Tag: Atrium

The Old Soldier – Ali Jones

~ Claire Walker ~ 1 Comment

The Old Soldier

He has a hut in the woods, well-concealed;
bounded by ash and thorn, linteled in ivy,
where he hides a Falkirk kettle and finds
a tin tea caddy stashed safely with the horseshoe
trivet and well-worn pan. It is not so small,
a familiar path of bird song leads him on
to dress in blackbird colours and sing of rain
while he works by the stream. A young buck
at his side asks who owns the forest?

He has no reply, only beckons, come and see;
the bounty of trees heavy with apples, a crop of nuts
netted with the fingers, a spring dancing
to offer a cup of water, the abundance
of berries and birds to pick them.

Tame a man and lie him down,
make him peaceful in crowds and muddy trenches;
at home he is quiet as a fox and prefers
the rowan tree and blackthorn’s sloe arms
to other company. He finds a clutch of mushrooms,
the honey of the wild bees, a patch of wild strawberries,
enjoyed with a wash of tea and a drift of briar roses.

The summer hides him until autumn swells
her belly and skeins the sky with wild geese.
He is a nimble singer of the spinning wheel,
friend to the wren and woodpecker, despiser
of his own children, his wife has given up on him.

At night he hangs his hood with the fair white
birds, the voice of the wind harps twigs,
and the steam’s cascade is night music to his
swan song, He lays down with no quarrel,
a hermit in his little hut, and gives thanks.

 

Ali Jones is a teacher and mother of three. Her work has appeared in Fire, Poetry Rivals, Strange Poetry, Ink Sweat and Tears, Snakeskin Poetry, Atrium, Mother’s Milk Books, Breastfeeding Matters, Green Parent magazine and The Guardian. Her pamphlets Heartwood and Omega are forthcoming with Indigo Dreams Press in 2018.

Growth – Hannah Brockbank

~ Claire Walker ~ Leave a comment

Growth

This is how a shell grows
I say,
holding the pink scallop
and running a finger
over its ribbed top.
Every wrinkle
a year’s growth,
spreading and fattening,

traces of its former self
found in dark scars,
blotches and cracks
at crenulated ends.
Look how the swelling tide
has eroded its shape.
This is how I’ve grown,
I think.

 

Hannah Brockbank is published in a variety of journals, magazines and anthologies including: When Women Waken journal, The London Magazine, Envoi, and Raving Beauties (ed.) Hallelujah for 50ft Women anthology. Her debut pamphlet, Bloodlines is published by Indigo Dreams Publishing.

www.hannahbrockbank.com

@hannahbrockbank

http://www.indigodreams.co.uk/hannah-brockbank/4594114544

 

Water’s edge – Jay Whittaker

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Water’s edge

Every path has two lives:
one without you. Beyond furrowed fields
the farm’s spine leans against sky.

As talisman, I choose a twig
the length of my hand, every knot
and twist of bark alive with moss.

How much more I see in silence:
a seam of carmine leaves
tracing the contours of the bank;

the steel of a heron’s wing lifting
into air, as though it understood
being blown back on course.

 

Edinburgh-based Jay Whittaker’s debut poetry collection, Wristwatch, was published by Cinnamon Press in October 2017.  She writes about transition, resilience, grief, breast cancer, and LGBT+ lives (including her own). Her poems have been published in a wide range of magazines. www.jaywhittaker.uk

Grace – Robert Nisbet

~ Claire Walker ~ Leave a comment

Grace
 
“There’s nothing more inspiring or – beautiful than
the sight of a mare and a new colt”
(Biff Loman, in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman)

And you, Biff Loman, right out there
on prairie, in open air, we all of us
see and share your moment’s grace. But we
who’ve taught in schools, a pasty-faced kind
of livelihood alongside your Texas ranch:
a tough guys’ register would rank us
pretty low. We are seen as indoor men.

And Biff, I notice too you hesitate,
you check before the simple beautiful.
Biff, in all those years I taught
in classrooms, nothing, nothing at all
(not learning outcomes, grades, initiatives)
was ever as inspiring or
………………………………………..beautiful
as the simple sight, in a Silent Reading class,
of a child, a pupil, twelve maybe, thirteen,
quite, quite absorbed in a book.
Witches, midnight gardens, winds in trees.
The page would turn, rustling (the child
unaware), so very, very slowly.

 

Previously published in Roundyhouse

Robert Nisbet is a poet from Pembrokeshire who does not see himself as unduly competitive, but who has recently won the Prole Pamphlet Competition. His entry, Robeson, Fitzgerald and Other Heroes, appeared last year from Prolebooks.

Oystercatchers – Jean Atkin

~ Claire Walker ~ 1 Comment

Oystercatchers

So, I squat down by his still-perfect stripes. Lift him, warm and limp
…………..and the vehicle has wrecked the other side of his head.
…………..Try not to look in his ruined eye.

A robin and a blackbird sing, a tractor grumbles half a mile
…………..away. Already I am in Wood Field, planning a shovel
…………..and thinking what words can take his place.

After school he’s stiff and fully gone. The children white
……………with shock, they’ve not yet seen the death
……………of something young. We stand in Wood Field round a grave.

The nights are drawing in, it’s getting late. I lay him good eye up.
…………..Their sobs stream on and on over the hills, and shudder
…………..off the trunks of trees. The distant village listens to their grief.

Up there the clouds are dark and racing. Here, we are in this day.
…………..For keeps, in all our heads, the sobbing and
…………..the oystercatchers whistling.

