Month: December 2020

The Green Fairy – Teika Marija Smits

~ Claire Walker ~ Leave a comment

The Green Fairy

Not Kylie, CGI-flying above a celluloid Moulin Rouge
in impossible wings, impossibly sparkly.
Nor a Bohemian beauty, translucent in oils on a canvas,
inspiring/taunting the poverty-stricken artist.
Neither a vision in green, emerging genie-like,
from a bottle, intoxicated, intoxicating.

But a middle-aged woman with brittle hair,
caught in the contours of a wine glass –
her eyes as green as the absinthe,
and as knowing as the marketers who never,
not once,
portrayed the green fairy
as anything other than
young
slim
ravishing.

..

Teika Marija Smits is a writer, editor and mother-of-two. Her poetry and prose have been widely published, and her debut poetry pamphlet, Russian Doll, is to be published by Indigo Dreams Publishing in 2021. https://marijasmits.wordpress.com @MarijaSmits.

Post-mortem – Sarah Doyle

~ Claire Walker ~ Leave a comment

Post-mortem

i.
Place the steel of your scalpel – here –
in the hollow of my throat. You will
encounter resistance. So many words
caught there, the viscosity of my uvula:
layers of things unsaid, choked back.

ii.
And you thought I was thin-skinned.

iii.
Press – hard – and draw your blade
downwards, navigating my clavicles,
down, through the cleft between my
breasts, bisecting my midriff, towards
navel, that tiny pothole; down further,
through belly, to the privacy of pubis.

iv.
Do you see the beads of blood, fine as
seeds, like miniscule rubies on a wire?

v.
Prise me open. The butterflies in my
stomach won’t hurt you: they atrophied
years ago, ruined gossamer balled tightly,
colours no longer discernible. I will
spread like wings for you. I am all ribs.

vi.
Dig your fingers underneath – deep.
Now this is archaeology. Unearth
my heart from its excavated cavity.

vii.
Slick as a new-born, see the heart glisten
weightily in your slippery palms. It wasn’t
on my sleeve after all. Keep it. It was yours
anyway, and I have no need of it anymore.

…

Sarah Doyle is widely placed and published, with a pamphlet of collage poems inspired by Dorothy Wordsworth’s journals – Something so wild and new in this feeling – due from V. Press in spring 2021. She is currently researching a PhD in meteorological poetry at Birmingham City University. Twitter: @PoetSarahDoyle. Website: www.sarahdoyle.co.uk  

I discovered in this town more than a cliff – Claire Trévien

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I discovered in this town more than a cliff

Even this jumble of rocks,
these dice thrown down
into a semblance of a path
towards the lighthouse,
or, rather,
knives jerking from kelp to sky
even they,
even they have names.

The crones’ fishing spot,
the lopsided rock, the rock
that looks like a cat, the rock that belongs to Hervé,
the one of Louis XVI’s head, the one on which Sarah Bernhardt sat,
the lobster’s hole, the sleeping rock.
Each collective of birds has claimed one or more as theirs.

Names flung which barnacle-stuck;
names passed from palm to palm across the week;
names half drowned and washed up on the beach
with a new tail – unrecognisable to themselves.

Names nevertheless. To be named is to be known
even in passing. That someone once stopped to look at you
and collect you for a bird or a tyrant or themselves.

…

Claire Trévien is the author of several collections and pamphlets including The Shipwrecked House, Astéronymes (both Penned in the Margins), and Brain Fugue (Verve Poetry Press). She founded Sabotage Reviews and its Saboteur Awards. She now lives in Brittany, France with her cats. http://clairetrevien.co.uk http://twitter.com/ctrevien 

