Four Poems by Wendy Webb

 

Eden: Birds and Beer



The garden is simply beautiful now,

full of vibrant hope (a Platinum spell).

The crow/rook/jackdaw/pigeon speak of hell.

I pray for bluetit/robin/wren, and how

these sunshine days are passing by so slow.

One Mother (in her cell) might say, ‘All’s Well…’

as women writers/Anchorites still tell,

there’s nothing beyond Eden. Time to mow,



your seeded plugs are in the Veg Plot. Watch

that heaven’s not for slugs nor snails nor earwigs.

Drown them in beer or salt, else (cruellest-kind),

environmental pasta’s coloured swatch

hidden beneath the sod of sweet earth-gigs.

Radiant rainbows blossom for humankind.




TO THE PEOPLE OF A HUNDRED YEARS’ TIME (revised)

First published in eTIPS, 2010-04/EZINE



We care about the world, we know its worth,

papyrus-rich to nature’s forest span.

Impressionistic death throes of dull birth,

no blueprint grows a bright-lit world to plan.



Papyrus-rich to nature’s forest span

of vanishings of animals and plants,

no blueprint grows a bright-lit world to plan,

their colours gone where torchlight dark recants



of vanishings of animals and plants.

The sight, the smell, the harsh and strident sounds:

there colour’s gone where torchlight dark recants.

We stand upon the tide where surf rebounds.



The sight, the smell, the harsh and strident sounds,

shrill seagulls cracking sand-salt fat with fish.

We stand upon the tide where surf rebounds,

inhaling sting-deep salt in sweat-dried dish.



Shrill seagulls cracking sand-salt fat with fish,

blind howls of mobile phones and MP3s;

inhaling sting-deep salt in sweat-dried dish,

nude parchment brushes tingling on bare knees.



Blind howls of mobile phones and MP3s,

we kiss the earth in hardy PC rooms;

nude parchment brushes tingling on bare knees,

deliver paper chapels draping tombs.



We kiss the earth in hardy PC rooms,

impressionistic death throes of dull birth

deliver paper chapels draping tombs.

We care about the world, we know its worth.




HEAVEN’S SMILE (Glosa)


Quote from Poems 1891, XIII, Emily Dickinson – in italics. For modern use of the Glosa, I have excluded the quote from the beginning of the poem. 2010/07/PUBLD Metverse Muse/Issues 29-31



I hoped, though not content on earth,

through hellish turmoil in life’s pace,

that heaven’s whimsy would still birth.

A smile suffused Jehovah’s face;



it beamed the friendly sun to shade,

his dark side shone with morning dew

and breathed an infant chill, late-made;

the cherubim withdrew.



And as the organ piped false notes,

wrapped close in paradisal pity,

I mourned where holy absence floats.

Grave saints stole out to look at me,



and sprinkled shooting stars in ink,

where Pluto’s cosmos churned and flew

to poets’ deep-enchanting brink,

and showed their dimples, too.



I could not listen to the spheres

that paced quink-pale as darkest night.

Spilt caverns blotched in torchlight meres;

I left the place with all my might, -



and wished God’s beaming back would turn

askance: his light side into day,

where angels incense as they learn.

My prayer I threw away;



it ebbed and flowed upon my tide,

until foul Neptune filled his cup,

to lap on shores an ocean wide.

The quiet ages picked it up,



and bladderwracked the dross to feed;

sea creatures chanting seraph dew,

enchanting grace to every creed;

and Judgment twinkled, too.

 

 

BENEATH THE OAK IN SUMMER (Palindromedary Sonnet)

First published in Star Tips, 2016-09

 

Such weeping, weaning bliss wrapped in first love,

raw consummate completeness in a glance.

What pregnant hope, expectancy above

conjoining of sweet flesh in fickle chance.

 

Such long-drawn plans, so quiver-full, un-taut

as Cupid’s bowstring plucking bees to stars.

White bonnet, booties, and a lace dress, bought,

slow window-shopping prams; child-friendly cars.

