by Lisa Zerkle
Once I watched a snake encircle the post of a picnic shelter, spiraling towards a wren’s nest tucked under the eave, not dissuaded by the shrieking pair of swooping decoys or their frenetic flailing as it breached their haven atop the post, plenty of time to consider how it would allow each egg into its mouth, how each would shatter into tasty slurry of slime and shell, those brood-warm ovals cradled in beak-woven straw, how—no rush-- it would swallow all but only one by one. Lisa Zerkle’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Quartet, Heavy Feather Review, The Collagist, Nimrod, storySouth, among others. She was the creator and curator of 4X4CLT, a public art and poetry series for Charlotte Lit. In January 2023, she was awarded an MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College. She lives with her husband and a 100 pound slobbery bulldog named Ozzie. Follow her on Instagram @hag_lore
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by Kris Spencer
The April-wind kicks up, leaves are all grown back on the maple. It sings quieter than the sycamores that line the street. Branches chafe and chirp as a squall comes in. When the rain stops, we sit under its canopy. The light comes green through the new wood as the tree drips. We pat and stroke the trunk, finely shaped and kinked halfway—like a dancer’s leg. In a hot spell last August, a jay slept in the shade of the branches, every afternoon for a week; a mirthy spot of blue, too big for the cats to bother. In the autumn, my wife raked the fallen leaves into three hessian bags. All neatly tied and stacked, they stayed by the shed all winter. Each sack, frost-haunched or soaked; sometimes lit by the pale circle of the sun. Today, we spread the dark mulch, enough for the flower-beds and the new saplings. My daughter tells me, in winter the tree keeps the sun inside, like a cactus keeps water. She lifts my arm so it rests on a low branch, where the feeder hangs; my son says, you are the tree now. Kris has work published in journals in the UK, US, Eire, Europe, Australia, India and SE Asia. His debut collection, Life Drawing, was published in 2022 by Kelsay Books. His second collection, Contact Sheets, is due for publication early 2024. Also by Kelsay Books. after Pablo Neruda
by Tom Nutting I like for you to be still: it is as though you are here close now we stop touching your sky with kerosene cross-hatch packages of freedom, and it sounds like you speak in birdsong we had forgotten in our parks — our daily dose of clean air — who knew the city could be so clear? It seems as though you’ve returned, my soul, to the spaces we reserved for you. You are like the word: wild. I like for you to be still here and it seems as though you are rejoicing: dolphins crystal Venetian canals, elephants tea garden in Yunnan and goats wander Llandudno town centre. We laugh at the new kids in the playground to hide our terror at ‘Nature reclaims!’ -- let us come out and play your return through the night, lasting like Attenborough behind electric screens always (t)here: I like for you to be as close as my remote. I like for you to be still: it is as though you are with that plastic bag choking your whalesong. But one viral video, then, one graph in Nature, is enough. And I’m happy; happy that it’s not true. Tom Nutting (he/they) is a writer from Bristol, UK. He is a practising psychiatrist but also has an MA in English Literature. His work focusses on mental health and medical humanities, on gender and queerness, and on nature and climate. He is currently working on his first collection of poetry and short stories. by Ian Irwin
crickets tap the air thin as wire flirting in code a crowd shivers in heat atmosphere fraught summer the length of grief hums with prayer for the sake of shaking out bury me mad & broken so I won’t be late Ian Irwin is a Bristol-based writer and educator. He is an Out-Spoken Press Emerging Poet and his poetry is published in Trasna and Poetry Pulpit anthology. by Jacklyn Irwin
I climb on top of my huge, strong friend, a horse called ‘Cricket.’ He is warm and I can feel his body moving and flexing beneath me under my legs. I feel his power but I am not afraid. He carries me carefully and steadily along pathways in nature. I love it when it rains softly on us both. I feel connected to the living energy of the world. Thank you, Cricket. You give me joy. Jacklyn Irwin was a non-speaking young woman who belonged to the Sunshine Coast Writer’s group and The Brotherhood of the Wordless. Her work has been published in anthologies of both groups as well as Prism, A collection of Contemporary International Poetry. Creative writing was a great passion of hers. by Rida Zulfikar / sau- li- tiyude / [Noun]: a hitch in birdsong ; error in autumn “In silence, music / is heard louder, i press my / ears to my pulses” See also: Reflection | egg splitting | drumbeat | weight of water in my eyes | |drumbeat | reflection traces waves in my hair | | oh, drumbeat | |emotion and reason | drumbeat | | I am split into two | | alone || alone || alone|| FAQs: 1) the waves bring back dead corals; can I please go back home? → remember, foot crushing grass → remember, paper cutting clean through skin → remember, hands clutching each other alone 2) and so what does it take to break an orbit? → blood seeping on glass-threads → the cobweb succumbing to the brush → planet whizzing by, lost. 3) and so when does a reflection look back at you? → edge-cutting words, heavy words, words i dress myself up in → between lips, dead butterfly wings → stars copy-pasted on to-do’s Rida Zulfikar is a poet living in Chandigarh, India. She has been published in the Journal of Undiscovered Poets, InkPantry, Visual Verse and more, and has authored The First Few Tiles of The Road. She is also the editor-in-chief of Mollusk Literary Magazine- dedicated to empowering writers and poets. by Rebecca Brown
