Parkour – Daun Daemon

 

sailing through saplings

            claws clutching first one stem

                        swinging to another and another

            paws grasping winter’s bare branches

                        tail dancing and switching

the giddy squirrel flung itself

            into the berry bedecked holly nearby

                        deftly dodging the prickles

            finally kicking with its back legs

                        launching onto a tall pine tree

scrambling up rough bark

            stopping thirty feet off the ground

                        and barking at its competitor

            parked on the poplar nearby

 

I had never thought of trees

            as vertical obstacle courses

                        for athletic risk-taking squirrels

            showing off their kinetic prowess

                        their giddy sciurid confidence

or was it joyful desperation

            to navigate the world by vault

                        and leap from here to there

            as fast as we can with as few

                        scratches and falls as possible

even then to rise and climb,

            fall and roll, crawl, and run

                        around, across, over, under, and

            straight through to the moment

 

when we must stop

 

---

Daun Daemon’s fiction has appeared in Flock, Dead Mule School, Literally Stories, and Delmarva Review among others, and she has published poems in Third Wednesday, Typehouse Literary Review, Remington Review, Deep South Magazine, Into the Void, Peeking Cat Literary, Amsterdam Quarterly, and other journals. Daemon is currently at work on a memoir in poetry as well as short stories inspired by memories of her mother’s home beauty shop. She teaches scientific communication at North Carolina State University and lives in Raleigh with her husband and two cats.

Advertisement

January 18, 2023 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: animal, climb, confidence, creative, creativity, Daun Daemon, leap, moment, movement, nature, NC, obstacles, Parkour, poem, Poetry, Raleigh, season, squirrel, tree, US, winter, world, writing Leave a comment

Fluttering – Heather Walker

 

I notice the fluttering inside of me at the time the earth stands still. Equal day and night. I turn to the man sleeping with his back to me. The shape of him stirs me and the fluttering increases. I lie my head against him and he does not stir.

The fluttering reminds me of a butterfly whose wings knock against a closed window, yet I cannot open up and let you out. It is not yet time. The year dips into winter. Snow lines the windowsill. I breathe on the glass and draw a heart. How I long to be out in the fields once more.

I have not told him of the fluttering I feel inside. This is my secret and I have no wish to share it. I hug my arms around my stomach, shelter you, to reassure you.

As days move into months, I have not grown much, yet I feel your kick. I caress your movement, talk to you as I shower. Surely it will be soon. I have still not told him. How can I?

Spring comes with a burst of white and yellow. I walk the fields, my feet sodden with dew. Lifting my face to the sun, I ask it what I should do. When the pain begins, I rejoice seeking a hollow rather than return home where he will ask questions.

You are restless to escape and now cramps rage through me as you shift. I hunker down and push, bearing my weight and strength through the length of me. And then the slip-slide of body, membrane, mucus and blood onto the grass. You are all legs as you flounder. Your head turns and we make eye contact. I smile and stroke your body, still wet through. I lift you to the sun and name you Solar. Placing you at my feet, you dry off, all the while trying to find your feet. I hug you, nestle into your furriness, and place you to my breast.

He will never understand. I can never tell him of this. You are mine, and we shall run the fields together, just as I did before I met the human.

 

---

Heather Walker is a London based writer of poetry, flash and short fiction. Her work has appeared in various magazines, ezines and anthologies, including Paragraph Planet, Visual Verse, Ink Sweat & Tears, Seaborne and Popshop. Her novellas, Where It Ends and The Chair are available through Amazon.

