Downtown after the offices let out – John Grey

 

Tall buildings cast overlapping shadows.

It’s night long before nighttime.

Last of the commuters catch their train, their bus.

Garages empty out.

The few inner city dwellers

lock and latch the doors

of their small fortresses.

At street level,

two men approach each other.

It’s dark. Identities are smudged.

Is it? No it can’t be?

Wasn’t he the one who… ?

And didn’t he…?

They nod as they pass –

recognition or just acknowledgment

that there’s no other in this world –

neither gives an indication.

Each hears footsteps

on the concrete sidewalk,

softer and softer,

farther and farther away.

Then all would be silent

if it weren’t for themselves.

But they don’t feel responsible,

just alone.

 

---

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Published in Nebo, Euphony, Columbia Review, Leading Edge, Poetry East and Midwest Quarterly.

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January 7, 2023 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: Australia, buildings, city, creative, creativity, darkness, distance, encounter, footsteps, identity, John Grey, leaving, moment, night, poem, Poetry, recognition, shadows, silence, sound, street, US, writing Leave a comment

You’re so cool – Anna Idelevich

 

A tear mist stettled on the city

and I can’t see, I don’t write for show-off,

I’m driving on the night road of interconnections, you can’t see

point blank,

but it is audible, audible as if the stars are pouring ointments,

on the rustle.

I am one of them small, millionth.

Communication with you is nothing but needles,

but it’s dark in the car, I’m sitting lit up,

let’s say lit, but the Universe was not enough

gunpowder,

and it’s just a silhouette filled up with you

light, do not remove all the sadness from the stains,

and you can call for a long time and pull your hands into the distance.

Such a nebula over the city

illegal,

your colossus is reinforced concrete,

but the song sounds not funeral, but restless,

as if window tokens were nailed through the air to

rest,

and if there is no time, then there is neither river nor bank,

turn your head, I am parallel to you, to the fire and

time.

 

---

Anna Idelevich is a scientist by profession, Ph.D., MBA, trained in the neuroscience field at Harvard University. She writes poetry for pleasure. Her books and poetry collections include DNA of the Reversed River and Cryptopathos published by the Liberty Publishing House, NY. Anna’s poems were published by BlazeVOX, Louisville Review, Salmon Creek Journal, Bourgeon Magazine, In Parenthesis, O:J&A, Gyroscope Review among others. She hopes you will enjoy their melody, new linguistic tone, and a slight tint of an accent.

February 8, 2022 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: air, Anna Idelevich, city, communication, creative, creativity, distance, drive, elements, light, mist, poem, poet, Poetry, river, road, sadness, senses, song, sound, stars, time, writing Leave a comment

Flowers and night-time flowers – DS Maolalai

 

camden. the bus

flipped like a swing

in bad weather

with somebody

kicking their heels.

11pm. earth gone

grey in salty

shades of orange.

the shops all closed, bars

curled open,

like flowers

giving way to night-

time flowers. someone

already hammered,

being sick in a corner

next to a fish shop.

pavement alive

like a pond

with ducks.

a part of the city

with evening in shades,

beautiful and busy.

stylish people

and shirts

bought from second

hand stores.

 

---

DS Maolalai has been nominated eight times for Best of the Net and five times for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in two collections, Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden (Encircle Press, 2016) and Sad Havoc Among the Birds (Turas Press, 2019).

April 4, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: beauty, Camden, city, clothes, colours, corner, creative, creativity, DS Maolalai, earth, elements, evening, flowers, Ireland, life, night, pavement, people, poem, Poetry, time, weather, writing Leave a comment

Riverdawn – Daniel Tobias Behan

 

Dawn-break 

over water – 

cold depths she runs 

in her course;

 

shifting blue-grey 

and orange juice

canvas, of 

painted sky’s 

mirroring;  

 

sombre: her

undulating 

ice-flow 

belies the 

busyness 

of city-day

scurrying.

 

---

Daniel Tobias Behan is a London born-and-based poet. From 2017 to 2019, Daniel performed regularly at the London Irish Centre, Camden; in 2018 Daniel was interviewed by the Irish Post as part of their London Calling podcast series, and in 2020 had a short film made of ‘The Visit’ featuring acclaimed actor Nora Connolly and directed by Patrick O’Mahony, was interviewed for Wombwell Rainbow, and commenced a poetry series ‘Findings’ on channillo.com.

