foxglovejournal

Carnota – Elizabeth Gibson

We are in a glass dome of summer – pick us up and shake us,

and pollen-dust will swirl around us. The delirious strip of sea

is the other side of our zip: we curve and arc into each other.

Life is reduced to blue and green, with dots of pink and yellow,

and all I could ever need for fullness again is this sea and sky,

these hills of foxglove and gorse, and long Galician granaries,

their stone frames warming lizards and cats. We stop, to sprawl

among the brittle mauve patches of seaweed, watch dolphins

spinning like cogs, in and out, in and out of the wave machine.

Hey, I see a whale – well, I see spray – but no-one believes me.

We find the corpse of a small creature – a porpoise, maybe,

all beak and curve, now brittle with sand. Across the meadows

are chubby brown goats, and foals gulping from patient mothers

whose fringes tumble like kelp. It all keeps circling in on itself.

Elizabeth Gibson is a Manchester writer and performer, and the Editor and Photographer for Foxglove Journal. Her work is often inspired by her travels, as well as themes of queerness, community, body image, and mental health. She has recently been published in Aurelia Magazine, Giving Room Mag, Lighthouse, Popshot, Queerlings, and York Literary Review. She is @Grizonne on Twitter and Instagram, and she blogs at https://elizabethgibsonwriter.blogspot.com.

August 10, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: A Coruña, animals, Carnota, colours, creative, creativity, death, elements, Elizabeth Gibson, Galicia, landscape, life, moment, nature, poem, poet, Poetry, sea, Spain, summer, travel, UK, writing Leave a comment

Passing Colours – Martin Potter

Rail journey

Thickset windows fix

Fleeting landscape green-chill

Outside carriage warmth

A winter sun’s

Tentative intense

Strikes brushwood bark-bole

Bounces lemon curd

Off the trees’

December slumber skin

Insinuating dazzle

Lichen imbued light

Martin Potter (https://martinpotterpoet.home.blog) is a poet and academic, and his poems have appeared in Acumen, The French Literary Review, Eborakon, Scintilla, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Poetry Village, and other journals. His pamphlet In the Particular was published by Eyewear in December, 2017.

August 2, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: carriage, colours, creative, creativity, journey, landscape, lichen, light, Martin Potter, movement, nature, poem, Poetry, rail, sun, travel, trees, UK, view, warmth, windows, winter, writing Leave a comment

I Have Walked This Path Before – James G. Piatt

I am peering through raindrops, which are

washing away my memories watching the past

fade as I walk along an old path I have walked on

many times before.

I have walked this path before, in the springtime

when cheery trees were pink with blossoms,

giant maple trees were showing their pink buds,

and young animals in their new born freedom

loped along the river, carefree, and filled with the

excitement of new birth.

I have walked this path before when the summer

heat silently placed its warmth upon my

shoulders as I sat on a beach chair near a placed

pond thinking about the beauty of nature, and

listening to the sweet warbling of tiny songbirds.

I have walked this path before when autumn’s

slowly increasing winds started their polished

journey into winter with whispered hints of

fading time, and the sun was covered with dark

moisture filled clouds.

I have walked this path before when the chill of

winter blurred my footsteps, tiny birds took

refuge in bushes and I, bundled up in wools and

layered cotton, pondered on the coldness of the

season, and what I should etch onto the marble

face of my tombstone.

James is an internationally published poet, a Best of Web nominee and three time Pushcart nominee. He has had four poetry books; Solace Between the Lines, Light, Ancient Rhythms, and The Silent Pond, 1500 poems, five novels, and 35 short stories published worldwide. He earned his doctorate from BYU, and his BS and MA from California State Polytechnic University, SLO. He writes poetry to maintain his sanity, and sometimes succeeds.

July 21, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: animals, birth, CA, change, creative, creativity, elements, James G. Piatt, journey, life, memories, nature, past, path, poem, Poetry, seasons, senses, time, US, walk, weather, writing Leave a comment

Baskett Slough III – Marc Janssen

The milk sun combs uncombed fields

While

An atonal chorus of geese concert invisibly directly overhead.

