UK – Foxglove Journal

Sleep Revolutions – Anna Percy

Awakened from a dream

where in a repetitive

fashion

tattoo

elaborate scenes on the meatiest part of my thighs

in reality my skin is altered by mere sunlight age and accident

I do not see the images fully formed each viewing they are

in lasered stages b l u r r e d into obscurity for the next round

the sense arises that this cycle of subjecting myself to pain

for an artistic vision is trying to tell me something

about my poetry about how I make the same mistakes again and again

like blueberry gin after midnight

and emotionally distant men

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.

November 28, 2021November 28, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: Anna Percy, awakening, creative, creativity, cycle, dream, midnight, mistakes, pain, poem, poet, Poetry, repetition, scenes, senses, skin, sleep, stages, sunlight, tattoo, UK, vision, writing Leave a comment

Carnota – Elizabeth Gibson

We are in a glass dome of summer – pick us up and shake us,

and pollen-dust will swirl around us. The delirious strip of sea

is the other side of our zip: we curve and arc into each other.

Life is reduced to blue and green, with dots of pink and yellow,

and all I could ever need for fullness again is this sea and sky,

these hills of foxglove and gorse, and long Galician granaries,

their stone frames warming lizards and cats. We stop, to sprawl

among the brittle mauve patches of seaweed, watch dolphins

spinning like cogs, in and out, in and out of the wave machine.

Hey, I see a whale – well, I see spray – but no-one believes me.

We find the corpse of a small creature – a porpoise, maybe,

all beak and curve, now brittle with sand. Across the meadows

are chubby brown goats, and foals gulping from patient mothers

whose fringes tumble like kelp. It all keeps circling in on itself.

Elizabeth Gibson is a Manchester writer and performer, and the Editor and Photographer for Foxglove Journal. Her work is often inspired by her travels, as well as themes of queerness, community, body image, and mental health. She has recently been published in Aurelia Magazine, Giving Room Mag, Lighthouse, Popshot, Queerlings, and York Literary Review. She is @Grizonne on Twitter and Instagram, and she blogs at https://elizabethgibsonwriter.blogspot.com.

August 10, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: A Coruña, animals, Carnota, colours, creative, creativity, death, elements, Elizabeth Gibson, Galicia, landscape, life, moment, nature, poem, poet, Poetry, sea, Spain, summer, travel, UK, writing 1 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

A Dream of Flying Over My Childhood Home – Isabel Greenslade

I open out my skull bones like leaves

my head a white hard dome

hot knife humming.

Current flows along my skin like oil

slicking rigid arms to body.

I rotate my neck as I do just before speech

gasp as I rise head-first to my element

a fish of the air.

Only then do I see them standing there

mother father brother neighbours all

gazing up by the fence, rooted as sunflowers

soundwaves lapping at their stems.

I flick my shoulders like fins

I am gone.

Isabel is from and of London where she works in a museum. In a former life she was a youth worker then a tour guide. Her poems has been published in Orbis and she can be found discussing poetry, art, gardening urban history, and the natural world on her Instagram account @ijgreenslade.

June 21, 2021June 21, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: air, bones, creative, creativity, current, elements, family, fins, fish, flight, home, Isabel Greenslade, leaves, London, neighbours, poem, Poetry, rising, senses, soundwaves, sunflowers, UK, writing Leave a comment

White Butterflies – Andy Eycott

White butterflies

crisp as a new playing cards,

hinged wings

guitar picks strumming.

The first rests on yellow petals

the second fluttering

over blackberries ripening,

both blown into the bushes

as a train that doesn’t stop

at this station thunders through.

A flash of bright white returns

drawn back by a dandelion sun.

Andy lives in South East London and currently works within the NHS. Since being diagnosed with dyslexia at forty-eight he has been published in a number of magazines and anthologies. These include Obsessed with Pipework, Worktown Words, Orbis, The Dawntreader, The Cannon’s Mouth, Snakeskin, Runcible Spoon, Sentinel Literary Quarterly and Poems in the Waiting Room. He had also qualified as a counsellor and enjoys writing stories for his grandson.

