A Few Very Speculative Ideas About Language – Ann Pedone

 

sometimes it’s hard to remember/the names of things /those trees

along the side of the freeway/ I used to know what they are called

and  then there are words  I’ve never known /is there a word for

the lust bees feel for a flower /or the way his neck tastes /that moony

combination/ something like cyprus and salt and bone.

 


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.

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What the wind said – Rebecca Gethin

 

I followed a drystone wall down the hill in a mist

wind pattering in my ears like a pony

 

on dry turf and snaking through gorse and reeds.

I caught a moaning, a voice lamenting

 

on just one note with breathy inhalations,

its instrument a welded gate

 

played on as though it were an organ pipe.

I pressed my fingers to the holes

 

and nothing stopped or changed the note,

air finding what it needed for an utterance

 

of sorrow, the little Os its mouthpiece

calling out from among the silent stones.

 

unnamed 1Rebecca 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.

Old sludge beds – Mark Totterdell

 

The former sewage settlement lagoons,

a wasteland wedged between the river’s curves

and an elbow of equivalent canal,

have been recolonised by sedges,

by bulrushes releasing feathered seeds,

by tall blond reeds in broad stands, rustling

with unseen life, suspicious scurryings.

 

From leafless trees, the great tits and song thrushes

are cleanly piping out, respectively,

their simple and their complex repetitions.

Close your eyes and you can almost see

the sounds as clear distinctive prints

cutting into the greyish sludge that spreads

everywhere from the traffic on the bridge.

 

 

This one DSC00795-herefordMark Totterdell’s poems have appeared widely in magazines and have occasionally won competitions. His collections are ‘This Patter of Traces’ (Oversteps Books, 2014) and ‘Mapping’ (Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2018).

Colorful Combinations – Deborah Guzzi

 

Being of earth, wind, fire, and water, I amble wide-eyed in a world of color.

Elements form metaphoric limbs, link the undefined—in a world of color.

 

Unified, stalwart, we stride, side by side, reveling in the differences

from the molten core to the tide-line—enshrined in a world of color.

 

There are no weeds, no right place or time; all life’s sublime, beauteous

in the blessed-eye, like unto like, all entwined in a world of color.

 

Rays, wings, seeds—exploding suns—jellyfish in the sea,

quarks to leptons to universes, all primed in a world of color.

 

Gather the multitudes—reform and combine—splatter watercolors

for all creations shines—life’s sublime in a world of color.

 

 

 

debbie 3aDeborah Guzzi writes full time. Her third book, The Hurricane, is available through Prolific Press. Her poetry appears in Allegro, Artificium, Shooter, Amethyst Review and Foxglove Journal in the UK, Existere, The Ekphrastic Review, Scarlet Leaf Review and Subterranean Blue Poetry, Canada – Tincture, Australia – mgv2>publishing, France – Cha: Asian Review, China – Vine Leaves Literary Journal, Australia – The Scarlet Leaf Review – Greece, Ribbons, pioneertown, Sounding Review, Bacopa Literary Review, The Aurorean, Liquid Imagination, The Tishman Review, Page & Spine and others in the USA.

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

 

 

me cropped to squareStephen 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.

Día logues – Margaret King

 

She talks to every living thing

Maybe even more than humans

She talks to her plants as they grow

To butterflies & birds who visit daily

She has an ongoing rapport with the

Blue jays and chickadees

Who boisterously call for food

Whenever she walks under the trees

Of the yard

Underneath, the grass is littered with

Shells of sunflowers & peanuts

A beach, an ocean of giving &

Giving back

She talks to her cats

Marking loyal days together.

To her, these things are as alive as anyone

& worthy of communication.

But why doesn’t she speak to the

Hummingbirds? Messengers, she feels

She should at least send a prayer

Or a wish

Or a private longing

A cry for help

But she doesn’t

Want to scare them away.

 

 

 

unnamed

Margaret King is a Wisconsin writer who enjoys penning poetry, short stories, and young adult novels. In her spare time, she likes to haunt the shores of Lake Michigan, similar to many of her fictional characters. Her most recent work has appeared in Unlost Journal, Moonchild Magazine, Enclave, and The Ginger Collect.

