5.Poetry

                                                                                             

Fabelists

Lucinda Dawkins

Archie Cornish

Isabella Hammad

Richard O’Brien

Rebecca Kaye

Luke Prendergast

Savannah Whaley

Francesca Nell Goodwin                      

                                                                                                 

     

Of a Certain Mighty Quietness

By

Lucinda Dawkins

 ‘Nest’

THEY CAME IN the Iliad nestled in epithets

Man-slaying, city-sacking, robust.

For me this pair have always had their own brown-paper tag

Of a mighty quietness held uncracking as an egg in their palms

Even in fury.

He holds his life etched into the surface his hands

The rower’s calluses twisted knots in a bedsheet

Drawing sails of skin tight across the curving flesh.

Little bony medals, better than the gold ones in his bedside drawer,

Because he can press them into every handshake.

A quiet pride when the other exclaims

At the unexpected cobblestones found in his palm.

These two taught mine to draw.

Maple wood tapering to badger hair tapering to a filament of soaked

watercolour

Balanced in their delicacy between bolted knuckles,

Knotted tree roots wielding instruments

Too fine for my small unblemished hands.

Always blistering tears

Clotting with the paint into a thick viscerality of green and brown

Then his parchment fingers would unwind the brushes from my hot child’s

fists

And replace them with the cold metal box of pencils

Military ranks of green, their own epithets inscribed in gold on their ends.

In imitation of the concentration stroking through the hairs and water onto

the page

I would sit beside him, gouging my marks onto the white.

Those two painting, these two drawing

Those of a certain mighty quietness.

 

 

 

 

         

‘Hands’

                           

                                                                                                 

                               

Alplight

By

Archie Cornish

I

BY TWO THE KNIFE-EDGE ridgeline halved the sun.

We were sidelit on the chairlift bobbing

Over lone skiers carving snow helixes.

A matchstick piste-pole on the ridge

Shivered in swirls of powder at its base

Like a walker ruffled in a contrary wind.

When sun and pole and lift aligned

It flared like a beacon to high heaven

As if possessed of heat from underground.

Glow of red and blue in a fleeting halo –

Sped-up wax and wane of amber gleam.

Inspiration came and comes to mind

II

I wanted unusually

Pictures taken under

The inverted rainbow.

No English faint shimmer –

Perfect arc inside another,

Every colour.

Upturned curve above

Shallow bowl balancing

On coloured air,

Almost-intersect of

Red and smiling violet,

Extremely rare.

Bridging swarming valley

Each end anchored

Solid, clear.

Sky-parabolas.

Skiers whistling wonder.

Bitter forgotten cold.

On faces dawning

Half reborn belief

In buried pot of gold.

         

   

               

Exile On A Sleeper Train / Vision

By

Isabella Hammad

1.

THE SEA SPINS a ribbon on the window

to bodies in sixes stacked like fishes. Through

earth’s central line a daddy long legs

panics on the wall. The engine is gossiping

and unlit bars wink between cities, empty drives -

a sleeper drops a pillow and despairs; there’s

a sign for the coconut club the shakedown dive

truckless garage open squares

and mountains can move, surprisingly:

cliffs fall right to left. A static cascade

passes like an ice cream.

we cross a border into no man’s fathom.

The sea laughs and the man in the mountain cannot leave

he ran out of himself · saw a girl in a white brocade dress

We face the sheer valley walls of the brain cell,

the firing line of deadbeats.

Slits of erosion in pastless rock

move like a blinking sky in high wind.

Chantal Powell- ‘Pilgrimage’

2.

THIS IS HOW we always vomit, honestly. The nibs are kicking time. The umbrella of the right hand

spins and you ought to be put to death.

You are the brightest star,

perfectly glued together legs. new veins in

your knuckles like cracks

in the glass bowl.

This is how we vomit,

with my knees behind your ears again.

And then

he appears

though there all along you have never

wished to be borne so much as in this last beatific

forward and already pressed and running

there is only one route etcetera

successfully blended and bathed in the apparent street.

A tincture of a man, a tiny essence in a shell of himself, he says

He is soft, and has one of your hairs on his chin

and you can see the root like a white match head floating

                                                                             

                           

So Much Will Waste

By

Richard O’Brien

FLAT ON MY BACK in a Methodist chapel

I watch a plastic bag fill up with blood.

It’s mine, and next to me is you, and yours

it’s filling half as fast and twice as red.

I hate to state the obvious, but baby,

we’re already lying down, and when it’s done

they’ll toss them both together in a van;

we’ll never see those pints of us again,

and they’re no longer ours – other men

will share you, other women me, the secrets

of our hearts will whisper in the walls

of strangers’ ears. So by comparison,

we’ve known each other years in this position,

since we know our bodies, young and strong,

were vetted good to go. It’s all the same –

our tissues sank, we both filled in the forms,

and we could brush in arteries or veins

as close as passengers on rush-hour trains.

