Tag: Atrium

10th of October, Time Immemorial – Beth McDonough

~ Claire Walker ~ Leave a comment

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.

Nomenclatures – Kate Garrett

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Nomenclatures

“If I could find a real life place that made me feel like Tiffany’s, then I’d buy some furniture and give the cat a name.” – Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Our cat was called Eve before we met her.
It was a name I changed in the years when I
believed she would be all I knew of daughters,
amidst the day-to-day mothering of free-running
sons, whose constant bounce off brick and stone
kept me earthed. And when our girls found us,
their flickered hellos on screen from the small
ocean inside me, we willed our wishes into their
new patterns of letters—freedom, grace, beauty,
a honeyed life. We teach them mutability. They will
know to drift downstream is not only forgivable,
sometimes it’s necessary. I learned the same lessons
slowly, hard-earned, my own name’s gift unattainable
for so long – a mother’s cruel joke: pure, worthy of love;
a smattering of abbreviations always falling short.

 

Kate Garrett writes and edits. She was raised in rural southern Ohio, but moved to the UK nearly twenty years ago, where she still lives – in sunny Sheffield – with her husband, five children, and a sleepy cat. Twitter: @mskateybelle / www.kategarrettwrites.co.uk

Cutting Back the Tayberries – Edwin Stockdale

~ Claire Walker ~ 1 Comment

Cutting Back the Tayberries

In her head, Granny hears Satie’s Gymnopédie No.1,
the CD Grandpa bought her.

She is pruning the tayberries away
from Galloway Beltie cows.

The stalks beginning to brittle.
She sits on a stool to garden.

She shuffles back to her bungalow
with tiny feet that shrink over time.

Time for her tot, whisky and ginger ale,
with not too much ginger.

She sits on the patio, her back supported,
sips her drink, watches the sun fading.

 

Edwin Stockdale’s debut pamphlet, Aventurine, was published in September 2014 by Red Squirrel Press.  He has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Birmingham with Distinction and is researching a PhD in Creative Writing at Leeds Trinity University.

The Boat – Sam Payne

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The Boat

I don’t expect to see his boat
moored amid the feathered plumes
of the pampas grass.
Paint flecks rising in the breeze
like rowers lifting their oars.

He used to tell of sirens and sea ghosts,
taught us how to navigate by the stars.
Warned about the swell and how
it could toss a little boat like a wet rag.

He’d be there with his pipe and yellow hat
and we were his sea-licked urchins
with sand in the gaps between our toes
and the brine of the seas clinging to us
long after we went home.

 

Sam Payne is a writer living in Devon. She is currently studying for an MA in Creative Writing with Teesside University through their distance learning programme. Her poems have appeared in several places online including, Ink, Sweat and Tears and The Open Mouse.

Battenhall Fair – Ian Glass

~ Claire Walker ~ 4 Comments

Battenhall Fair

I knew this place, this hill, this sky;
not long before the fields were buried.
I stood where you are now.
There was a stile as high
as my shoulder and a hawthorn
whose shade I borrowed.

And Sam sitting on Persephone
our cow asked why and why
and why does grass grow upwards
and why is the sky blue?

And Mam smiling said: God’s love
is reflected in the sky; the grass
reaches up to touch.
And Pa said: starlings
paint the sky with cornflowers;
the grass is scared of worms.

And scraps of laughter drifted
up the hill from Battenhall fair
and beyond the stalls
the tall cathedral tower stood
golden white
and the river twisted
silver blue
like the ribbon in my hair.

And Sam was singing, so I shouted: why
did they build so tall?
And Mam said:
to touch God.
And Pa said:
because we are scared of worms.

 

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.

Con Moto – Stephen Claughton

~ Claire Walker ~ 1 Comment

Con Moto

Who else would have thought of it:
teaching yourself to drive
by sitting at the piano,
playing with (look!) no hands?

That’s how I found you one day,
both feet on the pedals,
an umbrella clutched by your side,
as you practised changing gear.

In the days before simulators,
what else were you to do?
I needn’t have scoffed, I suppose:
you passed your test first time,

even though years of driving
never quite smoothed out
those kangaroo starts
and tooth-on-edge, grinding gears.

You carried on into your eighties,
pooh-poohing my spoil-sport advice
about buses and taxis being cheaper
(and less costly to life and limb).

Nothing could dent your resolve.
Wing mirrors in the end
became consumable items
like the tins of touch-up paint.

Even writing your car off once,
not stopping when you should,
didn’t prompt you to give up,
whatever that policeman said.

Those white-knuckle rides to the station!
I’d rather have walked through the rain
with a ton of luggage in tow
than have taken those lifts with you.

“Remind me again,” you said,
as we came to a busy junction,
“what happens at roundabouts.”
No arguing, you were grounded after that.

You still had the piano, though,
tuned up, ready to go,
whenever you fancied a spin,
or a trip down memory lane.

You read music better than roads
and never lost your touch,
the notes still at your fingertips,
long after you’d failed to grasp words.

 

Stephen Claughton’s poems have appeared widely in magazines, both in print and on line, most recently in Ink Sweat & Tears, London Grip and Poetry Salzburg Review. Another is forthcoming in The High Window.