Tag: Atrium Poetry

Trompe l’Oeil – Jennie Farley

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Trompe l’Oeil

It’s something about the way
he wields the rag that inspires her,

like the way the butcher’s thumbs
suggested a gladiator’s blood-smeared thighs,

and the fishmonger’s wrists, slippery wet
with fish scales, made her think of Poseidon.

The surrealist painter takes up her palette.
The window cleaner agrees to pose,

turns his hand to display a grubby palm.
With her brush she hammers in the nail.

 

Jennie Farley is a published poet, workshop leader and teacher. Her poetry has featured in magazines including New Welsh Review, Under the Radar, The Interpreter’s House and webzines. She runs events for an iconic arts club, NewBohemians@CharltonKings. Her first collection My Grandmother Skating (Indigo Dreams Pub) published 2016. Her new book Hex (IDP) out 2018.

Life-Cycle of the Cry – Kathryn Alderman

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Life-Cycle of the Cry

She cried like a baby they say
as though grief should grow up
fold tears to one neat tuck
of the handkerchief.

A parlour assistant, professionally grave, mouths
I’m sorry
draws navy velvet matinee curtains
and presents

the shock of the familiar –
your face with you not in it
chill to the touch.

Much of you was silence.
Now you burrow into its inky balm at last

and I squall like a slapped infant
testing new lungs.

 

Kathryn Alderman was an actor before starting a family. She won Cannon Poets’ Sonnet or Not (2012) and is published online and print including: Amaryllis, The Cannon’s Mouth, Eye Flash Poetry Journal, I Am Not a Silent Poet. She Co-Chairs Gloucestershire Writers’ Network. 

Burning in You – Jude Cowan Montague

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Burning in You

In fire and snow your words on the letter are disappearing.
Out of my cold eyes I see you beyond the lines of pines,
and my nose smells your room like a cup of hot tea.
I came out to remember how feathers land on branches.
A train passes in an encounter, brief hello and goodbye.
Can any moments be as soft as your skinny arms?
The broken records pretend to know better than us.
It’s impossible to know how cold it gets when it snows inside.
I’m not allowed to think of becoming a man anymore,
not the man I want to be, just a snowman with coal eyes.
So I watch trains cross the river, your words on fire.

 

Jude Cowan Montague worked for Reuters Television Archive for ten years. Her album The Leidenfrost Effect (Folkwit Records 2015) reimagines quirky stories from the Reuters Life! feed. She produces ‘The News Agents’ on Resonance 104.4 FM and writes for The Quietus. She is an occasional creative writing tutor for the Oxford University Continuing Education Department. Her most recent book is The Originals (Hesterglock Press, 2017).

Russian Doll – Marija Smits

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Russian Doll

I am heavy with the hopes
of my younger selves – the ones
who dreamt of all I could be.

They call to me, disappointed,
as my once-bright dress
begins to dull, as I thin

and am worn smooth by little hands
that dismantle me daily.
I answer with excuses and apologies.

Life intrudes, I explain;
takes us apart
and rebuilds us askew.

 

Marija Smits is a mother, writer, artist and editor. Her writing has appeared in various places including Mslexia, Brittle Star, Strix, LossLit and Literary Mama.

Cabochon – Kathy Gee

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Cabochon

(for T & J)

They’re amethyst and agate, fighting life
for thirty years like gemstones under water.
Bicker-banter’s how they draw me in.

I’m oxbow-taut and half expect a breach,
a burst of plunging flood between the rocks.
I had forgotten how they shine in spate.

As rapids flick my feet from under,
she wins an outburst, he diverts the flow.
A rueful smile acknowledges her reach.

Lips meet in light reflection, lowered lids
like hanging branches. Love is polished
by the timeless grinding together of edges.

 

Kathy Gee’s career is in heritage and in leadership coaching. Widely published online and on paper, her poetry collection was published by V. Press http://vpresspoetry.blogspot.co.uk/p/book-of-bones.html and she wrote the spoken word elements for a contemporary choral piece – http://suiteforthefallensoldier.com/

10th of October, Time Immemorial – Beth McDonough

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10th of October, Time Immemorial

Revenge is sweet? My arse! You’ll suck it sour.
Go, lug fruit home – observe it breed a bowl
of maggot-writhe. My fly coachload, winged-black
with foul disease will batter down your panes.
Those jells will whersh, and piddle thin; your pies
will turn; your crumbles whiff of piss; your tarts
fall festering, and stink; they’ll dribble bloodied inks.
Do pour a wine – that rancid fruit shall make
mere vinegar seem fine, and any thought
of winter liquor – gone! Aground and bruised
I pluck out spines and curse. Of course you know
me, shit-brain! I spit my vengeance, darkest gob!
Hell won’t mend ye, bastard bramble bush!