 

Such cradled infant gurgled prescience, charmed

by family-shared news that cannot wait,

when all the world hives honeycombs unharmed

like Rock-A-Byes’ pared buzz-flight, stinging late.

 

Dull aching emptiness, slow sickness eased:

poor breaking-screams of waste where love-flesh bleeds.

 

Pour breaking-screams of waste where love-flesh bleeds

dull aching emptiness, slow sickness eased.

 

Like Rock-A-Byes’ pared buzz-flight, stinging late,

when all the world hives honeycombs, unharmed

by family-shared news that cannot wait.

Such cradled infant gurgled prescience; charmed.

 

Slow window-shopping, prams, child-friendly cars,

white bonnet, booties and a lace dress.  Bought

as Cupid’s bowstring: plucking bees to stars.

Such long-drawn plans; so quiver-full, untaught;

 

conjoining of sweet flesh in fickle chance.

What pregnant hope, expectancy, above

raw consummate completeness in a glance?

Such weeping, weaning bliss wrapped in first love.

Wendy Webb: Born in the Midlands, home and family life in Norfolk. She edited Star Tips poetry magazine 2001-2021. Published in Indigo Dreams, Quantum Leap, Crystal, Envoi, Seventh Quarry) and online (Littoral Magazine, Autumn Voices, Wildfire Words, Lothlorien, Meek Colin), she was placed First in Writing Magazine’s pantoum poetry competition. She devised new poetry forms (Davidian, Magi, Palindromedary); wrote her father’s biography, ‘Bevin Boy’, and her own autobiography, ‘Whose Name Was Wit in Waterr’ (title inspired by Keats’ grave in Rome). She has attempted many traditional forms and free verse. Favourite poets: Dylan Thomas, Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Burnside, John Betjeman, the Romantic Poets (especially Wordsworth), George Herbert, William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Mary Webb, Norman Bissett, William Shakespeare, the Bible, and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

 

Two Poems by Michael H. Brownstein

 

Subtitle Within the Mould of Cheese

 

within the vernacular of mud moon

a cool three light blue with lint of orange

shadows itself in the Crater of Mystery

deep inside the left eye of the face of the moon

 

How sad it is hiding from a lack of oxygen

a flurry of water globs of unmovable dust

 

how is it numbers become colour

and colour begins to smell until

vowels speak of great silences

and consonants cross into fabric

 

 

SCREAM WRITING

 

I cannot run anger away from my heart

nor can I sing the stone of war into the shadow.

Today is not a day for comfort, but patience--

one tree in the distance, large leafed grass,

rocks the size of houses, Dall sheep on narrow paths

and still the semblance to peace is disquieting,

the rumble of conflict gaining force from without

everywhere a rock skid of splinter and blood,

a scar of flesh, a star held in place by bullets.

Michael H. Brownstein’s latest volume of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else was recently published by Cholla Needles Press (2018).

 

Three Poems by Ann Christine Tabaka

 

Nothing Will Ever be the Same Again

 

We moved,

and life moved with us.

Nothing will ever be the same again.

 

Two shattered hearts,

strong in their convictions – fused.

Molten gold poured into cracks.

Glistening ribbons of truth sealed our love.

 

The music played past midnight,

a soft song of doves.

Rippled moonlight danced on the lake.

 

Time evaporated into mist,

tears into clouds, shutting out the stars.

 

Darkness fell,

sheltering all hope, silencing the rhapsody.

Who knew moving could be so hard?

Nothing will ever be the same again.

 

 

The End is in Sight

 

I watched the sky fall

one star at a time

while I sat plucking petals

from a moonflower.

I heard my mother’s voice

call to me from the past.

Needles exploded in my head.

I sheltered myself in darkness

seeking the refuge

only silence can bring.

Walking down a dirt path

I became the rain

turning everything to mud.

Years turn into lifetimes

and lifetimes into eternity.

The passing of life is swift

and sharp like a knife.

It cuts through words

and past memories.

Time does not exist.

How can I go on without you?

