Vinyl
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Poppy Stevens is a poet, actor and educator living in Norwich. Her writing has been commissioned by The National Centre for Writing, TOAST Poetry and BBC Radio Norfolk.
Vinyl – Poppy Stevens
Month: September 2022
Severed – Kate Hendry
Severed
Blood has soaked her pyjama top when she appears,
holding out her hand – four-fingered – as if it’s no use
to her now. My instinct’s to save the severed part,
so I hoist her onto my hip and run to the kitchen
where she’s chopped an apple under the spotlights
hidden beneath the cupboard. The rest of the kitchen’s dark.
Outside is dark, with flickers of frost light when the moon
breaks through scurrying clouds. She’s heavy-limbed
and helpless in my arms, but the finger’s there amongst
half-moons of pink-fleshed apple. I swivel from worktop
to freezer, thrust it in with the tubs of raspberries
from the summer, collapse on the lino. She’s still offering me
her hand – half wanting the whole thing gone, half wanting
it fixed. Where is her pain? I’m wrapping her fingers
with crumpled tea towels pulled from the middle drawer
and she’s resting her head against the crook of my arm,
staring at a distant point by the door, as if at the doctors
for her jabs. I’m screaming for help, for someone to phone
for an ambulance, wanting to haul us both into the freezer’s
silver body, to be closer to the finger, the part of her
that’s permanently broken, permanently gone.
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Kate Hendry’s poems have been widely published in magazines including The Rialto, The North, Mslexia, Under the Radar, Gutter, and are forthcoming in Poetry Wales and New Welsh Review. Her first pamphlet, The Lost Original, was published by Happenstance Press. @hendrykate
Diazepam – Elizabeth McGeown
Diazepam
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Elizabeth McGeown is based in Belfast, Northern Ireland and has poems published or forthcoming in Banshee, Abridged and Under the Radar. She is the 2022 UK Poetry Slam Champion and her first collection ‘Cockroach’ is out with Verve in Summer 2022.
The mattress – Janet Hatherley
The mattress
Sometimes they sleep in
though the daylight is broad.
Two young people on a single mattress
under the bridge, the quilt up to their chins
still as dolls,
heads touching, black hair intertwined.
Sometimes the bed is empty,
quilt pulled back—and they are gone.
Pigeons on the girders, orange eyed,
nod and coo, a fluttering of feathers.
A bus brakes, each passenger absorbed
in their own music.
People’s feet splash by through puddles.
They glance down at a bed in the open
scuffed, dirty, damp
as they emerge from the bridge
to catch their connection.
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Janet Hatherley’s debut pamphlet, What Rita Tells Me, was published May 2022 (Dempsey & Windle). She has poems in Under the Radar, Stand and others, won third prize in Second Light competition and was highly commended in Ver competition.
Why We Leave – Gill Barr
Why We Leave
We children are told that we are moving
to the Waterside not far from our cousin.
We are pleased when we see the new house,
feel the scale of it, clatter up and down
the many stairs, lie on the new carpet,
smell the fresh paint, enjoy the airy rooms
without furniture, eat our lunch
like a picnic on the floor, but something’s
not right. Mammy is unhappy. She is crying.
She does not want to leave. She has lived
in the same streets all her life, no matter
that she is moving to a better house,
a bigger house – and safer.
On moving day we use a green van
that isn’t meant for removals. Mammy
is upset. In the van, she says out loud:
We are flittin’. She seems ashamed,
as if she has let the side down after all
these years. She doesn’t explain why
we can’t stay. We children cannot know
that our daddy has been threatened
in repeated late-night phone-calls,
has been told to get out
or face the consequences – he has been dragged
into an alley off Maureen Avenue and told at gunpoint
to get out or be shot.
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Gill Barr’s poems have appeared in Bad Lilies, The Honest Ulsterman and The New European. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Queen’s University, Belfast and is appearing at the Ledbury Poetry Festival in July 2022.
Skinned – Antonia Kearton
Skinned
The tomatoes are naked,
five of them, blanched, skinned,
a little indecent, something
not meant to be seen. The knife
is sting-sharp, dissects them
into precise quarters.
The recipe dictates de-seeded:
I push my thumb against the secret flesh,
feeling its moist resistance. It gives,
I scoop. Pulp, warm to the touch,
slick and tender, slips
between my fingers, seeds suspended
in umbilical sacks. I half expect
it to start pulsating, a stranded creature
straining back to its sea.
Detritus now, discarded, it’s swept
into the food waste, where it bleeds
among egg shells and onion skins, pale, lost.
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Antonia Kearton writes, parents and is training as a person-centred counsellor in the Highlands of Scotland. She has been published in various journals including Acumen, Northwords Now and New Writing Scotland, and is intermittently on twitter as @AntoniaKearton.
Abba wants to talk, so let’s talk – Galia Admoni
Abba wants to talk, so let’s talk
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Galia has poems in Bad Lilies, Atrium, Dear Reader, Streetcake, Zero Readers, Anthropocene and Eat the Storms. She has lectured at Shakespeare Institute, BFI, British Library and is committee member for the London Association for the Teaching of English. Follow her on Twitter @galiamelon
Survival Guide – Mark Czanik
Survival Guide
Keep a conker in your pocket to protect against broken bones.