May 12, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: Andy Eycott, animals, blackberries, bushes, butterflies, creative, creativity, fauna, flight, fruit, London, nature, petals, poem, Poetry, rest, return, senses, sun, train, UK, wings, writing Leave a comment

oakfruit – Martin Potter

an oak’s

robustness all

reduced to essence nutwise

gloss green encased shaping egg

its sticky thimble cup

unclasps to earth

the acorn

May 4, 2021May 4, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: acorn, colour, creative, creativity, cup, description, earth, egg, encased, essence, form, green, Martin Potter, nature, nut, oak, poem, Poetry, robust, shape, thimble, UK, writing Leave a comment

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.

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

Souvenir – Isabel Greenslade

I left the car on the cliff top,

went looking for a toilet, found a bird.

There used to be a coal mine under here –

that’s what the guidebook said,

and the mark on the map.

It’s long dead, whatever it was,

probably dead when I was at home

looking it up in the bird book.

Fieldfare? Thrush? Which colour plate,

which description did it fit?

Anyway, there it was, trapped in a toilet block

in a car park empty of other visitors.

There were only two of us.

This assemblage of stone sand wind and air

progressed up and down the cubicles,

one two three four five five four three two one

its feet scrabbling on the overhead cisterns.

Too far above me to catch, it wouldn’t be wafted

towards the doorway with my map.

Already I was trying to name it as it struck

at the skylight that we could both see.

Death was always certain – inside a neglected egg,

by teeth or talon, by being shaken loose.

It didn’t need its name, only the sky which turned solid on it.

I flushed and walked out over the stone floor

into the wind, past the laminated pictures of the mine.

I got back into the car, drove to the heritage museum

where miners are trapped on a screen, to be bidden by a button

so someone knows they’re still there.

It’s history now, that bird. I thought about it

on the motorway all the way home.

April 11, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: bird, creative, creativity, death, doorway, encounter, heritage, history, home, Isabel Greenslade, journey, London, map, memory, mine, poem, Poetry, senses, sky, skylight, sound, UK, writing Leave a comment

Haze – Neil Fulwood

Soft haze hangs

over trees, over road,

view losing focus

near broken gate

at field’s edge,

rich man’s house

vaguely outlined

a half mile away.

The rumble

that trembles teacup

could be anything

passing at any

distance at any

point in time.

Neil Fulwood was born in Nottingham, England, where he still lives and works. He has published two pamphlets with The Black Light Engine Room Press, Numbers Stations and The Little Book of Forced Calm; and two full collections with Shoestring Press, No Avoiding It and Can’t Take Me Anywhere. His third collection, Service Cancelled, is due for publication later this year.

March 28, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: creative, creativity, edge, elements, focus, gate, haze, house, nature, Neil Fulwood, Nottingham, outline, poem, Poetry, road, scene, senses, sound, time, trees, UK, weather, writing Leave a comment

Interior design for fools – Demi Lloyd

Come and pick up your stuff by Thursday

or I’ll take it to the tip.

The voicemail repeats,

clanks round eardrums

I pull up, golden hour drips through,

glazes your ornaments. Bittersweet.

The white rabbit clock,

five minutes too fast.

I trace my fingers over the curves

of your sofa, green velvet hills

like last summer at the castle in Dover,

when we realised it might be over.

I look at your art for the last time,

shapes and maths, strong and clear.

My abstract dreamscape is

Decaying in a landfill

I collect what’s left of me.

Obnoxious orange and purple bags.

Full of the things you detested;

resting on your polished oak desk.

My wrist threads through the handles.

We could never thread love like that.

The cat, thrown from the cradle,

but she lands feet first.