December 13, 2022 by foxglovejournal Categories: flash fiction, Prose, UncategorizedTags: birth, creative, creativity, fiction, fields, flash, fluttering, Heather Walker, London, movement, name, nature, secret, shelter, short, snow, spring, story, sun, time, UK, winter, writing Leave a comment

seals’ dreamtime – Martin Potter

 

readier to roll about

than to drag seal-bulk

shingle-crunch climbing

the beach’s skirts

 

haul and lay their mass

press on the pebble bed

a bay’s broad outscouring

they bask the lull

 

when a pair of helpless eyes

pitch-bright in bristled snout

ratchets round in meeting

yours with sea-thoughts

 

---

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

November 24, 2022 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: animals, bay, beach, creative, creativity, creatures, dream, elements, encounter, eyes, Manchester, Martin Potter, meeting, movement, nature, pebbles, poem, Poetry, roll, sea, seals, UK, writing Leave a comment

Gaia’s Song – Claire Shaw

 

We start slow

Let the fire burn low

As the shadows grow

by Moon Mother’s glow

Wait

 

Lick the grease from our fingers

Breathe the smoke in that lingers

Wait

 

Test the ground with our feet

Wait for the beat

The thrum

Feel the life in the peat

The hum

We drum

 

We dance

fling the embers as we spin

a trance

there’s heat on our skin

a chance

to feel the fire burn within

 

and now we’re striped with sweat and dust

 

we’re dripping

with the scent of musk

heady incense

burning lust

 

and we are bound

to the sound

of the beat

that we found

at the hearth at the heart of the world

 

---

Claire Shaw is an emerging UK-born poet and author whose work has appeared in publications including Black Hare Press, The Dawntreader, Silkworm and Grimsy. She currently resides in The Netherlands with her husband and two cats and works in Digital Marketing. She loves to travel, practice her photography, and read like it’s going out of fashion.

November 18, 2022 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: Claire Shaw, creative, creativity, dance, elements, fire, Gaia, heart, hearth, life, moon, movement, nature, Netherlands, poem, Poetry, senses, shadows, smoke, song, UK, world, writing Leave a comment

Palm Civet – Rahana K Ismail

 

To Úrsula Iguarán

 

A mouth gnawing at the cemented floor.

The tail a sky of shadow. Between niches

mousing, a scratch of claws. Two eyes

planetting the room

 

of my conscience. Guilt can take on

many forms. As a hole

in the sprawl of air. A hole

that housed

 

a spear. A throat it makes around it.

A head it wedges in, the mesh

of bone and body it zeroes in on. The hand

that weaves into esparto grass.

 

Walking as a man does, sad

and searching

until you haunt courtyards

for the open faucet, or floorboards

for the ticking beetle,

or the telling heart in spite.

Ever since grandma told me, a civet cat

 

knocking over boxes of what I have

squirreled in my head.

 

---

Rahana K Ismail is a poet and doctor from Kozhikode, Kerala. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in The Penn Review, Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English, nether Quarterly, Contemporary Haibun Online, Usawa Literary Review, POSIT, Io Literary Journal (Refractions), The Alchemy Spoon, Paradoxlit, Farmer-ish, Poetic Sun, Chakkar, Alipore Post, Aainanagar, Hakara, Verse of Silence, EKL Review, Pine Cone Review and elsewhere.

October 25, 2022 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: animals, civet, creative, creativity, creatures, elements, eyes, guilt, hand, haunting, heart, Kerala, movement, poem, Poetry, Rahana K Ismail, room, sadness, search, shadow, sky, sound, writing 2 Comments

Breakfast Club – Jeffrey Joseph

 

I take my daughter into Breakfast Club,

Tracksuit bottoms sparking as I force myself along,

And leg ends heavy with damp;

She skips beside me, taut with a promise of the new,

Her sentences long, long, her questions unanswerable,

Her laughter unanswerable.

 

In the busy, smelly, milk and plimsoll hall, she stands bemused –

Aware, perhaps, that something is changing,

Hearing across a span which I have lost

(Or, if not lost, forgotten),

The din of warring hopes.

 

Through the window I see her – a uniformed dot –

Move, unnoticed, to her place.