We’ll breathe and bruise, it hasn’t killed us yet;

the window closing when the platelets clot

is thin as plasters, fragile as the Tuc they hand you

in the blush of standing up. But this is not the closest

we could ever get to knowing how it feels to swim

across a body like a foreign cell: forget the spinning

ceiling, then, let steel mosquitoes dive towards

the wrists of noble citizens. They’ll do no harm

that we can’t heal in one another’s arms.

                                                                         

                         

Seaside Triptych

By

Rebecca Kaye

THIS SEREIS OF POEMS are part of a collection called “Touch Tank” which, draws on sea-mammals, fish and other sea-creatures, both real and mythical, as well as the vast body of the ocean itself, for inspiration. I hope to work these poems into a montage of snapshots of a shadowy, fragmented underworld which is home to even more shadowy characters, each filled with longings too great for their own good. The stories of these dubious characters will each, in their own way, attest to the ubiquitous loneliness, the pipe-dreams and the tragicomedy of small-town and urban America.

Buoy

I’ve weathered the fiercest tempers

I’ve braved storms and strong waves

bourn high tides and hurricanes

with eyes glazed, glued to the horizon.

I’ve rusted myself half away

with worry.

I’ve clanged myself blue in the face.

I’ve weeble-wobbled myself dizzy—

enough to make your head spin

or take the sea legs off a captain

or break the surface of the ocean open

and pull everything down into the deep

with one great heave of fury.

Seashell Speaks to the Heartache

Whole , I’m a temptation

to a five year old boy, hell-bent

on destruction.

As men grow they try to crush me

beneath their bones

and muscle,

figuring I’m wafer thin

and — an easy target.

They want to grind me down

to sand

to even less

than nothing.

They all forget

the shatter in me.

That bite in my snap.

In pieces

is when I’m sharpest.

Super Slingo

Chimaera, you are the dream

the spookfish

of the penny slots.

You keep your thoughts pressed

close to your chest, aces up

and nurse your black heart

as gently as a dice cup.

Your dreams are just a spin away

you whisper to borgata babes

who take you to their suites

to see the view.

And to your credit, when they do

you stand staring out, for a moment

at the town, darkly winking like a map

of broken glass.

You watch the glimmer

of cars and yachts

letting the ghost of the good man

you might’ve been

pass—over your face

before turning to the room

to take them

for all they’ve got.

                             

We Burnt

By

Luke Prendergast

WE BURNT WITH A QUICK, bright fire,

A blooming, burning bud that burst and caved

in the flicker lick of a flame,

like a firefly.

You raised me from the bathroom floor bruising and hurt.

I was a crippling star screaming into the murky mouth of a gaping toilet,

and you placed me, folded, like a trophy on the window ledge,

knelt before me, your knees branded with red lettered dirt.

Inside a raging beast had ripped this pretty shell,

left shattered battered beauty moaning and groaning,

but you leaked glue from lips that open and close like bleeding petals

and mended a fragile statue.

Each crack and scar was golden and silver thread,

You said.

Then we burnt incandescent.

Voraciously we built with gnashing tender teeth

a pyre of skin and bone and flesh and then we set

ourselves on fire. Again I thundered up and out,

rained down in a tempest of barbs and ice,

forked lightning upon your bleeding back like biting whip’s lash,

and choking smote myself.

After the storm,

drained and spent like an upturned bucket,

faceless forms filled my empty space like so much furniture and when

they fell in shudders of heartache in the wake of my pale shadow

I withered home, flinching from the moonlight and from your dark and vacant

window

before I was scattered ash and cinders in the wind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                   

(Untitled)

By

Savannah Whaley

Zoe Catherine Kendall

DO NOT STRANGLE me with

Lines of pristine images.

I cannot bear the weight

Of words woven too thick

For me to breath.

For I cannot mould words

As you do, your hands

Overflowing with a clay

That spatters to the floor

And echoes a whisper.

As your song turns

In my mind,

I wait for my voice

To mumble

The broken tune.

Your words are gold-bound,

They are jewel-laden

But they are suffocating.

Intimidating.

                                                                                 

                                     

Noh Plays for an Age of Renovation

By

Francesca Nell Goodwin

   I

MASK’S DIRTY FACE

an outside-in drying of a grimace

burrowing deeper

wrinkles, imperceptible

under a sculptor's invented

commonplace

strange shape for

shrinking

vital organs- judged reclusive by

immortality's masquerade

twitching

limbs in place

until

the death rattle

improvises and

catches ivory off-

pallor though,

pre-payment guarantees mummification

Chantal Powell- ‘Remnant’

II

WHITE

Displaced by its shadow –

Stalks

Imperceptible deterioration of colour-

less gradation

covers its alikeness

with an uncanny impersonation of

Propriety-

mimicry,

ungainly in reflection,

betrays a veritable portrait

of the unavoidable continuity in-

breaking the mould

as

the solo artist out-

steps

herself in the mirror

the understudy steps

-in

and (despite affected incongruity)

Still succeeds