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.

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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

Tornado – Robert Beveridge

 

The tornado

whispers across

the green lake

 

heads for your eyes

so that when I kiss you

your body splatters me

with droplets of jade

 

 

Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry in Akron, OH. He has recent/upcoming appearances in New American Legends, Toho Journal, and Chiron Review, among others.

August 25, 2019 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: body, colour, creative, creativity, droplets, elements, eyes, green, jade, kiss, lake, nature, OH, poem, Poetry, Robert Beveridge, senses, sound, tornado, US, weather, whisper, writing Leave a comment

Love Of Mine – Daniel Tobias Behan

 

Love

of mine,

so are you

forged, in

muted

yearnings;

murmured

remembrances –

hushed yellowed

 

keys, of

sun-smile’s

faded verse

beaming;

measured, in

amber leaf’s

fractured shade

crumbled,

into moist

earthen-bed;

 

in words

cast gently,

through

shimmering

refractions

of deep sky’s

sonorous

canvas,

 

impressed

in cotton

cloud-floss,

singed, by

skirting

of emerald pine

sparkling;

 

in kiss of

frost-tendered

mountainside,

in sweetest

whispered

breath’s

exaltation.

 

My love,

such

are you

birthed,

in ballad

of thick root,

and fragrant

moss-lined soil;

in beetle

and bug’s

scurrying;

 

ant’s nest, bush,

and tree trunk:

the soft

underfoot

crackling

of scattered

parts: bark,

and branch,

seed,

and twig.

 

 

Daniel Tobias Behan is a London born-and-based poet. Since late 2017, Daniel has performed regularly at the London Irish Centre, Camden, and was interviewed by the Irish Post as part of their London Calling podcast series. Daniel sees creative writing, and especially poetry, as a great natural form of therapy and creative self-development, allowing thoughts and emotions to be communicated effectively in a non-linear fashion.

February 24, 2019 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: breath, cloud, colours, creative, creativity, Daniel Tobias Behan, earth, elements, fauna, kiss, love, nature, pine, poem, Poetry, senses, shade, sky, soil, sun, verse, words, writing 2 Comments

A Stone – Oak Ayling

 

Do you think

A stone taken up from the ground

Forgets where it is from?

Erased of place, of memory?

 

Do you think it remembers

The rough kiss

The tender current

The air, the ocean

The chatter of falcons nesting?

 

Does it still think fondly

Of the year you were born?

 

 

Oak Ayling is a young woman quietly stitching poetry into the blurry windswept border between Cornwall and Devon, England. Highly commended by Indigo Press in the Geoff Stevens Memorial Prize 2018, her work can be found in Anti Heroin Chic Magazine, the fast growing lit mag From Whispers to Roars and forthcoming charitable anthology ‘Shorthand’ by author Helen Cox in support of UK homeless charity Streetlink.

October 18, 2018 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: air, birth, creative, creativity, current, elements, England, falcons, kiss, life, memory, nature, Oak Ayling, ocean, place, poem, Poetry, senses, sound, stone, UK, world, writing Leave a comment

Outside the window – Tony Press

 

You can’t see nothing from here but if you could, what would you want it to be? That’s what she asked the first time I ever went to her apartment. We’d met in Sioux City when I was living there on a highway crew. She lived in Correctionville. Yes, Correctionville is the real name and you’ve probably already got an idea why it’s called that. Don’t bet on it.

I thought about it. Really: what would I want to see, if there were anything to see out her kitchen window. I’d seen the rest of the place and my answer was more important than you might think, because the kitchen was the only room with a window. The living room slash bedroom was nothing but three walls and the bathroom was the same, just smaller. It had more plumbing, too, which was a good thing.

Sweetie, I said, I’d like to see one of those Venice canals.

Venice? Venice, Italy?

That’s the one.

Oh, Darrell, did you ever go to Italy? Did you ride in one of those boats there?

No. Nope. I’ve never been across the Atlantic. Or even seen the Pacific. The farthest east I’ve ever been was South Carolina and the farthest west – you’ll laugh, maybe – was Kansas. I was at Fort Riley for four years and two more in Manhattan after I got out.

Manhattan? New York Manhattan? I thought you were talking about Kansas.

I am. It’s smaller than the one with Rockefeller Center and the Empire State Building and all that, but it’s got the same name. I was working at the university there: Kansas State.

Oh. Oh. Okay. Anyway, let’s just stand here and you can tell me about the canal out the window.

I poured her another glass of wine and one more for me, and then I lowered the light. I’ll give the place some credit, it had a cool dimmer switch, at least for the kitchen. I put my left arm around her shoulders and with my other I pointed outside.

Look, that’s the Grand Canal and over there … can you see it? That’s the Bridge of Sighs. If two people stand on that bridge and kiss they will be together forever. Flat-out-fucking-forever.

Really?

Really, I said. Step up onto it with me, but careful, ‘cuz it was raining so it might be slippery. I held her hand. That’s it, I said. Easy does it.

It feels real, she said. I’ve never been any place like this.