 

---

Jeffrey Joseph was born in London in 1952 and was educated at the University of York, University College Cardiff and at The Open University. He worked at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama before spending many years as Performance Manager at Trinity Laban Conservatoire. He is a heavily published musical journalist and poet. His music has been performed on the South Bank, at St John’s Smith Square, in Westminster Abbey, in the National Concert Hall in Dublin, throughout Europe and in Africa and the USA. He is published by Warwick Music/Hal Leonard Music and is distributed on-line by lulu.com.

October 13, 2022 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: answers, breakfast, change, creative, creativity, family, hope, Jeffrey Joseph, laughter, loss, memory, movement, new, place, poem, Poetry, promise, questions, senses, sound, UK, window, writing Leave a comment

Arran Postcard – Anna Percy

 

Dear T.

I know you have cycled on the coast road where I bumped along on the bus I haven’t asked if you stopped here at Kildonan where seals are promised or whether in fact the flop of their sea adapted bodies fills you with the same glee a fortification crumbles in a dark stone on the hill a look out a warning place the first line of defence the current light house sits on an islet must be lonely have to row back and forth to find another body the sun has started to blaze and yet the sea froze my toes a swimming costume was a dare to the water the water itself is all subtle movement and glitter past the sand everything is bands of blue and white you would swim.

 

---

Anna Percy has been writing for the page, stage and publication since 2004 mostly in the North of England. In 2010 she co founded the feminist collective Stirred Poetry. She has three full length collections with Flapjack Press. This poem is from an upcoming pamphlet The Everlasting Now from Some Roast Poets.

April 4, 2022 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: Anna Percy, Arran, coast, colours, creative, creativity, elements, hill, journey, landscape, movement, nature, poem, poet, Poetry, postcard, road, sea, seals, sun, 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

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

Bewildered – Ann Pedone

 

What is the body in the eyes of the body

is it nothing more than a translation

of water salt and air

an alchemy of blood and sand and lust

bones fragile anxious within

muddy flesh the nervous

desire of hips

bewildered

that you are still not here every

 

day I put my feet down one in

front of the other a child would

say that this should be enough

but the heavy box of the body asks

 always for more.

 

---

Ann Pedone graduated from Bard College with a degree in English and has a Master’s degree in Chinese Language and Literature from UC Berkeley. Ann is the author of the chapbook The Bird Happened, and the chapbook perhaps there is a sky we don’t know about: a re-imagining of sappho is forthcoming in December. Her work has recently appeared in Riggwelter, Main Street Rag, Poet head, Cathexis Northwest, The Wax Paper, and The Phare, among others.

November 15, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: air, alchemy, Ann Pedone, blood, body, creative, creativity, desire, elements, emotions, eyes, feet, fragility, movement, nature, poem, Poetry, salt, sand, translation, US, water, writing Leave a comment

Sight of a Night Otter – Martin Potter

 

Scrabble on the slipway like

A dog making for the water

Caught too far from the river’s edge

Expecting solitude at that hour

 

The otter observed unhurried once

Back in the element supported

On welling untraceability

Swam away into its comfort

 

 

Martin Potter is a poet and academic, and his poems have appeared in Acumen, The French Literary Review, Eborakon, Scintilla, and other journals. His pamphlet In the Particular was published by Eyewear in December 2017. Read more at https://martinpotterpoet.home.blog.

August 25, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: animals, comfort, creative, creativity, edge, elements, encounter, Martin Potter, memory, moment, movement, nature, night, otter, poem, Poetry, river, slipway, solitude, UK, water, wildlife, writing Leave a comment

Soon the Drift of Dusk – Darrell Coggins

 

Twirls of seaweed strew

over dimpled rocks

 

quickly shed free –

across damp sand

playing off each other

 

papery filaments skitter

and flip

 

Later, washed over

crisscrossed in a half-smile

frail footsteps recede

 

disquieting behind me

ribbed with graveyard bones

limestone fragments crumble

 

wallpapered underneath

in imprecise lines

 

snippets of ochre conjure

an amoebic design

a patina stained and flecked

 

Soon the drift of dusk –

unmoored, about to weep

drawn back and back

 

both beautiful and hypnotic

a bevy of clouds merge

towards the sea

 

continuously glassy

minute waves lap

almost silent –

 

gentle against my feet

 

 

Darrell Coggins is a poet, visual artist and musician who lives in Adelaide, South Australia. His poetry has been published in Poetry Matters, Positive Words, The Mozzie, Tamba, Studio, Nine Muses, Envy – Seven Deadly Sins, The Crow and Friendly Street Poets anthologies. Darrell’s poems are of moments seen, heard and felt.

