don’t – Mark Goodwin

 

don’t

 

try to tell

a wet shape

 

silent but for

grasses’ grasping

 

at it

 

that the five

snail shells lit

 

like tiny bulbs of

coloured glass

 

kept in wet’s

cradling

 

palms

 

cannot hold

solid

 

sound

 

---

Mark Goodwin is a poet-sound-artist, and speaks & writes in various ways. He is also a walker, balancer, stroller, & climber. He has a number of books & chapbooks with various poetry houses, including Leafe Press, Longbarrow Press, Nine Arches Press, & Shearsman Books. His poetry was included in The Ground Aslant – An Anthology of Radical Landscape Poetry edited by Harriet Tarlo (Shearsman Books 2011) and The Footing edited by Brian Lewis (Longbarrow Press 2013). His latest chapbook – a compressed mountain travelogue called Erodes On Air – was recently published in North America by Middle Creek. Mark lives with his partner on a narrowboat just north of Leicester. He tweets poems from @kramawoodgin, and some of his sound-enhanced poetry is here: https://markgoodwin-poet-sound-artist.bandcamp.com.

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March 20, 2022May 9, 2022 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: animals, bulbs, creative, creativity, creatures, elements, glass, grass, Leicester, Mark Goodwin, moment, nature, palms, poem, Poetry, senses, shape, shells, silence, snails, sound, UK, writing Leave a comment

The Wren on the Sidewalk – Don Krieger

 

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.

March 29, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: UncategorizedTags: air, animals, bird, creative, creativity, Don Krieger, dragonfly, elements, grass, hop, jump, look, moment, movement, nature, PA, poem, Poetry, sidewalk, snatch, US, wren, writing 3 Comments

Bear – Rhianne Celia

 

She kneads herself into the grass,

brooches of hay collecting on her back.

I’m on my stomach, the grass glossed

and sun-pooled, and for once

I’m not waiting for something or someone

to slip from surface talk to the big stuff

as readily as a mother forgives –

I’m watching her beard fill with buttercups

and the wet beads on her tongue nudge back

and forth as she shimmies against me.

I reach for a stick, throw it, and off she trots,

her paws a skit as she loses track

of its flight. She returns with an open

tennis ball in her mouth, a clopping ring box

she presents with a flourish. I readily accept,

placing it on my stomach like an upturned

book, and then I’m looking at the sky – a hearty

magenta block, and the remainder of my evening

appears in hob flames and final Tupperware clicks.

She leads me home, my hessian stopwatch,

urging me to live, live, live.

I swallow as the script starts up.

 

 

Born and raised in Manchester, UK, Rhianne has recently completed an MA in Creative Writing at The University of Manchester. She has loved words (and arranging them) since she could put fluffy pen to paper (that’s a lot of fluff, and a lot of paper!). She explores human relationships in all of their wonderful complexity in her work and writes a lot about mental health, a subject close to her heart. You can find more of her poetry and general musings over at rhianne-writes.tumblr.com.

May 2, 2019 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: colour, evening, flight, flora, flowers, forgiveness, grass, home, Manchester, movement, nature, paws, poem, Poetry, Rhianne Celia, senses, sky, sound, sun, talk, time, UK, waiting Leave a comment

Seven sleeper/thruddle-crump/hazel mouse – Rebecca Gethin

 

Under leaves a furry apple of a one-ounce-mouse

sleeps fast in a cup woven with honeysuckle bark.

gaps darned with moss and grass blades.

 

Before sleep it gorges on rosehips, hawthorn

and blackberries, or hazel nuts, leaving little round holes

in the shells. Before seven months of sleep it must be fat.

 

With cold growing thicker, its metabolism slows to a tick over

inside its core. The furred tail is a scarf wound across its face,

as it curls itself into the pips of its heartbeat.

 

 

Rebecca Gethin lives on Dartmoor in Devon. In 2017 two pamphlets were published: A Sprig of Rowan by Three Drops Press and All the Time in the World by Cinnamon Press who published an earlier collection called A Handful of Water and two novels. She has been a Hawthornden Fellow. In 2018 she jointly won the Coast to Coast Pamphlet competition and has been awarded a writing residency at Brisons Veor. Find more at www.rebeccagethin.wordpress.com.

January 23, 2019January 23, 2019 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: bark, cold, core, creative, creativity, Devon, food, grass, heartbeat, life, months, moss, mouse, nature, poem, Poetry, Rebecca Gethin, scarf, shells, sleep, tail, UK, writing Leave a comment

Drinking You In – Stephen Mead

 

Pores open,

pores becoming all weather,

its every possible effect & degree

when we are plants pressing tips

to windows

or when we

are that grass itself

now eye-wide as mouths

singing

give,

touch,

give & return us back

to the spirit of skin

 

sated by breathing

 

 

Stephen Mead is an Outsider multi-media artist and writer. Since the 1990s he’s been grateful to many editors for publishing his work in print zines and eventually online. He is also grateful to have managed to keep various day jobs for the Health Insurance. Find out more at Poetry on the Line, Stephen Mead.

September 1, 2018 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: body, breathing, creative, creativity, degree, effect, eye, grass, nature, plants, poem, Poetry, pores, return, senses, singing, skin, spirit, Stephen Mead, touch, weather, windows, writing Leave a comment

Side By Side – Gerry Sikazwe

 

Side by side, we’ve walked

Through dust sickening, mud

bleaching and the pleasant in between

 

Side by side, we’ve walked

Through stabbing thorns, cutting

stones and soft grass comforting

 

 

Gerry Sikazwe is a Zambian poet. He is currently studying at the University of Zambia pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Adult Education. He manages a poetry page on Facebook: “Words and voices from a root” and a poetry blog, Scribbles of a Root. His poems have been featured on sites such as Dissident Voices, AfricanWriter.com, In Between Hangovers, Mshikamano.com and Tipton Poetry Journal.

October 18, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: between, comfort, creative, creativity, dust, elements, Gerry Sikazwe, grass, humanity, life, movement, mud, nature, poem, Poetry, senses, soft, stones, thorns, together, walking, writing, Zambia Leave a comment