Watching the ISS go over during the Covid-19 pandemic – Cheryl Pearson

~ Claire Walker ~ 2 Comments

Watching the ISS go over during the Covid-19 pandemic

I miss the threat of the red button.
The cold thrill of a lump in the breast.
We pine for toilet roll, jarred tomatoes.
The news dooms us, but we are compelled
to watch the tickertape. Politicians.
Death rates. Nurses weeping
into their scrubs. At night we memorise
the ceilings, worry forward: I bury
my mother a dozen times a week. And
yet, there are moments of sweetness.
Last night we dressed, coats over
pyjamas, went outside to the park
at the back. The space station
would be going over; we wanted
to look at the stars. Not essential. But
yes, essential. We hadn’t been out,
we needed to see something marvellous.
We stood and stared. The hammock moon
was luminous. Uncountable stars.
Then there it was – sharp as a scratch.
It followed the wavering line of my finger,
slender clock hand, absolutely dutiful.
The air was cold. The quiet loud.
We breathed into it, held up our phones.
Who reached for whose hand first?
I can’t remember. Only that we
were locked together. A latched gate.
Watching the world go on above us.
We could stay a lamb. A virus. Instead
we made a ballroom of our chests.

…

Cheryl Pearson is the author of ‘Oysterlight’ (Pindrop Press) and ‘Menagerie’ (The Emma Press). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in publications including The Guardian, Mslexia, and The Moth, and she has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

My Father’s Dinner Jacket – Simon Williams

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My Father’s Dinner Jacket

Each year, just once, I measure up to him,
see how I fit his DJ – black serge,
thin, silk lapels, proper pockets. This year
it’s not so bad, I’m only slightly plumper
than the girth of him, don’t raise my arm
too far in slipping on the jacket.

When I’m back at midnight,
the trousers humid from rocking to
the Stones, beating to Quo,
I know he’d never rise to perspiration,
from a Lehár waltz, a ragtime foxtrot, though
perhaps he’d raise the odd bead from a polka.

He wouldn’t like the music, never did,
but he’d appreciate the ball, would like me
living up the night, welcoming December
by polishing my shoes, straightening
my purple bow-tie, taking to the dance
like a tailor takes to tails.

…

Simon Williams (www.simonwilliams.info) has eight published collections, his latest being a co-authored pamphlet with Susan Taylor, The Weather House (www.indigodreams.co.uk/williams-taylor/4594076848), which has also toured in performance. Simon was elected The Bard of Exeter in 2013, founded the large-format magazine, The Broadsheet and is currently developing a one-man, science-based poetry show, Cosmic Latte.

Featured Publication – Suitcase by Kevin Reid

~ Claire Walker ~ Leave a comment

Our featured publication for December is Suitcase by Kevin Reid, published by 4word.

‘These poems are the real thing. Gritty, honest, vernacular, funny but also at times startlingly moving. Reid writes equally movingly about a mother’s deathbed (he wasn’t there. He was away being a fuckin’ artist) or a daughter’s move to Glasgow. The loss which he carries with him to a new life in Athens is so skilfully evoked you can taste it long after you close this lovely collection.‘ Carole Bromley

‘Kevin Reid’s poems view the world from an angle which renews and revitalises the everyday. Here pigeons have ‘tones of stone’ and ‘the devil in your feet’. These are tender poems alert to the way the objects that surround us can summon our greatest losses. ‘the twitch of twigged words / woven into chicken wire’ one speaker notes before turning to ‘Your easel: a girl in a white dress, / her unfinished wave’. Careful and evocative, Reid’s lines shimmer with the unspoken.‘ John McCullough

‘How long has it been since a Scottish poet wrote at any length about Greece? By my reckoning it was Alexander Scott in 1971 with his pamphlet Greek Fire. Even then, he wrote as a tourist and many of the poems were damp squibs about retsina tasting worse than hemlock. Here, Kevin Reid tackles the lot of the self-imposed exile, trying to outrun grief and the grim legacy of the past with all its bigotries and religious baggage, only to have to confront it finally in poetry. Reid shows us that little worthwhile is come by easily, that it is the struggle to live a truthful and meaningful life that is worth all the hardship.’ Richie McCaffery

…

The Church of the Red Telephone Box

was open to all,
baptism wasn’t a requirement,
but loose change was. Confirmation
took place when you were tall enough,
strong enough to open the door.

Communion wasn’t a sacred host
or fortified wine, only the occasional
unholy offering of a half-eaten chip butty
and the dregs of a can of McEwans.