All around

The illusion of softness

In the graceful curving hill-scapes,

Rust carpets of oak leaves,

Before it is broken by an insincere tittering of human voices.

Marc Janssen lives in a house with a wife who likes him and a cat who loathes him. Regardless of that turmoil, his poetry can be found scattered around the world in places like Penumbra, Slant, Cirque Journal, Off the Coast and Poetry Salzburg. Janssen also coordinates the Salem Poetry Project, a weekly reading, the annual Salem Poetry Festival, and was a 2020 nominee for Oregon Poet Laureate.

July 16, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: birds, chorus, creative, creativity, elements, fields, geese, grace, hills, illusion, landscape, leaves, light, Marc Janssen, nature, poem, Poetry, senses, softness, sound, sun, US, voices, writing Leave a comment

Sunlight – Stephen Kingsnorth

The bulbs above –

their filaments,

the broken joints of spider legs –

hang lazy, washing on the line,

a sad parade unheeded now,

awaiting switch of energy,

electricity,

spark generation of the sun.

The bulbs below –

first snowdrops show,

hint cream and green above the snow,

the phototroph, explosive strength,

breaks crystal ice of brittle soil.

Then corms of crocus, specie, grow,

pale mauve or streaked,

bear stripes of war

from battle through harsh undergrowth,

spark generation of the sun.

Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales from ministry in the Methodist Church, has had over 250 pieces published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies. Find more at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com.

June 28, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: battle, bulbs, colours, creative, creativity, electricity, elements, energy, flowers, generation, growth, light, nature, poem, Poetry, snow, soil, spark, Stephen Kingsnorth, strength, sun, Wales, writing 1 Comment

A Dream of Flying Over My Childhood Home – Isabel Greenslade

I open out my skull bones like leaves

my head a white hard dome

hot knife humming.

Current flows along my skin like oil

slicking rigid arms to body.

I rotate my neck as I do just before speech

gasp as I rise head-first to my element

a fish of the air.

Only then do I see them standing there

mother father brother neighbours all

gazing up by the fence, rooted as sunflowers

soundwaves lapping at their stems.

I flick my shoulders like fins

I am gone.

Isabel is from and of London where she works in a museum. In a former life she was a youth worker then a tour guide. Her poems has been published in Orbis and she can be found discussing poetry, art, gardening urban history, and the natural world on her Instagram account @ijgreenslade.

June 21, 2021June 21, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: air, bones, creative, creativity, current, elements, family, fins, fish, flight, home, Isabel Greenslade, leaves, London, neighbours, poem, Poetry, rising, senses, soundwaves, sunflowers, UK, writing Leave a comment

Preserved – Stephen Kingsnorth

I dusted coal soot from the sill

and came across the brittle bee,

stuck, desiccated, frosted pane.

And yet, with yoghurt, muesli dish, –

a bowl of porridge not amiss –

I plunged my fork deep in the pot

and spooned gold honey onto mix.

The jams and pickles, sloe gin jars –

ghoul specimens of organs, blood –

thank God for vinegar preserve,

a promise realised before.

Those languorous, drawn heady days

of elderflower, drone buzzy gnats,

will come gain, blaze summer tastes.

For now, past future on the shelves,

swelt sweating stove for spreading loaf,

float gherkins, onions, sweet with cheese,

a ploughman’s grubby hand from sheaves,

slow thaw, then other layered snow

cannot remove year’s heavy brew,

sure harvest cycle, budding soon.

June 16, 2021June 16, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: creative, creativity, cycle, food, future, harvest, honey, jars, memory, nature, past, poem, Poetry, preserved, promise, senses, Stephen Kingsnorth, summer, time, vinegar, Wales, writing 1 Comment

The prints you laid – Gareth Culshaw

The coast elbowed the land

a sea came from afar

nudged the pebbles until they rolled.

