Prohibited to Touch You
they were hidden in dying sunlight
circles around your lips
a pouted patch touched by age
You — surviving like words on a page—
delicately curl without intentions
wanting to freak me in a passage
it’s small effort to make me think
shining stars and distant analogies
a wrinkled cosmos on forehead—
a prohibited room of imagination
not a battle for silence
just eyes trapped behind doors
But in fact, I haven’t even come close
to you. At least, I want to.
Rizwan Akhtar works as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Punjab University, Lahore, Pakistan. He completed his PhD in postcolonial literature from the University of Essex, UK in 2013. He has published poems in well-established poetry magazines of the UK, Wales, US, India, Canada, and New Zealand. He has also done a 5 weeks workshop on poetry with Derek Walcott at the University of Essex in 2010.
Knitting a Gansey.
A gansey or Guernsey (from the Channel Isles) is the traditional woollen jumper worn by seamen. Usually kitted by their wives the tight twisted wool keeps out wind and sea spray.
In flame flicker and kitchen light,
she snicks, slides, dips.
Needles tap like the rattle
of dice or chatter of teeth.
A twist, loop through.
Thoughts in time to the click, slip
and his fate hangs on luck.
As did his Dad and his before.
There’s a stitch for his life,
one for his love,
one for his ongoing safety.
Hope twists into every loop
as the gansey grows,
on four needles in the round.
a long woollen mouth,
body-wide, cosy, and sleeves
are muscled in,
with her elbows tucked rib-tight
needles like swords, clashing.
She knits for his warmth,
knits for his health,
knits for his next return.
As it grows she thinks of how
it will encase him.
Keep out North Sea wind and salt spray.
She sees the garment grow,
expand as they have grown.
A stitch for a child, a stitch for a ring,
a stitch for a long-held marriage.
In flame flicker and kitchen light
she holds his face in her mind.
Knows his smile, his smell,
his arms about her.
Knits a stitch for his eyes,
a stitch for his mouth
a stitch for his fisherman’s heart.
Michele Byrne
SOUL
for Grant Tarbard
Northern kids, their futures
predictable, they grafted dourly
five days a week down pits, in shops
and on the factory floor –
paying their way with some left
for vinyl, speed and threads.
Travelling miles by train each
weekend with a change of clothes
and a box of classic tracks
– minor hits and rarities
by blacks the charts ignored –
they kept the faith
and stormed the bouncers
– who lost their cool and didn’t get it –
once doors were opened
to another drenched all-nighter
at Wigan Casino, the Highland Room,
the Golden Torch, the Wheel.
A four-four beat was all
they needed, rock steady,
relentless, and simple lyrics
that told the truth. Hallucogenics
and hopeless solos
warped the walls of bedsits
in never-never-land,
but lads in bags and polo shirts,
their girls in swirling skirts,
danced all night till morning.
Doing splits and fancy tricks,
they span around like dervishes.
David Cooke was born in the UK but his family comes from the West of Ireland. His poems, translations and reviews have appeared widely in the UK, Ireland and beyond He has published five collections of his poetry, the latest of which is After Hours published by Cultured Llama Publishing in 2017. David co-edits The High Window.
BUNTY
She would submit fashion pictures
– Spotty dresses, cut-off leggings,
Cutely jazzy zig-zag tops,
Off to Bunty Magazine
And as I let her lick the stamps,
I breathed hope into those envelopes.
But she never won the prize,
Never was publicized.
The back page of Bunty
Carried outfits with little tabs; A, B, C, etc.
Which, carefully cut out,
Might just about stay on the anodyne frame
Of Bunty herself,
Who wore only vest and knickers
Waiting to be dressed.
She was the perfect patient girl;
Perfect with her bobbed hair and no tits.
She had adventures with kittens
And humorous encounters with deck-chairs
...Unlike the Four Marys who thrilled us all
With scary missions inside
Weird crypts and secret corridors
And there were plenty other tales:
Orphan slaveys, acrobats,
The sabotage of step-sisters
And ragged ballerinas, shining, spiralling,
Out from bedroom mirrors,
Dancing on the pages
– All of great but undiscovered
Blue-blood and/or talent:
Bullied by the worthless/jealous rich
Until the mysteries of hidden, but
Inevitable heritages unravelled.
Yes, Bunty Magazine for girls
Dripped with weekly cruelty
And masochism but,
Though badness ever lurked
With sneering lips to keep apart
Some poor girl from her darling horse
And break her heart,
Smart endurance
And forbearance in the stories
Got rewarded always by the sunshine ointment
Of success and rapture in the fragrant end.
I think I suffered more than disappointment
When my stoic daughter's contributions
Ended on the reject floor;
Never won a medal once,
Never got to dress the star,
Never, ever caught the eye
Of that ingrate Bunty editor.