December 20, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: canvas, city, cold, colours, course, creative, creativity, Daniel Tobias Behan, dawn, elements, flow, ice, landscape, London, nature, poem, Poetry, river, senses, sky, UK, water, writing Leave a comment

Granada – Hannah Patient

 

We step outside of time for just three days

and make this place our own: get coffee

every morning at the same café, where

ageing waiters all wear neat blue waistcoats.

This city’s pomegranate-like, they say:

bursting at the seams with juicy seeds

of things to come, of things that might have been.

We walk around the town in midday heat

and everything slows down: we’re living at the speed

of unripe fruit on orange trees and buskers in the streets.

Lost in Sacromonte, we give up and watch

the whole world pass us by, the palace

on its lonely hill a solid compass point.

As night falls, we get brave and mess around:

go rambling through the undergrowth

in the belly of the town, eat tapas in

our favourite bar as the Spanish sun goes down.

We join processions through the streets

where children chant and incense swings;

get punch-drunk on the smell of it,

turn sleepy listening to the man who sings

each night, alone, in the courtyard by our house.

 

I say that like it’s ours; of course it’s not –

nothing here really belongs to us.

The next day when the sun grows restless, hot,

we pack our bags and leave for a new place.

Time speeds up once more; how quickly we forget

the peerless lustre of these Andalusian days.

 

 

Hannah Patient is a third-year English student at Somerville College, Oxford, and the former Essex Young Poet of the Year. Her work has appeared in publications including ASH, The Oxford Review of Books, Blacklist Journal and The Purple Breakfast Review. In her spare time she enjoys exploring crumbling buildings, watching detective dramas and eating chips with mayonnaise.

September 25, 2019September 27, 2019 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: Andalusia, city, colours, creative, creativity, fruit, Hannah Patient, heat, memory, night, Oxford, place, poem, Poetry, senses, Spain, sun, time, travel, trees, UK, world, writing Leave a comment

Boxed Dusk – Jenny Moroney

 

A beginning of an evening was grasped by the room

whose sparse light seeped in from a solitary window.

Lain on the bed, a pencilled in person noted the square

of sunset with its pastel pinks, blues and greens

layered over a charcoal city skyline.

 

Moving their hand against the square

so the light was sieved through their skin like dust,

they noted how this beginning of an evening

could be anything from a painting

to a life.

 

 

Jenny Moroney lives in South-East London. She studied English Literature with Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia and has been published online and in print.

August 4, 2019August 4, 2019 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: bed, beginning, city, colours, creative, creativity, dusk, dust, evening, Jenny Moroney, layers, life, light, London, nature, poem, Poetry, room, skin, sky, UK, window, writing 1 Comment

An Almost Empty City – Samuel W. James

 

The sea is tired and the sky above seems runny

while on the shore of the sea

humans swarm like bees;

you’d think the slow waves were made of honey.

 

Inland, mile by mile, the leaves seem to glow

with the lime leaves’ piercing greens

which is only the sun’s gleam,

and neither the trees nor the sun even know.

 

The bees themselves patrol the streets

and they are the only ones.

Even down to the concrete, the world is sweet;

down to the marrow of its bones.

Its secretive souls need not be discreet

when the humans have all either hidden or flown.

 

 

 

Samuel W. James’ poems can also be found in Allegro, The Eyewear Review, The Fortnightly Review, Dissident Voice, The Literary Hatchet, Amsterdam Quarterly, London Grip, Clockwise Cat, Peeking Cat, Sentinel Quarterly, Scarlet Leaf Review, Door is a Jar, The Beautiful Space, Elsewhere Journal and Ink, Sweat and Tears.

July 16, 2018July 16, 2018 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: bees, bones, city, concrete, creative, creativity, elements, humans, marrow, nature, patrol, poem, Poetry, Samuel W. James, sea, sky, souls, streets, sun, swarm, sweet, trees, world Leave a comment

Separation – Rachel Lewis

 

In seconds the ice will crack bright on the pond.

You’ll lift a bubble of it in your hand, ungloved.