Rain – Louise Wilford

 

The rain, it raineth every day.

Slugs cower beneath the pavement slabs –

the sage leaves curl, their powder spent –

the quilted mint leaves pillow through their veins

and spears of tarragon drip glassy beads.

 

The painted terracotta cat

no longer casts out beams of candle light,

just snivels, shoulders huddled in the chill.

The real cat shelters underneath the bench.

The rain, it raineth every day.

 

The rain, it raineth every day.

Chlorophyll glisters green on every branch.

The guttering spews an endless waterfall.

The rags of rubbish blown out of some skip

are stuck with watery bullets to the fence.

 

The rain, it raineth every day.

The traffic is a dampened lullaby,

a pebbled stream that boils across a weir,

the ache of a wave collapsing on a beach,

nudging the rounded rocks and shells.

 

But still the loud rich smell of dampened earth,

the bursts of thyme and parsley as I pass,

the slick pink smell of early flowers, 

trumpets the spring through the cloud-drenched air.

But the rain, it raineth every day.

 

 

unnamed (2)Yorkshirewoman Louise Wilford is an English teacher and examiner. She has had around 60 poems and short stories published in magazines including Popshot, Pushing Out The Boat and Agenda, and has won or been shortlisted for several competitions. She is currently writing a children’s fantasy novel.

Helianthus – Margaret Holbrook

 

These bright, brash plants standing

tall have no pretence.

They are what they are,

and don’t deny it.

 

Fields of them line the

French roadsides. Striking and

purposeful, they are not to be

meddled with.

 

Even their small siblings,

the ones bought in pots from

florists and garden-centres

have attitude.

 

These plants are not shrinking-

violets. You will not find them

cowering in shade or damp woodland;

they are showy, proud, in your face,

demanding to be seen.

 

If sunflowers could speak,

They would be loud, outspoken,

heard above the crowd,

unable to help themselves.

 

But,

sunflowers are silent, intent

on following the sun,

looking for love; and

all the while in that beautiful head,

Fibonacci numbers are calculated,

seeds plotting their spiral patterns.

 

“Helianthus” previously appeared in The Poetry Shed.

 

IMG_0641Margaret Holbrook lives in Cheshire, UK, where she writes poetry, plays and fiction. Her work has appeared widely online and in print including publications such as Jellyfish Whispers, The Poetry Shed, Schooldays, Best of British, Orbis, The Journal. Her latest poetry collection, Not Exactly Life was published in September 2017 and all the poetry features women; from life, fiction, film and history. ‘Where else,’ she says, ‘would Lucrezia Borgia, Jean Harlow and my mum all appear in the same volume?’ Find out more at www.margaretholbrookwrites.weebly.com.

Prunus Pumila – Carl Boon

 

Snow lay atop the boxwoods

all winter,

lather on skin,

and shielded

the sand cherry’s branches.

Now the dead wood

splinters when I pull,

and the leaves have bronzed

early. What should be neon-

red this sunset’s

glimmerless, a girl

too long neglected.

On the south slope

January comes—

Lake Erie finds its way

and waits.

 

I read it’s part rose,

part shade, where my father

used to sit and study

the broadening pin-oak.

The final spring he lived

it shone hot pink,

the blood of the lawn

he watched grow

nights like this,

nights in a chair with coffee,

the hedge a memory,

the trellis empty

of the purples we knew as kids.

 

Today I drew away

as much of the dead as I could.

My wrists grew furious

cutting, aligning, motioning

to corners of the yard

unseen in decades.

I stood back,

then I moved forward

as my father might’ve,

at peace with what remained.

 

cb-picCarl Boon lives in Izmir, Turkey, where he teaches courses in American culture and literature at 9 Eylül University. His poems appear in dozens of magazines, most recently Burnt Pine, Two Peach, Lunch Ticket, and Poetry Quarterly. He is also a 2016 Pushcart Prize nominee.