Plan escape routes and learn to tie double knots.
Let yourself be guided by the mazy braille of garage walls
whenever wearing a patch outside, and refuse to take off
your Mighty Dynamo T-shirt on piping hot days for fear
of getting a tan as golden syrup brown as your Dad’s.
Practice jumping your garden gate and turning the front door key.
Should your dream heavy legs weigh you down when pursued,
throw yourself onto the grass and curl into a ball.
With luck your enemy will fall badly. Timing is crucial.
Go down too soon and you will look like a toddler playing peekaboo.
He will turn you like a fox turning a hedgehog.
Offer no resistance if he does, and do not worry
if the finer points of his instructions escape you when struck
by the whites of his Peter Lorre eyes. Sit up.
Notice how the rooks jostle for space in the silver birches.
The shadowboxing kite’s struggle to free itself.
Develop a stoical attitude towards lineups and take refuge
in alternative fictions. Stay home on test days with your cat
watching Mr Ben and The Red Balloon instead.
See the way the balloon follows the lonely boy from street
to street like a stray thought bubble only he can understand.
Harbour secret loves. Sarah Miles’s stutter. The roof of your mouth
where your thumb rests snug as Cinderella’s slipper.
The blue eyed girl in the opposite house
whose gate springing shut is a glass thrown into a fireplace
every time she leaves and returns. Cherish small freedoms,
most of which you will gawp at in astonishment in the blink of an eye.
The gap in the hedge. The open playing fields. Unlocked doors.
Your mother’s voice calling you in just before dark.
Try not to hog the background in photographs.
The first time you drink too much and are sick in the nut bowl
at Aunty Edie’s Christmas party, seize the opportunity to ask
your father’s silhouette to hug you as you lie on your deathbed
in the borrowed light from the landing,
knowing that in the morning, if there is one,
you can always deny the memory. Be careful with islands.
…
Mark Czanik was born in the sweet borderlands of Herefordshire, and now lives in Bath. Recent poems, stories, and artwork have appeared in MIR, The Rialto, Riptide, ROPES, Porridge, Pennine Platform, Morphrog, Black Nore Review, and 3AM.
Featured Publication – Manland by Peter Raynard
Our featured publication for September and October is Manland by Peter Raynard, published by Nine Arches Press.
Peter Raynard’s Manland is a bold, brilliant and outspoken new collection of poems that scrutinise men and manhood, mental health, working class lives and disability. Aloud and alive with music, wit, anger and rebellion, this is an accomplished, politically aware and vital book.
Raynard is a skilled observer, and these razor-sharp poems document parenthood through the lens of a stay-at-home dad, attempt to tell the truth about men and depression, study our cultural and social and medical relationships with drugs and drug-taking, and lay bare the realities of life at the sharpest edges of society. By turns frank, painful and bleakly funny, this humane and brilliant book encompasses pride and prejudices, the bonds between lads and dads, the toxic pressures of masculinity and the way illness and poverty irrevocably shape lives.
“In Manland Peter Raynard traverses the unstable terrain of working-class masculinity. His poems meet manhood in all of its banter and swagger; its persistent myths and dangerous silences. With his characteristic lyric verve, Raynard explores what it means to be a man, a father, a husband, and a son. The result is moving, candid, wise and tender, full of humour and hard-won insight. A convincing and beautiful book.” Fran Lock
“Part manifesto, part hymn, part raging lament, this collection takes apart the dirty engine of so-called masculinity, strips it down to its component parts, reconsiders and rearranges them using a dazzling array of poetic forms. It is only through acknowledging the strength of their vulnerability, these poems suggest, that men will be able to manifest change in our broken system where the violence of patriarchy is the enemy of us all.” Jacqueline Saphra
“One of the things I love most about Peter Raynard’s work is his voice. His voice is necessary, vital, passionate. It is the voice of anger at social injustice, a voice that deconstructs toxic masculinity, a chronicler of illness. Above all, it is the voice of truth. He tells us how the world is, not how we would like it to be. In this way, Peter Raynard is nothing short of a truth-teller.” Richard Skinner
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Go On My Son
Previously published in the Rialto
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Home-Father’s Beside Himself at the Seaside
previously published in the North
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A Sestina to Die For
previously published in The Brown Book Anthology
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Peter Raynard is a disabled working class poet, and editor. Born in Coventry, he now lives in St Albans. He has been widely published in journals and anthologies. Peter edited Proletarian Poetry: poems of working class lives, for five years (www.proletarianpoetry.com), featuring over 150 contemporary poets.
He has written three poetry books; Manland (Nine Arches Press, 2022), Precarious (Smokestack Books, 2018), and The Combination: a poetic coupling of the Communist Manifesto (Culture Matters, 2018). He has been an associate of Culture Matters and alumni of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen where he was a member for five years.
Copies of Manland are available from the Nine Arches Press website.
atriumpoetry.com 