In minutes the mud will have soaked through our shoes,

And we’ll leave behind the gardens and the bending statues.

In an hour’s time we’ll leave this place I’ve always loved

And in a day anyone might have come or gone.

 

Hot, tight, soft, close, are goodbyes here,

As though intensity could be a kind of glue,

For all the things we’ve promised here, to glue

Them to my promise that next year,

This city, here.

 

 

Rachel is a London-based poet. She was previously a poetry editor for the Mays Anthology and a Young Producer with Poet in the City. Her poetry can also be found on the Poetry Society website, in the Dawntreader and Kindling journals, and unpredictably at live events around London.

March 17, 2018 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: bubble, city, creative, creativity, elements, gardens, goodbye, hand, ice, intensity, leaving, London, mud, nature, poem, Poetry, pond, promise, Rachel Lewis, shoes, time, UK, writing Leave a comment

Ithaca – Rachel Lewis

 

My wife is behind me

And my life before.

The sky lit from inside itself

With golden dying day.

Turning itself,

Turning itself,

And turning again.

We are sailing east

Towards a dawn

That has not yet risen and will not

Til terrors past absolve us

Of having left at all.

Ithaca, sharpening blue

And deepening silver,

My house just one

In our city stretching out the coast.

My father buried there, his dust

Rising in flowers touching heads to dew.

My nurses there, their old hands threading

At baby clothes, sat in sun smiling wrinkled.

Ithaca I can feel you holding back.

Something in me will not come with me.

It will stay murmuring in the cypress,

It will croak with the cicadas at night,

It will live with the snakes in the sand and the gulls on the water.

Promises, winds,

They cannot move a weight of water.

Ithaca I promise

I have never and will never leave you

Even as winds blow me on

Into the rose red grasp

Of this first dawn alone.

 

 

Rachel is a London-based poet. She was previously a poetry editor for the Mays Anthology and a Young Producer with Poet in the City. Her poetry can also be found on the Poetry Society website, in the Dawntreader and Kindling journals, and unpredictably at live events around London.

February 17, 2018February 17, 2018 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: animals, city, colours, creative, creativity, dust, elements, fear, flowers, home, Ithaca, journey, London, nature, night, poem, Poetry, Rachel Lewis, sounds, sun, travel, UK, writing Leave a comment

Coldharbour Lane – Rebecca Metcalfe

 

You drive to the end of the lane. Past the rice factory, the seafood processing plant, the paper factory, the chemical works, the pharmaceutical plant. Grey upon grey upon grey sails past your car window and then disappears into your rear-view mirror as you drive further down the lane. You reach the turning at the end of the lane, the road narrows and there are dense bushes either side. You reach the carpark at the end, and you see the river. The wide, grey river where the tide beats endlessly on, eastwards. Mud lines the banks on both sides, thick, stinking mud that will never clean off. The footprints snaking across this ooze show the steps took by recently-flown wading birds that are now no longer to be seen. A bit closer to the water, the hulking mass of the concrete barges, leftover from some war long past, sit and refuse to rot, only crumble slowly. Then there’s the metal statue of a diver, who looks like a cage and crawls out of the water whenever the tide is going out. He will never reach the bank. The water of the river is violent and boats jolt along it. Police boats or cargo boats carrying industrial containers in and out of the city. Going eastward, they are on the very edges of the city now. The factory smoke mixes with the clouds and they roll across the paleness along with the tide, heading out to sea and waiting to hit the vast East Anglian sky.

 

 

Rebecca Metcalfe is a 22-year-old student and writer from Essex. She did her undergraduate degree at the University of Chester and is now studying for an MA in Victorian Literature from the University of Liverpool. She has been published in Pandora’s Box, Flash: The International Short Story Magazine and in the Electric Reads Young Writers’ Anthology 2017.

February 6, 2018February 9, 2018 by foxglovejournal Categories: flash fiction, ProseTags: birds, boats, city, Coldharbour Lane, creative, creativity, drive, elements, factories, fiction, flash, Prose, Rebecca Metcalfe, river, road, short, sky, smoke, story, transport, UK, water, writing Leave a comment

Yesterday Calling – Laura Potts

 

Somewhen,

a gull snaps its wings

and laughs

as I stretch out the past

 

to the city with its dark heart

and us,

splitting our skins for a kiss.