Clive Donovan devotes himself full-time to poetry and has published in a wide variety of magazines including Acumen, Agenda, Pushing out the boat, Prole, Salzburg Review and The Journal. He lives in the creative atmosphere of Totnes, Devon, often walking along the River Dart for inspiration. He has yet to make a first collection.
Swallows
They’d perch on phone wires near the house
to twitter sub-Saharan words,
red-throated, hectic immigrants.
We tried to welcome them, spell out
our joy at their return, but like
confused hoteliers we mumbled.
They’d flown for days, five thousand miles,
across dust deserts, mountains, sea,
to occupy old nesting sites
and through high summer skim around
our chicken run and hoover up
their prey, then bolt into the dark
where tiny mouths demanded food;
loud-gaping purses of attention;
insects tendered on the wing.
And then a blue-black shoulder turned
once more to greet out there, the endless
blue of summer skies, their home.
Simon Fletcher has had 4 collections of poetry published, the last Close to Home, Headland, in 2015, and poems in many magazines including, recently, Orbis, Envoi and The Seventh Quarry.
THE HANGMAN’S TREE REPURPOSED
You can’t keep history – its darker secrets –
from bursting out all over Main Street.
The Hangman’s Tree saloon, built on the stump
of the actual tree, drew locals and tourists
like moths, the dummy cowboy George
swinging from the façade like a dusty flame.
The old Gold Rush mortise-and-tenon
building at last declared unsound; boarded up.
City managers said it had to go. Our town’s
most famous landmark? A fixer-upper,
it was retrofitted, spiffied up. Preserved, that
ponderous front door swings open
on its legendary groove, calligraphy of Time.
But on the polished bar, sparkling
spoons, bowls, and saucers instead of beer mugs.
What will the raucous swinging ghosts
do, in a Hangman’s Tree that’s family-friendly,
serving ice cream.
Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the California Sierra, and serves as El Dorado County’s first poet laureate (2016-2018). She’s included in the anthologies Villanelles (Everyman’s Library) and California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University). Her latest book is Uplift (Cold River Press, 2016).
Weight
Round a friend’s house
(Who once saw a dead man standing at a window)
I remember a soul weighs 21 grams
according to a film I heard of.
Half a Mars bar, she says.
There are too many mirrors in her house
refracting through cold surfaces
different identities revealing themselves in each one
Shadows at the edges.
I walk around wandering
By how many souls
Am I now overweight?
I could sanctuary lost spirits
In my flesh.
A community worker, artist and writer Andrea Mbarushimana suffers acutely from being interested in everything. She has just had her first short collection published with Silhouette Press. Other credits include the Development Education Journal and Soil Biology and Biochemistry. You can find her on www.andrea-mbarushimana.c
The Number of the Universe
In the beginning sky was cut from earth
water from land;
binary sliced out of uniary.
Let there be a tossed coin, one and zero.
From them destiny follows.
From the beginning, luck is trinary:
intended,
past
to come;
you float or drown.
Let there be thimblerig, three way chance
the zero, the one and the coin.
Whether sailing three ways
or infinitary
the number of fortune’s unknown.
Let the dice, poly-sides for poly-choice,
roll into binary: win or lose.
E. A. M. Harris has been writing for some years and several of her poems and stories have appeared in print and online magazines and anthologies. She blogs at http://eamharris.com/ and tweets as E A M Harris @Eah1E.
Chill
these
lone
words
of
chilled
desire
are
on
a
parchment
scroll
unravel
them
one
future
day
when
your
skin
is
dry
your
secret
past
unfolds
before
your
tired
limbs
to
thrust
and
surge
again
back
to
the
thrill
of
the
crackling
fire
Julie Sampson's poetry is widely published online, in small press magazines and in anthologies. Her work has been short-listed and placed in several competitions, including Wells Festival of Literature poetry competition, the erbacce-prize and The Page is Printed competition. She edited Mary Lady Chudleigh; Selected Poems (Shearsman Books, 2009). Sampson's full collection, Tessitura, was published by Shearsman, in 2014 and a non-fiction manuscript, Voices from the Wildridge; Women Writers in the Devon Landscape, was short-listed for The Impress Prize, in 2015.
Little White Lie
Mother has sewn a white lie
into the hem of my breast pocket,
a finishing method for a voodoo doll boy
folded narrowly. The white lie will grow
in my pocket as an egg, my blood
will be an incubator, my marrow
will be fed to the bones of her dead son
made in me, a little ivory lie scattering
into the fledging feathers of a goose.
The goose will merge out of my back
giving me the appearance of having angel wings,
the goose’s beak pecks my cartilage.
This piece of cloth is sewn to prevent
the unravelling of mother's fabric heart.
Grant Tabard is an editorial assistant for Three Drops From A Cauldron and a reviewer. His new collection Rosary of Ghosts (Indigo Dreams) will be released soon.