 

Jean Atkin has published ‘Not Lost Since Last Time’ (Oversteps Books) also pamphlets and a novel.   Her recent work appears in Magma, Agenda, Ambit, Envoi, The North, Earthlines and The Moth.  She works as a poet in education and community projects.  www.jeanatkin.com  @wordsparks

On having enough messages from the dead – Abegail Morley

~ Claire Walker ~ 1 Comment

On having enough messages from the dead

Your name is paperweighted to my tongue.
Each time I try to lift it, it bangs to the floor
of my mouth, heavy as a sandbag,
or an iron girder from that old advert.
Your name trundles on wheels, heavy
in its criss-crossing skids, but like a glass
memory is always reflecting something else.

I decide to pin your name to the notice board,
stick another to the fridge with a magnet,
to loosen you from me. This morning I find
they’ve slipped off, parachuted down
and are hissing on an unwashed floor ‒
paper sun-torn, unbearable to touch.
I watch ink vacate itself from the present,
silently bleeding as it disappears.

 

Abegail Morley’s recent collection is The Skin Diary (Nine Arches). Her debut, How to Pour Madness into a Teacup, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize. In the Curator’s Hands is new from IDP. She’s “One of the Five British Poets to Watch in 2017” (Huffington Post), blogs at The Poetry Shed and is co-editor of Against the Grain Poetry Press.

I used to think if I ate an apple core, a tree would grow in my belly – Stephen Daniels

~ Claire Walker ~ 2 Comments

I used to think if I ate an apple core, a tree would grow in my belly

Day 1
A pip nestles in my stomach,
finds a fertile space to settle.

Day 2
Sprouts appear,
show signs of growth.
I send down much needed water.

Day 5
It craves sunbeams
and other apple saplings –
at what point does it become a tree?
They say an apple tree can take 20 years to grow full size.

Day 274
I have these lines
and blemishes on my face.
Lemon trees can develop needing
only a little light. An apple tree cannot mature without
sunlight. My body obliges. As I fall asleep, I feel the bark forming.

Day 4,222
I can feel the branches
rustling around my lungs.
I coughed yesterday: a leaf appeared.
The roots irritate my knees; I woke this morning
and moved too quickly leaving a crick in my neck –
I could hear my twigs snapping. Appetite slows as more apples fruit.

Day 7,300
My skin feels thicker,
rougher. Teenagers often visit,
spend their afternoons kissing under
my cover, carve their initials into my torso
before they depart. My head feels hazy, I struggle
to peer through the blossom in my eyes. I will keep them
closed today. They say apple trees can live for over 100 years – 36,500 days.

 

Stephen Daniels is editor of Amaryllis Poetry. His poetry is published in numerous magazines and websites. His debut pamphlet ‘Tell mistakes I love them’ (V. Press) was published in 2017, his second pamphlet will be published in 2018 (Paper Swans Press).www.stephenkirkdaniels.com

Nightwalk (Moped Emptiness*) – Chris Hemingway

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Nightwalk (Moped Emptiness*)

The Honda C90 is not an iconic machine
at the best of times.
And when the engine splutters out
at midnight,
it’s not the best of times.

For reasons of personal safety,
this has to be a pavement trip,
to wheel it back to Manchester
before dawn.

Skirting Altrincham,
it’s 1985,
streetlights are low priority.
Past Manchester Airport,
where automorphic grounded planes
give Disneyesque smiles of encouragement.

In Wythenshawe,
telepathic youths flicker in the shadows,
assessing the scrap value of man and machine.

“Smiths fan, leave him, he’s not worth it…”
they mutter.

I pass a sign welcoming me to Gatley,
my 12th suburb,
this could have been
the world’s most downbeat calendar.

Now I’m home, and it’s 6 a.m.
An hour later, set off for work,
relieved, for once,
that there’s no water cooler,
and very few moments.

 

*from “Motorcycle Emptiness”- Manic Street Preachers

Chris Hemingway is a poetry and prose writer from Cheltenham.  He has a pamphlet “Party in the Diaryhouse” to be published by Picaroon in April 2018, and has previously self-published two collections (“Cigarettes and Daffodils” and “The Future”) through lulu.com.  He has read at Cheltenham Poetry and Literature Festivals, and co-runs the Squiffy Gnu Poetry Prompt blog and Facebook Group.

First Date at the Natural History Museum – Alice Allen

~ Claire Walker ~ 1 Comment

First Date at the Natural History Museum

We give the animals voices
make a handbag of the pangolin,
comment how The Walrus
on its polystyrene ice
peers down at us like Pavarotti.

All afternoon we laugh at similitudes,
cannot stop ourselves seeing
not what the animals are,
but what they are like

and later, on the station platform
are silenced by what we see:

two seagulls, delicate, trembling,
one treading air above the other.

 

 

Alice Allen’s poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies including most
recently, The Moth and Envoi. In 2014 she won the Flambard Poetry Prize. Alice is a
poetry reviewer for Sabotage and a writing mentor at The Ministry of Stories.

The truth about cats and courgettes – Hannah Stone

~ Claire Walker ~ 1 Comment

The truth about cats and courgettes

My cat spurns laps and hearths,
shuns stroking;
wefts her tail with sluts’ wool
under the spare bed.
Spine retreats into corrugated peaks.

I do not speak of these signs
when I call my mother.
In turn, she neglects to mention
that the vegetables I left prepared in her fridge
last month are slime in the salad drawer.

We exchange scripted comments,
about meals to be enjoyed
and the companionship of cats.
Like her hand, holding the phone to her ‘good’ ear,
mine now has freckles which outstay the summer.

 

Hannah Stone co-edits the poetry ezine Algebra of Owls and convenes the poets/composers forum for Leeds Lieder Festival. Her first collection, Lodestone, was published by Stairwell Books in 2016 and Missing Miles by Indigo Dreams Publishing in 2017.