We lounge under the duvet, my limbs in yours, making plans for the park. I place sliced grapes and bear-shaped crisps under your expectant noses. You tell me you love me so much, over and over again. We watch each other closely, ready to worry at the first hint of a tear falling. I tidy the scattered puzzle pieces and wide-eyed baby dolls, muttering unconvincingly as if I don’t love every second. If only I could express these golden moments, sweet and strong as honeycomb, are as good as it gets. Rebecca Brown (she/her) is a disabled mother with incurable breast cancer. She started writing when the hospice gave her a gratitude journal. Once she started, she could not stop! She shares her experience growing up disabled and living with cancer. Rebecca has had poems published in Wishbone Words and Recesses. by Sophie Finlay
I. Gastropods some coil flesh-pink, lips lined with teeth an aperture whorls to an apex. within the extraordinary geometry of retreat a mollusced body nestles in the silken innermost layer-- the nacre of the shell II. Nudibranchs boneless, they shed their shells after the larval stage. with branching, naked gills and soft horns the nudibranchs feed on algae, sponges, coral and sometimes each other, absorbing the hues of what they eat-- skins bulging with colour and poison III. Jewel anemones a blush of footed pink, each tentacle has a tiny bud at the tip-- coloured more brightly than the body of the polyp and resembling a jewel or a dew drop, the ocean gives birth to luminous forms IV. Seahorses an abdomen of bony rings a coronet of filaments-- sensing with delicate fibres. fins that allow the seahorses to hover above the ocean floor like hummingbirds and suck tiny shrimps into their snouts. tails to curl around the kelps and grasses-- to hold-on in the sea-channels. a seahorse father has a nursery pouch in which he can adjust salinity levels, preparing his babies to pour into the sea Sophie Finlay is a visual artist and poet. She lives, works and creates on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. Her poetry is published in multiple journals including Meanjin, Australian Poetry Journal, Cordite Poetry Review, Plumwood Mountain journal and more. She has also been a finalist in several art prizes including the John Leslie Art Prize and the Salon des Refuses exhibition, Lethbridge Landscape Prize. Sophie is currently a PhD candidate in literary studies and creative writing at Deakin University. by Daniel Fuller
The mayflies have ever danced there in the cool sunlight, at the closing of the day, given over to lament and the sad, loping songs playing on the radio. The branches about them make art of the muted wood on the walls and it is time to let go time for me to make unhappy watercolours of myself —the day has abandoned colour now and this hour draws something wretched from my voice such that I can forget this city and almost speak in the manner of colonial streets. To speak nothing of the gap between evenings spent on buses in a place big enough for my tragedy and this hateful serialism from which a yearning cello rises and falters, like rain. Daniel Fuller (he/him/sé/é) is a British-Irish writer and musician. Currently based in Oslo, he draws inspiration from land and country, as well as the personal and relational. His work has been published in Rust + Moth, The Madrigal and The North Magazine, and was shortlisted in the 2020 Bridport Prize. by Meggie Royer
In a past life my great-aunt believed she was a monk, resplendent in marigold robes, offerings cloaking her doorstep like a shroud. There was a heron against the water in her dreams, so pale it shone like hair. In the life before that she was a boy in a cave, younger than I could ever picture her, hiding coins in the dirt. It was a privilege, to end one life and wake in another, to falter in the way love falters, to see her likeness moving around the corner like a cloud. When I knew her, I knew myself. I saw her; I saw what she buried, I saw that some of us spend our whole lives moving away from what moves toward us. Meggie Royer (she/her) is a Midwestern writer and the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Persephone’s Daughters, a journal for abuse survivors. She has won numerous awards and has been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize. She thinks there is nothing better in this world than a finished poem. Her work can be found at https://meggieroyer.com. |
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December 2023
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