Kiss me, I said, and we’ll never be any place else, no matter where we are.

She did, and we held that kiss until I needed to breathe. She could have lasted longer, she said, and then we kissed again. I moved in that week.

I’ve still never seen the Atlantic, or the Pacific. I did – we did – get out to Nevada once. We drove to Omaha and took the train to Elko, where a buddy’s got a place. We saw mountains on that trip, so that was cool: no mountains in Iowa. I’ve got a cousin who lives in Hills, Iowa, but the name’s a joke. Maybe I ought to tell my cousin to look out her kitchen window and think about what she’d want to see, in her heart of hearts.

We have a bigger place in Correctionville now, a real house, with windows in every room, but each night before we go to bed we stand at a window, and look out at the Bridge of Sighs.

 

 

Tony Press tries to pay attention and sometimes he does. He’d be thrilled if you purchased his 2016 story collection, Crossing the Lines (Big Table). It’s available at indy bookstores, directly from him, or even from that Amazon place. He lives near the San Francisco Bay.

November 4, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: flash fiction, ProseTags: boats, bridge, CA, canals, conversation, fiction, flash, forever, heart, home, humanity, Italy, kiss, place, rain, relationship, short, story, Tony Press, travel, US, Venice, window Leave a comment

Of Wind and Rain – Arlene Antoinette

 

As he stood looking through the back window

at my english tea roses,

he said he couldn’t tell the difference

between the movement of the flowers

from the wind or from the rain.

How could you not, I replied,

confused by his lack of eyesight and insight.

 

When my roses are moved by the wind,

they move as one. Pink headed soldiers

lead by a strict drill sergeant,

each unwilling to be called out

for breaking formation

or for being the weak link in the chain.

Eager recruits desiring to satisfy their sergeant’s

every whim.

 

When my roses are moved by the rain,

each petal dances independently of the others

to the rhythm of the raindrops.

A single drop kissing the petal,

like a passionate lover

toying with his sweetheart’s emotions.

I can almost hear their squeals of delight

floating through the air.

 

He laughed, saying I was foolish 

to have given so much thought 

to such an insignificant thing. 

I cried, thinking him thoughtless

for ignoring one of the small beauties

of this world.

 

 

Arlene Antoinette enjoys writing poetry and flash fiction. More of her work may be found at: Sick Lit Mag, GIRLSENSE AND NONSENSE, Boston Accent Lit and The Ginger Collect.

October 16, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: air, Arlene Antoinette, colour, creative, creativity, dance, delight, difference, elements, emotions, humanity, insight, kiss, movement, nature, passion, petals, poem, Poetry, rain, rhythm, weather, writing Leave a comment

Jellyfish – Peycho Kanev

 

Ocean glittering in deadly blue light,

filled with small phosphorescent dots,

we are bounded on the east and west

by beaches and the repetitious, drugged

sway of the ocean becomes our way of

living;

the room is empty, save for us, and your

long tentacles scattered on the bed.

This cut piece of reality is a still life

painted with pain and love.

Long hours lead to endless ages as I

dive back into the water to give you

the kiss of life or to get stung.

 

Peycho Kanev is the author of 4 poetry collections and two chapbooks, published in the USA and Europe. He has won several European awards for his poetry and his poems have appeared in many literary magazines, such as Poetry Quarterly, Evergreen Review, Front Porch Review, Hawaii Review, Barrow Street, Sheepshead Review, Off the Coast, The Adirondack Review, Sierra Nevada Review, The Cleveland Review and many others.

March 6, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: animals, beaches, blue, creative, creativity, fauna, humanity, kiss, life, light, nature, ocean, Peycho Kanev, poem, Poetry, reality, relationship, sting, tentacles, water, wild, world, writing Leave a comment

Unfinished breakfast – Roma Havers

 

Cold burnt toast waits in dawn light

for a kettle shriek,

porridge stains hob-tops,

stiff boils emerge into oaty alps,

a lung faints above clouds

as her tongue lolls onto stone tiles;

last kiss into dirt and breadcrumbs,

A rib cracks in a gust of air,

lets out a tire hiss;

 

the cat flap swings in spring air

and paws tread prints into her snow-flesh,

veins mark snakes and ladders under claws,

purring, its soft head dings at a dead arm

and licks a line from ear to throat,

the wet skin does not move

 

like a pond where freeze takes hold

and goldfish hang

mouths open, in the glass,

the cat scrapes at the surface,

starved for fish.

One last tear melts down her,

red with life,

and the kettle sings mourning blues.

 

Roma Havers is a Manchester-based poet, currently in her third year of an Drama and English degree at The University of Manchester where she is the Books Editor for The Mancunion and Chair of the Creative Writing Society. She performs regularly at spoken word nights, and events such as Reclaim the Night and UniPresents.

February 14, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: breakfast, cat, clouds, creative, creativity, death, ending, fish, flesh, food, goldfish, kiss, life, loss, mourning, poem, Poetry, Roma Havers, skin, surface, tear, UK, writing Leave a comment