It’s hard, here in orbit,
not to be able to hear
the simultaneous hum
of all those minds at work.
But it’s far harder to imagine
that this orb contains
all of the love and fear
for as far as eyes can see.
Ben Banyard lives in Portishead, near Bristol, UK. He’s the author of a pamphlet, Communing (Indigo Dreams, 2016) and a full collection, We Are All Lucky (Indigo Dreams, 2018). He blogs and posts mixtapes at https://benbanyard.wordpress.com.
I move toward the pool with delusions
of grace coursing through my muscles,
eager to feel the sky against my skin.
I am caught on the wings of a dream,
limbs in perfect formation,
like a bird in tandem with the wind
plunging toward the water.
I stop to linger in the scent of flight.
The smell of chlorine attacks my senses,
tearing doubt into my imagination.
I stumble to the ladder and start
my climb to the 3- meter board,
a thimble of fright tapping
a ballad across my rib bones.
Cold metal screams against my feet,
vines of anxiety crawling with skill
up the back of my neck.
I look nervously toward my coach,
pleading for a glimmer of confidence
or a fistful of staunch advice.
“If your fear is greater than your desire,
climb down”, she tells me.
It turns out I’m not a bird after all.
I prefer my feet on the ground.
Susan Richardson is living, writing and going blind in Los Angeles. In addition to poetry, she writes a blog called, Stories from the Edge of Blindness. Her work has been published in Foxglove Journal, Amaryllis, The Writing Disorder and Eunoia Review, among others. She was awarded the Sheila – Na – Gig 2017 Winter Poetry Prize, featured in the Literary Juice Q&A Series, and chosen as the Ink Sweat & Tears March 2018 Poet of the Month. She also writes for the Arts and Lit Collective, Morality Park.
Do you recall
watching waves through
a library window,
where a painter stood
on the edge of the beach
with the afternoon light.
Footprints that walked
towards the plastic inhabited sea,
imagination drawn there
by the coastline’s question
as to where all
the labyrinths of life disappear.
Before leaving the wide frame
he stood there,
a personal composition
that changed under
a resurrected air.
Byron Beynon lives in Swansea, Wales. His work has appeared in several publications including London Magazine, Poetry Ireland Review, San Pedro River Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Yellow Nib and the human rights anthology In Protest (University of London and Keats House Poets). Collections include Human Shores (Lapwing Publications) and The Echoing Coastline (Agenda Editions).
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.
The shock of seeing Eustace in the charity shop window almost rattled Miranda out of her skin. She’d never believed her parents’ insistence that they hadn’t got rid of him. But twenty years later there he was. Eustace as he’d looked at the edge of the sea, watching her father tip grandpa’s ashes into the waves. Watching her father’s tears as the arc of grey grit hit the water. Listening to tales of grandpa’s fishing days; how he’d taught generations of boys to swim and fish and sail; how he was the best of men. While her cousins watched bits of crushed bone drift away on the tide, Miranda watched the boy. His white curls haloed around his head like the seeds of a dandelion clock before they’re blown away by the wind. She asked him who he was. “Eustace,” he said.
The psychiatrist suggested art therapy as a way to unlock whatever had caused Miranda’s mutism. However, he added, as several of her cousins exhibited the same symptoms there was probably a genetic component.
While Miranda painted Eustace he told her he knew why all the girls in her family were mute. She didn’t go back to art therapy. Instead she talked to Eustace.
The psychiatrist reassured Miranda’s parents that imaginary companions were common in solitary children, and it was simply coincidence that the boy in Miranda’s painting resembled her grandpa’s brother who’d drowned as a child, and when Miranda started socialising with real children the imaginary one would disappear. He did. And so did the painting.
“Nice painting, eh?’ said the charity shop owner.
She nodded. “I’ll take it.”
She’d show her cousins. She’d tell them about Eustace. She’d tell them everything.
Sandra Arnold lives in New Zealand. She is a novelist, essayist, short story and flash-fiction writer with a PhD in Creative Writing from CQ University, Australia. Her work has been widely published and anthologised in New Zealand and internationally and has won several awards. Her flash fiction appears in numerous journals including The Airgonaut, Spelk, Jellyfish Review, Flash Frontier, Blue Fifth Review and was selected for the UK 2017 National Flash Fiction Day international anthology, Sleep is a beautiful colour. Learn more at http://authors.org.nz/author/sandraarnold.
Bare tree branches
Intricately intertwined
Giving the illusion of black Spanish lace
Reaching out
Across an angry sky
The fiery glow of sunset
Darkened by purple clouds
Accentuating the effect
Seductively drawing me in
Capturing me
In a mysterious web of imagination
Filling me
With awe
Ann Christine Tabaka is better known by her middle name, Chris. She has been writing poems and rhymes since she was fourteen. She was an artist, a chemist, and a personal trainer. Her poems are in the Contemporary Group’s anthology “Dandelion in a Vase of Roses,” and the poetry journals “Whispers,” “The Society of Classical Poets,” “Indiana Voice Journal,” “Halcyon Days Magazine,” and “Scarlet Leaf Review.”
Foxglove Journal 