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Issue 15 - March / April 2009 - Poetry
Myth by Rowena Knight
I’ve heard that suffering
is like fertiliser, that after years of shit
your mind can only be
the richest kind of soil.
And the body becomes a tree
whose limbs can only grow
the thickest bark.
So maybe something beautiful
seeded in my mind over those years,
and one day laughing green tendrils
will split forth
and I will bloom-
but for now, what do I do
with the dead part, the part
that can’t remember what to do
with sun and soil
the part
that’s waiting to snap.
Foreland Trees by Martin Raymond
This land God gave to the stones.
Gaunt, acid soils burn into cracks
The surface grass flat, tugged low
No ground for the fixed stem.
Even the stone wall falls
The made thing yearns for time
Standing, just winters enough
To give the rowan a slivered grip.
Above stone, its sap exposed
Ripped and scorched by frost
Follows wind, chased by rain
Dripping summers, winter traumas.
Layered as sandstone, scored
And smoothed, its tangled lee-life
Thrashed to shape Atlantic gales
Dragged North and bundled.
This is what life can do over stone
Fragile, particular, smelling of salt
Shaped by the hostile, the wilful,
But in August alone, ablaze in this red.
Gingerbread Lady by Michael Lee Johnson
Gingerbread lady,
no sugar or cinnamon spice;
years ago arthritis and senility took their toll.
Crippled mind moves in then out, like an old sexual adventure
blurred in an imagination of fingertip thoughts.
Who in hell remembers the characters?
There was George, her lover, near the bridge at the Chicago River:
she missed his funeral; her friends were there.
She always made feather-light of people dwelling on death,
but black and white she remembers well.
The past is the present; the present is forgotten.
Who remembers Gingerbread Lady?
Sometimes lazy-time tea with a twist of lime,
sometimes drunken-time screwdriver twist with clarity.
She walks in scandals; sometimes she walks in soft night shoes.
Her live-in maid smirks as Gingerbread Lady gums her food,
false teeth forgotten in a custom-imprinted cup
with water, vinegar, and ginger.
The maid died. Gingerbread Lady looks for a new maid.
Years ago, arthritis and senility took their toll.
Yesterday, a new maid walked into the nursing home.
Ginger forgot to rise out of bed;
no sugar, or cinnamon toast.
We Could Sing Along With The Band by Ryan Van Winkle
The gig is all waves and deep purple oceans.
His love’s feet sink in and he whispers what he can ---
that she should never die, drift away in slow motion
and should he get cold - well, she should understand.
In the car, salt necked, her lungs are bags of music.
An endless drive back to the home’s empty beds,
so he follows the red lights, counts all the green exits,
the off ramps. Hard focus on the straight ahead.
The yellow guides that flow north recall
the swim of sounds, the lines left on land.
Before the kids, all was white, perfect at town hall,
then good again tonight, along with the band.
The rush of cars goes on and he tries to hold
the night’s center. But as she sleeps, it folds.
Dancing with the Spectrum (collaboration with the Serpent) by Steven Nash
This heaven’s not so sumptuous
there’s cold up its sleeves
And the clouds break apart now
so the rain can fall
between their furrowed bales.
Like sand through the fingers of the
African girl carved into rock
at the edge of the world.
She was painted in violent hues
to fend off the dark
but with each kiss of waves
her colours break apart,
Just like the wind-tussled wheat far away
Dancing the spectrum; Gold hops to amber and pirouettes to grey.
Rewind and fast forward by Saudha Kasim
This evening
My mother and I took a walk together.
We walked past
The man selling greens on his cart,
The cow our neighbours were queuing up to milk,
The dog and his mistress, the flower seller, who sits
By the temple where the priest burns incense
Keeping an eye out for unhappy
Real estate agents, housewives and software engineers.
My mother sees kid goats munching
A cauliflower poking out of a woman's shopping bag.
I see the dusk settling inch-by-inch.
Dusk, the thief of colour and hue.
Dusk brings back the taste of desert dust.
My mother is younger and I am shorter than her.
We take the long journey back and see
The city by the sea, the souq and a star-studded night sky.
We walk past the man listening to BBC World Radio in Arabic.
Dusk brings it back, and we get sucked in.
We see women in black burqas selling
Plastic stationery from Taiwan and
Chocolate wafers in gaudy orange foil.
Dusk brings back
Love-in-Tokyo hair bands in pink trays,
Apple juice at sunset, thick and gloopy.
Shop signs in drawling Arabic calligraphy.
Goats eating paper thrown around by dry winds.
We see it all and smell the fish and the sea.
We see it all and wave good-bye as
Orange lights come on and paint the night now.
The ghosts have been blasted out, scared away.
The bones of times past frame our view.
We have to return to the distress of willing exile.
It acts upon us – we are changed:
I am taller – my mother, slower.
Arsenic by Kristina England
Dementias do not grow in
our back yard. Dad cuts off
the yellow heads, one
by one, lights a cigarette,
sucks from the wrong end.
Foxsense by Noel Williams
You cannot, can you, know
when the dog fox skirls in the yards of night
what it draws from the wind, what it snarls?
Yet your throat quivers.
Hunger. Taut
fear of the moon, fear
of the leaves turning grey as rheum.
If a child beneath the coverlet shrieks its fox
the world jerks awake.
It could be the weight of Astarte
with her dark moons behind the child's eyes.
It could be a wet sheet. A lost teat.
This is nonsense. How,
can you know the colour of my wanting?
The fox in me? My child?
Pay no attention to the moon behind the curtain.
You're writing this, and your nonsense, night-bark,
shriek to the various deaf stars
is the only sense it makes.