Confession wasn’t face-to-face, back then
the messenger wasn’t Skype. The operator
was supportive, but not always forgiving,
no matter how often you said sorry or swore

because they couldn’t connect you.
Their absolution and penance of hang-up
and redial, often led to immediate lapse
like leaving the receiver off the hook
or kicking-in a window.

A sanctuary of sin, this is where sex
could take place before marriage if
you didn’t mind shameless voyeurs
or the holy order of an unexpected ring.

Previously published in Prole 29

…

On Dying and Being an Artist

As your brain bled could you hear
my sisters bicker over who was
and wasn’t allowed at your bedside

Did you feel dad’s hand in yours
he said you still had a firm grip

Did you smell him leave the room
hear the family tell him not to

As he reached your side they told me
you opened your eyes for the last time
for the first time in twenty-four hours

Did you know I was on the other side
of the country at an arts festival

giving an artist’s talk
being a fuckin’ artist

…

Suitcase: A Traveller’s Companion

As vital as a bible can be to a Christian,
with its must-haves and recommendations.

Its attention to toilet bag detail:
dental floss, mouthwash, toothbrush
and toothpaste, hemp soap, cotton buds,
Jean Paul Gaultier, shampoo, shower gel,
razor and razorblades.

Its highlighted note on the essential
spare pair of glasses to replace those
you could lose in a dark room
full of naked men and women.

The sans of the underwear passage
has worn-out, faded from bold black
to greyscale, the value in updating
smalls barely readable. A reminder
of how much you can wear, wash, expose

five pairs of socks and boxers to sunshine
before they become dog-eared and unwearable.

…

The Brightest Song My Arms Have Ever Held

…call it home. It wanders, yes, but it is still yours.
………………………………………………..Rachel McKibbens

If I could summon joy today
I’d remove the thousands of miles
between Athens and Glasgow

I’d have Aegean sunsets
over the Isle of Arran
eat Greek with Glaswegians

Instead – I remove the years
between adult and child
between now and you singing
Bird On the Wire

…

Kevin Reid travels and works between the UK and Europe. In 2018, he was commended in The Bangor Literary Journal Forty Words competition for his short poem Four Walls
and an Absence of Livestock. His poetry has been published in various online and
printed journals including, Prole, The Interpreter’s House, Ink Sweat and Tears and Under the Radar. His mini pamphlet Burdlife ( Tapsalteerie ) was published in 2017 and his first UK pamphlet Androgyny (4word) was published in May 2018. Suitcase (4word) was
published in September 2020.

Suitcase is available to purchase from the 4word website.

the man who held your heart in his hands – Natalie Scott

~ Claire Walker ~ Leave a comment

the man who held your heart in his hands

did he have……. a……. steady touch?
did he handle it ………….like a flower 
or…. a grounded…………. fledgling?
was it….. a butter-block…………melting 
in his palms? or did he ………..not need 
such metaphors? ………..did he. believe 
it could be fixed?……… did he …….know 
how many times it had been….. broken?
did he feel its……… fitful ………rhythm
quivering  …….like down…… between
his fingers? ……..was it ……….the first
or one of many feathers…… in his… cap?
did he imagine how much it loved me?
did he fear….. its beat…… would….. stop?

…

Natalie Scott is an internationally published poet and Creative Writing lecturer. Her latest award-winning collection Rare Birds – Voices of Holloway Prison, published by Valley Press on International Women’s Day, 2020, received ACE funding for a West End performance.

Sparklers – Mat Riches

~ Claire Walker ~ 1 Comment

Sparklers

Free booze and hanging mistletoe
had lit our touch papers, sent us
flying into a dark corner.

We exploded across dance floors
like two speeding Catherine wheels
—burning brighter than all the rest.

Stopped at red lights too far from home,
I see you pushing buttons, and pause.
The rain across the windscreen’s filled

with fireworks from neon shop signs.
The hot potato of my heart
tells me not to go back.

…

Mat Riches is ITV’s poet-in-residence (They don’t know this). Most recently he’s had work in Wild Court and Finished Creatures. He co-runs Rogue Strands poetry evenings and has a pamphlet out with Red Squirrel Press in 2023.
Twitter @matriches Blog: Where The Fox Hat.