 

 

Learning to Climb the Mountain

 

I read a book once: The Fear of Flying.

It was not about flying at all.

I climbed a mountain,

spread my wings and tried to soar.

The cat thought I was crazy

as I tumbled to the ground.

I was twenty then.

I did not know my power yet.

 

Life lingered on the cusp,

the old man shed his beard.

Tides ran their rhythms with the moon.

I idled away my life in snips and dreads,

always going the wrong way,

then doubling back.

I was forty then,

still turning pages to discover who I was.

 

I visited a Greek Garden once.

It was not in Greece.

I rushed home

to plant my seeds among the thorns.

The sparrows were dismayed

that Doric columns did not grow.

I was too old then.

Too many years had crumbled beneath my feet.

 

*   Published by The Squawk Back Magazine, November 2021

Ann Christine Tabaka was nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize in Poetry. She is the winner of Spillwords Press 2020 Publication of the Year, her bio is featured in the “Who’s Who of Emerging Writers 2020 and 2021,” published by Sweetycat Press. She is the author of 15 poetry books, and 1 short story book. She lives in Delaware, USA. She loves gardening and cooking.  Chris lives with her husband and four cats. Her most recent credits are: Eclipse Lit, Carolina Muse, Sparks of Calliope; The Closed Eye Open, North Dakota Quarterly, Tangled Locks Journal, Wild Roof Journal, The American Writers Review, Burningword Literary Journal, Muddy River Poetry Review, The Silver Blade, Pomona Valley Review, West Texas Literary Review, The Hungry Chimera, Sheila-Na-Gig, Fourth & Sycamore.

*(a complete list of publications is available upon request)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Five Poems by Lawrence Wilson

 

Detectable

 

the motion detector light flicks on

snapshotting the fox, tiptoeing

down the steps, ears and eyes alert

for any scrap of food

 

sometimes it’s the ginger cat

from three doors down, insouciant

that feline strut, a declaration

of don’t-care-can’t-make-me

 

but sometimes it’s nothing at all

empty air—that’s when I grapple

with not-quite fear, wondering

what is walking our path tonight

Myth Making

 

I wonder, sometimes, if Icarus never fell

but fled, freed by unexpected fortune

a gift of sea-salted feathers, a sky

wider than any distant castaway dream

 

it was never his fault, never his sin

that his father had displeased a king

but exile was still his lot to endure

a brooding aggrieved father, and no mother

 

though we never hear about his mother

she was never mentioned in the myth

dead in childbirth? Executed by Minos?

whatever. Erased from the essential story

 

still, Icarus must have missed her

may we imagine, though, that she’d been marooned

on some other island, another lonely banishment

and he was striving to find her, fly to her

 

on the gift of his clever father’s wings

the legend insists that he flew too high

but perhaps he only flew too far, away

from his father’s grip and the king’s anger

 

perhaps the tale was rigged, rejigged, warped

to benefit the powers that be, the sires insistent

no one would leave us by choice

so he must have fallen, must have drowned

 

part of me imagines an Icarus instinctive, smart

strong of arm and shoulder, impassioned of heart

and I want to believe that his wings carried him far

over the sea’s horizons to true loving arms

Remember This

 

there is a mist rising, low and thick

over the flat marsh-meadows

where the red cows graze by day

the moon is breathing on it

cool silver, cotton white

moon white

all made new, made strange, made different

 

no camera could hope to capture it

words are weak

and break in the fingers like dry spiderwebs

 

but remember this when you see it again

remember this when the moon breathes on you

Spiral Learning

it never was a circle—looks like one!
no, time’s a helix, spiralled, coiled in space
we never do return whence we’ve begun
each twist leads to a strange, familiar place

where sunlight warms, remembered from the past
where holidays, in bright succession, cheer
but not exactly as they did the last
time round the orbit. New lives, new deaths, fear

of gravity’s embrace—the galaxy’s
colliding with Andromeda, they say
just several billion years from now—so seize
the endless, timeless origami day

unfolding as we watch, and learn to dance
on heads of pins with angels. Take the chance