 

On the rim of a memory,

spinning,

we fizz

like silver pins

on that street

or this.

 

My lover’s words I remember

trembled

like globed pearls on tepid stars

the hot dark of torchlight

kicking

from the pavement

sparks

as he went.

 

Bone-bent,

with eighty-six years in my face,

I read books

and play cards

and years have dried up,

slow prunes

in a vase.

 

But last,

in my crabbed hands his skin,

doused with river lights,

no foul breath of wartime but

a whole lost world of long-kissed nights,

 

thin films of eyes candled bright

in the lobes of my palms,

the four-medal arms deliberate,

passionate,

strong.

 

 

Afterwards, the distant salute of a bomb.

 

 

Laura Potts is twenty-one years old and lives in West Yorkshire. She has twice been named a Foyle Young Poet. Her poems have appeared in Seamus Heaney’sAgenda, The Interpreter’s House and Poetry Salzburg Review. She has recently been shortlisted for a Charter-Oak Award for Best Historical Fiction at The University of Colorado and also made The 2017 Oxford Brookes International Poetry Prize shortlist. This year Laura became one of The Poetry Business’ New Poets and a BBC New Voice for 2017. Her first BBC radio drama Sweet The Mourning Dew will air at Christmas 2017.

December 14, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: age, change, city, creative, creativity, eyes, heart, humanity, laughter, Laura Potts, lights, love, memory, past, poem, Poetry, stars, street, time, war, world, writing, years Leave a comment

Alma Mater – Laura Potts

 

Widow-black and winter, evening took me south into

lamps burning blue in the dusk. Out and over my hometown musk

lay the hinterland hills breathing low in the dark. Still,

frostspark sharp on the city streets, holy rain sweet

in the winter and the wet, with no evening stars ahead I let

the pavement take me home. Through the town nocturnal, gloam

 

and grey, my chimney throat coughing its smoke, I saw aslope

on the city’s slow spine those old black gates, the summer of my days

inside. Grief cracked my face. Those navy girls and me, a pace

always ahead. But in the pale stairwell light the ghost of my girlhood dead

in its fresh green spring and gone. From roadside wet I looked on

at this child of light, her afterglow bright, her ashes of life

 

already black. The cold breath of loss on my face. At my back

a schoolbell cracked at the evening air. I saw Death at my table there

tipping his hat, and the years in my face that sank as I sat

at that desk at the back of the class. I remember that. And last,

on an old December evening, down hallways dark the wilting hymns

of girls turned ghosts before their time, I saw their eyes

 

like candles cold, like lights no longer leading home. Outside, to the bone

I shook and swung, the darkened seas that were my eyes done

and gone at the sight of myself. Each girl ringing her own passing bell.

Well, in that mist and half-dark morning, my face a clenching fist

in pavement pools, I saw that septic, terminal school

for what it was. No, I never went back, of course.

 

I tipped my compass north.

 

 

Laura Potts is twenty-one years old and lives in West Yorkshire. She has twice been named a Foyle Young Poet. Her poems have appeared in Seamus Heaney’s Agenda, The Interpreter’s House and Poetry Salzburg Review. She has recently been shortlisted for a Charter-Oak Award for Best Historical Fiction at The University of Colorado and also made The 2017 Oxford Brookes International Poetry Prize shortlist. This year Laura became one of The Poetry Business’ New Poets and a BBC New Voice for 2017. Her first BBC radio drama Sweet The Mourning Dew will air at Christmas 2017.

December 7, 2017December 7, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: childhood, city, colours, creative, creativity, dusk, ghost, home, humanity, Laura Potts, life, memory, nature, poem, Poetry, rain, school, stars, UK, weather, winter, writing, youth Leave a comment

Servitude – Nigel F. Ford

 

They have walked in warm weather all the way from the beach, along the harbour wall, into the city, through the old quarter, up to the skirts of the castle, seeking the shade where possible, trying not to hurry, but not wanting to be late.

An attempt has been made before.

Two attempts in fact.

This time we are determined.

‘Do I look alright?’

‘You look fine. What about me. What do you think?’

‘O you always look alright.’