July 12, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: Adelaide, Australia, beauty, clouds, creative, creativity, Darrell Coggins, drift, dusk, elements, fragments, movement, nature, poem, Poetry, rocks, sand, sea, senses, time, waves, world, writing Leave a comment

How it was – Elizabeth Gibson

 

There was a storm out there, on the sea of ferns

and small spiders crept in and out of old burns.

Roaming the desert, a dog found the dusk

and in a flower somewhere, red-pink with musk,

a fairy curled up in the arms of a bee.

 

The midges were swirling like water back home

and in the sky, a jellyfish hung all alone.

Under layers of ice, a horse in a hole;

in a meadow of gold and blue starlets, a foal.

Far out beyond grounds of new comets, you saw me.

 

 

Elizabeth Gibson is a writer and performer based in Manchester, UK. She is also the Editor and Photographer for Foxglove Journal. Liz has won a Northern Writers’ Award and been shortlisted for the Poetry Business’ New Poets Prize, and her work has appeared Cake, Cardiff Review, The Compass, Confingo, Litro and Strix among other journals. Liz blogs at http://elizabethgibsonwriter.blogspot.com and you can find her on Twitter and Instagram as @Grizonne.

June 10, 2020June 10, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: animals, body, change, colours, creative, creativity, elements, Elizabeth Gibson, encounter, home, love, Manchester, memory, movement, mystery, nature, poem, Poetry, senses, time, UK, world, writing Leave a comment

Spending a Day with an Uncanny Nature – Chandan Dey

 

a snowy day–

 

the green leaves of the garden

are wrapped in the thick blanket of ice

 

the dangling white rose

is the face of a black tiger

in such a depressing morning

 

a flock of one-winged birds

are migrating to a sunless island

through gray clouds arranged unruly

in this pale light of dreary noon

 

the deepening dusk

with its illusive movement

is descending swiftly to the earth

through eerie sound of the crickets

 

in the distance–

 

the wavy mountain

is a strayed dolphin, swimming

in the ocean of night-fog

 

alone

 

 

Chandan Dey is a new and emerging writer living in Kolkata, India. His work has appeared in Liquid Imagination, Vayavya, Sky Island Journal and is forthcoming elsewhere. He works in Kolkata and is a passionate reader and writer of poetry. He loves to write articles on scientific philosophy; some of them have already been published online. Some of his work can be found on http://www.chandankumardey.blogspot.in.

May 17, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: animals, birds, Chandan Dey, change, clouds, creative, creativity, day, earth, elements, garden, India, landscape, light, movement, nature, place, poem, Poetry, senses, sound, time, writing 2 Comments

Choughs – Rebecca Gethin

 

 

Rebecca Gethin lives in Devon. She was a winner in the first Coast to Coast to Coast pamphlet competition with Messages. A pamphlet about endangered creatures called Vanishings is due to be published by Palewell Press in 2020. Two pamphlets were published in 2017: A Sprig of Rowan by Three Drops Press and All the Time in the World by Cinnamon Press who previously published a collection and two novels. She has been a Hawthornden Fellow and undertook a residency at Brisons Veor in 2018. Find more at www.rebeccagethin.wordpress.com.

April 12, 2020April 12, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: animals, birds, creative, creativity, Devon, elements, fauna, flight, landing, movement, nature, poem, Poetry, precision, Rebecca Gethin, rock, sky, sound, UK, wildlife, wind, wings, writing Leave a comment