Thorns

 

thorns of winter’s breath

sharp spikes in the mouth, nose, lungs

but clean, sharp, unused

 

so clean, so unused

see how cold remakes the air

solstice alchemy

 

alchemy of sun

riding low in southern sky

now pivoting back

 

pivoting back now

promising spring, summer warmth

forget winter’s thorns

Lawrence Wilson’s fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in Albedo One, Cerasus, Agenda, Gramarye, One Hand Clapping, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Three Drops from a Cauldron, Stone, Root and Bone, Best of British, The Poetry of Roses, The Pocket Poetry Book of Marriage, The Pocket Poetry Book of Cricket, The Darker Side of Love, on Salon.com and in other journals and collections. His first three collections, The April Poems, Another April, and An Illustrated April, are available on Amazon, as is his children’s novel, Mina, Etc.

 

 

Five Poems by Christopher Barnes

 

TOWNSCAPE 21

 

Submersed buttresses incline.

Vesicle budding uplifts moss.

Glazed tiles, daubed overlap.

The figurine looks away...

Where Pontus thrust a cranky lip.

 

TOWNSCAPE 22

 

Inky basalt groundwork.

Apoptosis disheartens metasequoia.

Ore rosettes at chute.

Party-gowned Sindy bobs in fishpond...

Where Proserpina flexed to shivers.

 

TOWNSCAPE 23

 

Listing eaves, dreary.

Encoded programs in scarlet sage, unstoppable.

Hotchpotch blocks, cracked terracotta.

Flea market quakes beneath rain...

Where Vertumnus ashened.

 

TOWNSCAPE 24

 

Embellishments hooded in slate.

Forsythia catalyses enzymes.

Diehard pretty-pretty rendering.

Seesaw pivot bolsters no weight…

Where Voltumna quivered with a squeak.

 

TOWNSCAPE 25

 

Modest folds at roof corners.

Intracellular reactions in calla lily.

Unwieldy pig-iron lattice.

Arcade’s laughing policeman, mute...

Where Thor screamed, ‘Have you seen her?’

 

In 1998 Christopher Barnes won a Northern Arts writers award. In July 2000 he read at Waterstones bookshop to promote the anthology 'Titles Are Bitches'. Christmas 2001 he debuted at Newcastle's famous Morden Tower doing a reading of poems. Each year he read for Proudwords lesbian and gay writing festival and partook in workshops. 2005 saw the publication of his collection LOVEBITES published by Chanticleer Press, 6/1 Jamaica Mews, Edinburgh.

On Saturday 16Th August 2003 he read at the Edinburgh Festival as a Per Verse.

Christmas 2001 The Northern Cultural Skills Partnership sponsored him to be mentored by Andy Croft in conjunction with New Writing North. He made a radio programme for Web FM community radio about his writing group. October-November 2005, he entered a poem/visual image into the art exhibition The Art Cafe Project, his piece Post-Mark was shown in Betty's Newcastle. This event was sponsored by Pride On The Tyne. He made a digital film with artists Kate Sweeney and Julie Ballands at a film making workshop called Out Of The Picture which was shown at the festival party for Proudwords, it contains his poem The Old Heave-Ho. He worked on a collaborative art and literature project called How Gay Are Your Genes, facilitated by Lisa Mathews (poet) which exhibited at The Hatton Gallery, Newcastle University, including a film piece by the artist Predrag Pajdic in which he read his poem On Brenkley St. The event was funded by The Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Research Institute, Bio-science Centre at Newcastle's Centre for Life. He was involved in the Five Arts Cities poetry postcard event which exhibited at The Seven Stories children's literature building. In May he had 2006 a solo art/poetry exhibition at The People's Theatre.

Five Poems by Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad

 

Deciduous

 

I

She searches for absolution

in the first bruise of dusk.

Slivers of cadmium

eat into the patina of the elms.

Back then, they were silver moths,

flitting in the fog of wayward love.

 

II

She razed everything in her path—

everything that showed her a bud

of kindness. This is how

he remembers her. As torch.