We walked. Left a memory

in the road. I unclipped

the lead from my hand,

and you cut away the distance

between yourself and a gull.

I followed the earth’s golden dust

as you pounded the edge of land

and water.

An oystercatcher flicked up into the gulp.

I watched the sun on your fur

that carried light, put prints

in the sand before I got there.

I hope they’re still around to lead me

when I go back, alone.

Gareth lives in Wales. He has two collections by FutureCycle, The Miner & A Bard’s View. He is a current student at Manchester Met.

June 6, 2021June 6, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: coast, creative, creativity, distance, elements, Gareth Culshaw, light, loss, memory, movement, nature, past, pet, poem, Poetry, prints, road, sand, senses, sun, Wales, water, writing Leave a comment

A Chapel of Sunflowers – Marc Janssen

Driving out west of town

There is a field, maybe part of an abandoned farm,

Filled with sunflowers.

There should be a name for a group of sunflowers,

Rank on jumble they stand

Lion-faced their ragged yellow manes roar in a June rain shower.

Their faces a cloud confusion.

This field of flowers could be called a landscape of sunflowers

A beauty of sunflowers

A Saint Francis of sunflowers

A van Gogh of sunflowers

A peal

A heart

A tender

A good grove of sunflowers.

Then it was gone

Somewhere behind me,

And the next thing comes into view

Between rain drops

Green and colorful and new.

May 31, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: beauty, colours, creative, creativity, driving, elements, farm, field, flowers, grove, heart, journey, landscape, Marc Janssen, moment, nature, poem, Poetry, rain, sunflowers, US, view, writing Leave a comment

Ghosts in the Nursery – Kerry Ryan

Will you help me? My son says.

Always, I reply, as I always do.

He looks up from his Lego.

What if one day you say no?

(To play what ifs is his favourite).

I laugh. That’ll never happen.

He pulls a roof tile off a brick.

But do some mamas not help?

My mind drills through years

to rain, ocean, storm.

Outside, a child wails.

Oh, that sound, I say.

My son frowns. What sound?

I can’t hear anything.

Kerry is the founder of Write like a Grrrl. Her writing has been featured in various publications including Steer, The Manchester Review, the Kenyon Review and Spilling Ink. Kerry has recently been published in Queerlings and has poems forthcoming from Off Menu Press. Her play Trust was recently performed at the Gulbenkian Theatre. Find Kerry on Twitter @writelikeagrrrl and at www.writelikeagrrrl.com.

May 25, 2021May 26, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: creative, creativity, family, ghosts, Kerry Ryan, memories, mind, nursery, past, play, poem, Poetry, question, rain, reply, roof, senses, sound, storm, wail, window, writing, years Leave a comment

White Butterflies – Andy Eycott

White butterflies

crisp as a new playing cards,

hinged wings

guitar picks strumming.

The first rests on yellow petals

the second fluttering

over blackberries ripening,

both blown into the bushes

as a train that doesn’t stop

at this station thunders through.

A flash of bright white returns

drawn back by a dandelion sun.

Andy lives in South East London and currently works within the NHS. Since being diagnosed with dyslexia at forty-eight he has been published in a number of magazines and anthologies. These include Obsessed with Pipework, Worktown Words, Orbis, The Dawntreader, The Cannon’s Mouth, Snakeskin, Runcible Spoon, Sentinel Literary Quarterly and Poems in the Waiting Room. He had also qualified as a counsellor and enjoys writing stories for his grandson.

May 12, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: Andy Eycott, animals, blackberries, bushes, butterflies, creative, creativity, fauna, flight, fruit, London, nature, petals, poem, Poetry, rest, return, senses, sun, train, UK, wings, writing Leave a comment

oakfruit – Martin Potter

an oak’s

robustness all

reduced to essence nutwise

gloss green encased shaping egg

its sticky thimble cup

unclasps to earth

the acorn

May 4, 2021May 4, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: acorn, colour, creative, creativity, cup, description, earth, egg, encased, essence, form, green, Martin Potter, nature, nut, oak, poem, Poetry, robust, shape, thimble, UK, writing Leave a comment

El Dorado – Ted Mc Carthy

“The fish fanciers, sitting by their ponds and gazing

into their depths, were tracing shadows

darker than they understood.” – Rubicon by Tom Holland

Arid – it took twenty years for the word to come.

