, from Poetry Ireland Review, Proletarian Poetry and The Interpreter’s House, to The Green Parent Magazine and The Guardian. She has a particular interest in the role of nature in literature and is a champion of contemporary poetry in the secondary school classroom. Her pamphlet, ‘Heartwood’ was published by Indigo Dreams in 2018, with a second pamphlet. ‘Omega’ forthcoming.
Covers gravestones
Erases names and dates
Pale green
& white growth overlapping
circular shapes expand
with every year
of neglect.
Rain
will not wash away
the stain
only spur
further growth.
I expect
someday to wear
a mantle of lichen
like a warm coat
sheltering me
from the cold, dark dirt.
James P. Roberts is the author of five previous collections of poetry. Recent work has been published in Weirdbook, Mirror Dance, Rosebud, Sand Canyon Review and Zingara Poetry Review. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin where he haunts Little Free Libraries and has a passion for women’s flat-track roller derby.
Standing tall against the frozen sky
Your skeletons are the exquisite calligraphy
Of an entire season
Your name is curly writ
Not in water
But with wind
Yuan Changming published monographs on translation before leaving his native country. Currently, Yuan lives in Vancouver, where he edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan. Credits include ten Pushcart nominations, Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17) and BestNewPoemsOnline, among others.
Once I stood, a tall pine,
basking in sunlight.
Mare’s tail fronded my roots,
creatures thrived in my forest.
Time has many names.
When I fell, I swam, bog born.
I have been pressed,
like a rare flower caught
in a treasured volume.
Life put weight into me,
I married billion year old sunlight
and held it in my trunk.
Transformed to strata,
then exhumed and scuttled
into a sparked hearth,
I reach for the skies again.
Alison Jones is a teacher, and writer with work published in a variety of places, from Poetry Ireland Review, Proletarian Poetry and The Interpreter’s House, to The Green Parent Magazine and The Guardian. She has a particular interest in the role of nature in literature and is a champion of contemporary poetry in the secondary school classroom. Her pamphlet, ‘Heartwood’ was published by Indigo Dreams in 2018, with a second pamphlet. ‘Omega’ forthcoming.