Demi Lloyd recently gained a Masters degree in Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University. She is part of a poetry group based in Nottingham called GOBS and is working towards her contribution to their spoken word showcase in March. In her spare time you can find her reading, listening to podcasts or thinking about cats.

March 2, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: art, bittersweet, castle, cat, clock, creative, creativity, Demi Lloyd, Dover, ending, landscape, light, love, memories, Nottingham, poem, Poetry, relationship, senses, time, UK, writing Leave a comment

A Meeting in Dyrham – lou moon

Where I am she will meet me

among the naming of the trees

and the subtle serendipities

I land gently on crows’ laughing feet.

Carefully trace the blue rivered breast,

try not to worry about what comes next,

for only time can bloom fruit sweeter,

and where she is I will meet her.

Only here, only now could she meet me,

and could we open arms so completely,

that where the branches meet the sky

we could slip away inside and

be calm,

for we will meet where we are,

and we will meet where we are.

lou moon is a vague and formless artist occasionally found reluctantly exploring the spaces between poetry & music, gender & sexuality, bristol & london. Part time artist, full time hippie & a regular at LBGT+ spoken word open mics in London, their work explores the intensity of the interplay between mental health and relationships, spirituality and symbolism, metaphor, vulnerability and queerness in all its forms. @_lou_moon on instagram & twitter

February 14, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: arms, branches, Bristol, calm, creative, creativity, Dyrham, elements, encounter, fruit, London, lou moon, meeting, naming, nature, poem, Poetry, senses, sky, time, trees, UK, writing Leave a comment

Time travelling in a coffee shop – Demi Lloyd

Sarah smells like caravan

holidays when I was small

I reach for a chip and

I’m stranded,

trapped in a blur of playing

Go Fish with Dad

February 1, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: blur, caravan, chips, coffee, creative, creativity, Demi Lloyd, family, food, game, holidays, memory, Nottingham, past, poem, Poetry, scent, senses, shop, stranded, time, UK, writing Leave a comment

Morning cat – Demi Lloyd

He basks in morning beam.

The sofa cradles, heart pulsates.

He watches me, charmed eyes.

Work at 6, haven’t slept.

I call in sick and stroke his head.

January 17, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: animals, beam, cat, charm, cradle, creative, creativity, Demi Lloyd, early, eyes, head, heart, moment, morning, Nottingham, pet, poem, Poetry, senses, sleep, time, UK, writing Leave a comment

Riverdawn – Daniel Tobias Behan

Dawn-break

over water –

cold depths she runs

in her course;

shifting blue-grey

and orange juice

canvas, of

painted sky’s

mirroring;

sombre: her

undulating

ice-flow

belies the

busyness

of city-day

scurrying.

Daniel Tobias Behan is a London born-and-based poet. From 2017 to 2019, Daniel performed regularly at the London Irish Centre, Camden; in 2018 Daniel was interviewed by the Irish Post as part of their London Calling podcast series, and in 2020 had a short film made of ‘The Visit’ featuring acclaimed actor Nora Connolly and directed by Patrick O’Mahony, was interviewed for Wombwell Rainbow, and commenced a poetry series ‘Findings’ on channillo.com.

December 20, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: canvas, city, cold, colours, course, creative, creativity, Daniel Tobias Behan, dawn, elements, flow, ice, landscape, London, nature, poem, Poetry, river, senses, sky, UK, water, writing Leave a comment

You – Daniel Tobias Behan

You are one, whose

lung breathes

new song, of

love beautiful;

dreaming

heart-drum

ever beating the

rhythm-shape of life;

the one whose

ear births

new ways

of hearing me,

here, being with me;

who grows

ever stronger

than ever will I

forever love you.

November 22, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: birth, body, breath, creative, creativity, Daniel Tobias Behan, dream, forever, hearing, heart, life, London, love, lung, poem, Poetry, rhythm, senses, shape, song, strength, UK, writing Leave a comment