And what did we expect, creeping that Saturday

down laneways whose leaves were dying into red,

towards the El Dorado of an orchard whispered about,

its apples untasted for years, guarded by a gun?

How near we were to town. How easily lost.

The youngest, last seen years ago, standing asleep,

wedged between three squatters in a phone box.

His eyes, they said, when he opened them, still had

that child’s disappointment at finding his last sweet gone;

suddenly he remembered himself and retreated.

He was a river of words at twelve

and I remember him now, from nowhere,

his life too fierce and frank to be glossed over,

unlike the rest of us, we on the cusp then of knowing

not the taste but the craving for it. So on

we blundered, countryside itching under our collars

until we turned and stumbled into a yard

ringed by trees, their fruit greener than leaves,

huge, monstrous almost. But we had to pick them.

And the house. No gun as frightening

as that abandoned silence, or the comb-teeth

litter of fish we knew we’d seen in books.

Never earth so bare as that dried pond.

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.

April 25, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: apples, countryside, creative, creativity, earth, elements, fish, fruit, house, Ireland, leaves, memory, nature, orchard, past, poem, Poetry, pond, senses, silence, Ted Mc Carthy, trees, writing Leave a comment

Patchwork Candle – Cat Caie

I used up all my candles, collected all the leftover wax.

My big Orange, Cinnamon and Clove came to an end.

Rusty flames, heat in my cheeks, an envelope-seal kissed shut.

I bought you a ring with my words engraved in.

Liquid gold melted wax over your silver band in a jar,

I poured in your favourite colour to cover the question up.

Now, I wait.

You’ll burn the wick whilst I pace alongside the festive scent.

Autumnal colours make it smaller everyday.

Maybe you’ll find the answer at the bottom of the jar.

I wonder how long it will take.

I wonder how long the candle will last.

I wonder, what will be your answer to the question I asked?

Cat Caie is a poet and writer who is currently based in Liverpool. Studying Creative Writing and Popular Music, she cites inspirations such as Orla Gartland, Halsey and Philip Pullman.

April 18, 2021April 18, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: answer, candle, Cat Caie, cinnamon, clove, colours, creative, creativity, heat, kiss, Liverpool, orange, poem, Poetry, question, ring, scent, senses, UK, waiting, words, writing 1 Comment

Souvenir – Isabel Greenslade

I left the car on the cliff top,

went looking for a toilet, found a bird.

There used to be a coal mine under here –

that’s what the guidebook said,

and the mark on the map.

It’s long dead, whatever it was,

probably dead when I was at home

looking it up in the bird book.

Fieldfare? Thrush? Which colour plate,

which description did it fit?

Anyway, there it was, trapped in a toilet block

in a car park empty of other visitors.

There were only two of us.

This assemblage of stone sand wind and air

progressed up and down the cubicles,

one two three four five five four three two one

its feet scrabbling on the overhead cisterns.

Too far above me to catch, it wouldn’t be wafted

towards the doorway with my map.

Already I was trying to name it as it struck

at the skylight that we could both see.

Death was always certain – inside a neglected egg,

by teeth or talon, by being shaken loose.

It didn’t need its name, only the sky which turned solid on it.

I flushed and walked out over the stone floor

into the wind, past the laminated pictures of the mine.

I got back into the car, drove to the heritage museum

where miners are trapped on a screen, to be bidden by a button

so someone knows they’re still there.

It’s history now, that bird. I thought about it

on the motorway all the way home.

April 11, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: bird, creative, creativity, death, doorway, encounter, heritage, history, home, Isabel Greenslade, journey, London, map, memory, mine, poem, Poetry, senses, sky, skylight, sound, UK, writing Leave a comment