As ash. As loathing. As ruin.

 

III

November moonrise.

She is a dying ember—

a russet shame in the rye grass.

 

IV

Old sins dissolve in this lake of salt.

He sleeps upon dead leaves—

a bed of mottled regret.                                                                                             .

Bokeh

Thistle clambers over tilled cheekbones.

Four decades of sunless pupils—

twin raindrops spewing lucid confetti

whirling in soft bokeh.

 

Come, listen to the whispers pierce—

overlords weaving their way

in the darkness of eustachian tunnels.

 

But believe you me—I am primal earth,

too seasoned now to embrace this ruse,

perennial deceit—promise of buds,

hidden behind the bristle of burrs.

 

 

Icarus

 

Freefalling through a cloud of doves,

wailing for wings to sprout—

 

scapula breaking in barbed skeins

of wind. He sees a circle of baobabs,

 

flames of the forest, vales of stupor lit

by fading lanterns—memories spill

 

from kaleidoscopes, lucent dawns

in every swivel, silken silhouettes

 

of seabirds, portia trees, vermillion petals

gale-scattered within the splintering psyche

 

of this ammolite angel

cleaving the tranquil sea.

 

 

Kintsugi

 

my name—fated to be maimed—

shell cracked, dismembered,

crumbling between jaws—pungent pulp

on tongues and taste buds,

mangled in mouths that sometimes

condescend to try, others

that purse with mockery

mimicry

 

how futile              this wasteland

endless correction

 

how to plead          how to bargain   how to be seen

shed alien halos stitched

to shadow, crawling

on all fours, piecing together

these shards each time

they shatter—soothing myself

with a kintsugi of my wounded syllables—

this name—my name—that means

ocean born, waves of unbridled passion—

swelling, ebbing, receding.

 

 

Endings 

 

Natal skies—vault upheld

by sagging chalazae,

flag and flail.

 

A crunch of shells

stokes the silence,

a reverberation

in soot-heavy dusk.

 

Muted eyes watch

over deepening voids,

yolk of ghostly suns

trickling down

a carcanet of thorns.

 

 

Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad is an Indian-Australian artist, poet, and improv pianist who was raised in the Middle East. She serves as an editor for Authora Australis. Her works have been published in various print and online literary journals and anthologies including Silver Birch Press, Eunoia Review, Cordite Poetry Review, Bracken Magazine, and Black Bough Poetry. Her poetry and art have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and nine times for the Sundress Best of the Net Awards Anthology. She was long listed for the 2022 Dai Fry Memorial Award for Mystical Poetry in Wales, UK. She won the 66th Moon Prize awarded by Writing in a Woman’s Voice Journal and was a finalist in the Glass House Poetry Awards. She is the author of three micro chapbooks published by Origami Poems Project. She lives and works in New South Wales on the traditional lands of The Eora Nation. Find her @oormilaprahlad and www.instagram.com/oormila_paintings

 

 

 

 

 

 

Five Poems by Bob MacKenzie

 