‘That’s alright then.’

‘What do you think? Can you see? Is there a long queue?’

‘It’s difficult to say. There is a queue of about half a dozen persons at the door. But then, there are several people leaning against the wall opposite the entrance. Some of them have come out for a smoke, I should think. But some of them might be part of the queue.’

‘We should probably start by waiting at the door.’

‘That’s the best plan.’

‘I think those people there are leaving. She’s fishing in her handbag.’

‘Could be. Still, we’re not the first in the queue.’

‘What’s the time?’

‘Eight thirty.’

‘We’ll wait until eight forty-five, but no longer.’

‘Alright.’

They stand patiently. A waiter talks to them briefly, smiles, laughs, jots down a note on a pad, nods and leaves.

Around them the evening crowd heaves and swirls, revealing empty hollows and then refilling them, like the sea they have watched for much of the afternoon.

‘What’s the time?’

‘Ten to nine.’

‘We’ll wait until nine o’clock. But not a moment longer.’

‘Alright.’

 

 

Born in 1944, Nigel F. Ford wrote his first radio play aged 14 (refused). Jobs include reporter for The Daily Times, Lagos, Nigeria, travel writer for Sun Publishing, London, English teacher for Berlitz, Hamburg, copy writer for Ted Bates, Stockholm. Had a hand in starting the Brighton Fringe in 1967. He started painting etc. in 1983 and has regularly exhibited in Sweden and on the Internet in various publication. In addition, several magazines in UK and US have been kind enough to publish his writing. Such as Nexus, Outposts, Encounter, New Spokes, Inkshed, The Crazy Oik, Weyfarers, Acumen, Critical Quarterly, Staple, T.O.P.S, The North, Foolscap, Iota, Poetry Nottingham, Tears in the Fence etc. He is now trying to produce & direct one of his stage plays.

November 6, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: flash fiction, ProseTags: attempt, beach, castle, city, creative, creativity, crowd, door, entrance, evening, fiction, flash, humanity, journey, Nigel F. Ford, queue, sea, short, story, time, waiting, weather, writing Leave a comment

Days Lie In Wait – Paul Waring

 

I wander streets 

as days lie in wait 

on blind corners 

and the future 

hides behind clock faces.

 

Six magpies steal gold 

from afternoon sun,

the seventh 

knows secrets

like city stone.

 

In corners of a shadow 

a black cat

sees me coming,

stretches, counts time,

disappears into days. 

 

And waits 

to deliver news

I’d least expect.

 

Paul Waring is a retired clinical psychologist who once designed menswear and was a singer/songwriter in several Liverpool bands. His poems have appeared in journals/sites including Reach Poetry, Eunoia Review, The Open Mouse and are forthcoming in Clear Poetry and Amaryllis. He recently returned from living in Spain and Portugal and continues to enjoy being re-acquainted with the wonderful variety of nature in Wirral and other parts of Britain. His blog is https://waringwords.wordpress.com.

August 20, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: animals, cat, city, clock, corners, creative, creativity, days, future, gold, magpies, Paul Waring, poem, Poetry, secrets, shadow, stone, streets, sun, time, UK, waiting, writing Leave a comment

Cityscape – Ali Jones

 

In concrete jungles, he dreams concrete trees,

to knock at his window in perfect cadences,

 

as night lowers the sky and curtains run their tracks.

He sees seeds lifted in the air, blown high

 

to ride with clouds, on moth wings and

twilight whispers. The trees have seen him,

 

they know where he sleeps, watch them lean in

and put their heads together, to show him

 

imagination and free thinking, without and within,

in grey skies, under a metal moon, a triumph of green.

 

Ali Jones is a teacher and mother of three. Her work has appeared in Fire, Poetry Rivals, Strange Poetry, Ink Sweat and Tears, Snakeskin Poetry, Atrium, Mother’s Milk Books, Breastfeeding Matters, Breastfeeding Today and Green Parent magazine. She has also written for The Guardian.

August 10, 2017August 10, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: Ali Jones, city, clouds, colours, concrete, creativity, dreams, imagination, jungles, metal, moon, nature, night, poem, Poetry, sky, sleep, trees, twilight, urban, whispers, wings, writing Leave a comment