 

Beth McDonough’s poetry appears in Agenda, Causeway, Interpreter’s House and elsewhere; she reviews in DURA. Handfast (2016, with Ruth Aylett) explores family experiences – Aylett’s of dementia. and McDonough’s of autism. She was recently Writer in Residence at Dundee Contemporary Arts.

Internal Combustion – Ian Glass

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Internal combustion

Daughter number two stares at me in mock horror:
eyes wide, mouth wider. She wants to know
why a car engine makes such a lot of noise,
which is not easy to explain when you’re driving.

Explosions? she says, real explosions?
Perhaps the horror is real: arms folded tight,
legs pressed hard against the seat,
retreating from this unexpected threat.

How many explosions?
………………………………………………I calculate roughly,
and miss the roundabout exit.

A hundred!
……………………….She says, as I go round again,
a hundred explosions every second!
What sort of death-wish madness builds machines
that explode a hundred times a second?

Traffic lights change to red:
a perfect opportunity
to explain the four stroke Otto cycle,
and while she’s not entirely gripped

by my discourse on compression ratios,
adiabatic expansion, temperature,
pressure and entropy; moving off
I sense her interest in the variations

of these mad death-wish machines:
the delicate sparking that animates
a petrol engine; the self-reliant
auto-ignition of a diesel.

Given a choice,
……………………………she says,
I would rather ignite spontaneously
than wait for a spark.

 

Ian was raised in Northumberland, lives in Worcestershire and has two grown-up daughters.  He trained as an engineer but when not writing he works as a programmer.  Ian’s poems have appeared in Ink, Sweat and Tears and Algebra of Owls.

Alistair – Kirsty A. Niven

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Alistair

With big brown eyes,
like a Labrador’s, he gazes up at me –
a male echo of my young self.

His impossibly little hands
enveloped in his tiny pockets –
a miniature man.

He talks away excitedly,
in his own hybrid language;
English with a hint of gobbledygook.

He goes to fetch something –
a sunshine yellow iPod toy.
Gleeful, he pushes its plastic button.

Out bursts music,
the Black-Eyed Peas,
“I gotta feeling.”

He explains to me the song’s meaning,
swaying the whole time,
how exactly to have a good night –

“You have a bath and you soak Daddy
and then you go to bed with Sookie
and kiss everyone goodnight.”

Confused by our laughter,
he naively smiles –
his baby teeth like glittering pearls.

 

Kirsty A. Niven is from Dundee, Scotland where she lives with her husband and cats. Her poetry has appeared in a number of places including Artificial Womb, The Dawntreader, Dundee Writes, Cicada Magazine and Laldy.

Chashitsu – Kathryn Alderman

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Chashitsu

*Japanese Tea Room

The grown-ups will talk in long whispers today
and I must play with Little Green Geisha.
Aunty M switches on the chashitsu lamp
and slips next door with two steaming cups.

Green Geisha folds her camellia parasol and bows.
She lays out rice straw mats,
draws back paper shoji panels and enters
the tiny house. Her shadow gathers tea flowers,
heats water over fired charcoal
and warms the flowers to bloom.

She brings me a tea bowl painted with owls.
I bow, take it with the right hand,
cup it with the left and twist it two quarter turns
to the right; this is the Way of Tea.

Green Geisha kneels back to watch me sip at the rim;
the amber mist, a drift of jasmine on the tongue.

Next door, two silhouettes framed in the shoji’s glow;
the glint of spoons on china,
murmurs, now just beyond hearing.

The proverb on the chashitsu scroll says –
the speaker may be a fool but the listener is wise.
Green Geisha’s eyes narrow and crease,
she presses a finger to her lips.

 

Kathryn Alderman was an actor before starting a family. She won Cannon Poets’ Sonnet or Not (2012) and is published online and print including: Amaryllis, The Cannon’s Mouth, Eye Flash Poetry Journal, I Am Not a Silent Poet. She Co-Chairs Gloucestershire Writers’ Network.  

Lead – Jennie Farley

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Lead

She wore shoes of lead to keep
her grounded. They were ugly,
heavy, gave her blisters.

One day in a fit of pique
she tore at the leather straps,
tugged off the buckles.

She rose up slowly, a wash
of cool air bathing her feet.
Upright, straight-backed,

her arms stiff by the sides
of her frilly pink frock.
There was no going back

to Mum and Dad and Chloe
the cat, the house and garden,
busy streets. Shoeless,

she rose above the steeple,
through a flock of birds,
through air balloons,

through clouds,
through the rays of the sun,
through midnight stars,

and kept on rising …

 

Jennie Farley is a published poet, workshop leader and teacher. Her poetry has featured in magazines including New Welsh Review, Under the Radar, The Interpreter’s House and webzines. She runs events for an iconic arts club, NewBohemians@CharltonKings. Her first collection My Grandmother Skating (Indigo Dreams Pub) published 2016. Her new book Hex (IDP) out 2018.