earth that is me breathes every moon



indentured swelling fading flooding

canalled and diked terra firma I

adrift unremitting awash washed

within without and yet withal sea

rising falling moon bound of for by

earth that is me breathes every moon





mourning dove



in mourning there is a mellow light

grief cannot darken nor dark remove

day's glow arising beyond the dark

night only a flicker between scenes

calm heart set like a dove on a limb

life sitting still between dusk and dawn

sun rise as a dove waits in morning

shadows softening in warming light

heart mourning past time shudders gentle

prism of tears letting in the new dawn

warm heart waiting for this too to pass

limb-set a dove waiting to take flight





the thoughts

unspoken

the lady aged



the mouth the same

and the eyes

she sat

across from me

watching

the years

two no

longer

you who

following me

following from

sanctity

paused



picked up

fifty or

so to add

to your

twenty three

years

whitened

bones brittle

hair dry

skin the

mouth the same

eyes watching

me watching



her eyes on

me

lost

in thought

the eyes

the same

tears welling

her stop

near me

wishing

to speak

and you

her gone





tolerance



the man sets his glass down

you mind he asks then sits

easy like he belongs there



tanned and old at maybe forty

cigarette hung off his lip

like some wild west cowboy



his eye constant as he sits

watching me and the room

wary as some old barn cat



I finish my beer quickly

give the waitress a nod

ready for another draft



you got to space them out

he says leaning toward me

across the barroom table



here we go again I think

close my eyes for a second

the old man just smiles



fades away with the room

the waitress and the table

fades like an old sad song





sunrise through a bottomless mug



convex against concave walls of glass

skew and reshape this world without end

clarity of daylight shining through



from below dark flows into the light

the void restored in black perfection

becomes death the destroyer of worlds



a boy observes his bottomless mug

restored by the waitress once again

night rising as worlds die in the dark



god of small worlds the boy reaches out

drops frozen light deep to the bottom

edge of dawn on the horizon spreads



morning light rising softens the dark

dawn flows black to deep brown to warm taupe

between walls of glass while new worlds wait



a boy raises his bottomless mug

swallows up the dark and light alike

calmly creates new worlds without end

Bob MacKenzie grew up in a photo studio in mid-century rural Alberta with artist parents.  His father was a professional photographer and musician and his mother a photo technician, colourist, and painter.  By the age of five, he had his own camera and ever since has been shooting photographs and writing poems and stories.  Raised in this environment, young Bobby developed a natural affinity for photography and for the intricacies of language.  

Bob’s poetry has appeared in more than 400 journals across North America and as far away as Australia, Greece, India, and Italy.  Bob has published nineteen volumes of poetry and prose-fiction and his work's appeared in numerous anthologies.  He's received numerous local and international awards for his writing as well as an Ontario Arts Council grant for literature, a Canada Council Grant for performance, and a Fellowship to attend the Summer Literary Seminars in Tbilisi, Georgia.  

With the ensemble Poem de Terre, for eighteen years Bob's poetry has been spoken and sung live with original music and the group has released six albums.

One Prose Poem by Laura Stamps

 

 

Bullet 

 

She reaches into the box. And selects another postcard. “Dear Elaine,” she writes. “It’s January. And I rarely see the sun anymore. But when it appears. Sunshine. A sunny day. Like today. When I was driving home from work. I see people out walking. In this glorious sun. Men power-walking. Teenage girls. Gossiping, giggling. Families trying to keep up with each other. Women walking with strollers. And this. Just now. This. As I was driving home. This man. Wearing a frizzy wig. Or that’s what it looked like. A wig. Lime green. With orange bangs. I kid you not. In a muscle shirt. He was. Pumping hand weights. I think. No. Actually. Prancing with weights. He was. But that hair. Geez. What if it wasn’t a wig? I mean. Maybe it’s his hair. Green. Like the Jell-O we had to eat as kids. My mother’s favourite. The only kind she would buy. Green Jell-O. A fate worse than death. It was. And orange marmalade. That too. Her favourite. Not strawberry. Not grape. Nothing tasty like that. No. Just orange marmalade. Her favourite jelly. Again. A fate worse than death. Truly. It was. And yet, and yet. I guess. I should count my blessings. Right? Like the Benedictine monks. Living a life of gratitude. Grateful for everything. Okay. I can do that. I can be grateful. For my hair. That it didn’t turn green. From a childhood diet. Of lime green Jell-O. And my bangs. Thankful. That they’re not orange. Like marmalade. So, so grateful. I am. To have dodged that family bullet. Me. Gratitude. Yeah. Living the life. I am.” 

Laura Stamps loves to play with words in her fiction and prose poetry. Author of 49 novels, novellas, short story collections, and poetry books. Forthcoming: “The Good Dog” (Prolific Pulse Press 2023) and “Addicted to Dog Magazines” (Impspired, 2023). Winner of the Muses Prize. Recipient of a Pulitzer Prize nomination and 7 Pushcart Prize nominations.