Tag: Poetry

Still Life of the Ironing Pile as a White Rhino – Emma Simon

~ Claire Walker ~ Leave a comment

Still Life of the Ironing Pile as a White Rhino

It emits a disgruntled air
as I keep a respectful distance
pretending to ignore it.

A rugged look of something
monumental
used to just standing there

dreaming of acacia leaves,
creases worn so deep
they concertina up like worry lines.

Of course white rhinos
are only white when a full moon
washes the savannah.

On days like this they glower
dust-baked grey, shades
of school vests and stretched elastic.

And black rhinos
are not black at all. They lurk
in airing cupboards

bleached out, faded, over-wrung,
proving the rule
all things converge to grey.

Casting a wary glance
I take a slow step or two
further back

from this brooding hulk
of household chores.
Although sometimes I dream

the hot hoof of an iron,
want its snorting steam
to smooth the tired folds

in heavy legs, ease out the ache
of all those lonely sleeves,
before it is too late.

…

Emma Simon has published two pamphlets: Dragonish (The Emma Press, 2017) and The Odds (Smith|Doorstop, 2020) which was a winner in the Poetry Business’s International Pamphlet and Book competition. She was been widely published in magazines and anthologies and last year won both the YorkMix Poetry Prize and the Live Canon International Prize. She has previously won the Ver Poets and Prole Laureate prizes. She works in London as a part-time journalist and copywriter.

Ascent – Ross Thompson

~ Claire Walker ~ 2 Comments

Ascent

Following years of taking deadly risks
and defying all the laws of physics,

it was, I regret, inevitable
that when a childhood friend finally fell

like a nest from its cradling parent branch,
this act of momentum would be his last:

gliding down past clouds the colour of salt
and the safety of outcrops of flat rock.

So I invert the image downside up
and it can no longer hurt quite as much:

his inhaled gasp, the dwindling avalanche
retreating back from the point of impact,

his silhouette now suspended in time,
the snow rising through a merciful sky.

…

Ross Thompson is a writer and Arts Council award recipient from Bangor, Northern Ireland. His debut poetry collection Threading The Light is published by Dedalus Press. His work has appeared on television and radio, and in a wide range of publications. Most recently, he wrote and curated A Silent War, a collaborative audio response to the COVID-19 pandemic that has been adapted into a series of archival and educational films. He is currently preparing a second full-length book of poems. 

The Brief – Julia Stothard

~ Claire Walker ~ Leave a comment

The Brief

It started out as a cavernous space
with no light source.
The brief was to make it bright and inviting,
to give it soul.
I took it, bunker and hideout,
and set about making it bright.
The clever bit
was the upturned sieves for lampshades.

The walls were too coarse to paint;
I plastered it
in paper mâché from unread papers,
back when the news
arrived from some distant place
and shot past me.
This is all about what I neglected.

Up next was colour, the season
offered up red leaves for the ceiling,
agarica xanthodermus stain
for light, a dab of moss
and a bottle forest,
whilst two fly-tipped mirrors
spoke endlessly of windows.

Such cluttering would offset
the dense silence
fizzing with anxiety. What
would an explosion sound like?
In the event, I felt it before I heard it
and I chose an intense teal
to focus on when nothing felt solid.

Stone floors are not as glamorous
as they had seemed
last season. I salvaged a rug,
a few off-cuts of carpet
from the loft, and squirrelled them
down to the basement.
Left them loose, for the dust.

Our centre-piece was an island,
half a beer barrel
dragged in at the seventh hour
to serve as a table.
It could fit eight elbows, hold four
heads when the news didn’t get through.
Next week’s challenge
will be based on the theme of Escape.

…

Julia Stothard lives in Surrey and works at Royal Holloway University of London. Her poems have appeared in various publications including Ink, Sweat and Tears, South, London Grip and Dempsey & Windle competition anthologies.

Fight – James McDermott

~ Claire Walker ~ Leave a comment

Fight

…

James McDermott’s poetry collection Manatomy, longlisted for Polari’s First Book Prize 2021, is published by Burning Eye and their pamphlet Erased is published by Polari Press. James’s pamphlet of queer nature poems is forthcoming with Broken Sleep Books. James’s poems have been published in various magazines including Poetry Wales, The Cardiff Review,Popshot Quarterly, Ink Sweat & Tears and Fourteen Poems.

The Salesgirl says the Mannequin is Not for Sale – Nora Nadjarian

~ Claire Walker ~ 1 Comment

The Salesgirl says the Mannequin is Not for Sale

Marie Antoinette’s shoes are like cakes in pastel colours. She says she needs a friend, the
salesgirl says they don’t sell them here. She tries on a pair of flat shoes, her hair is flat, her
heart is flat. Then her hair becomes a bird nest, sparrows fly in and out. That’s better, she
thinks, licks whipped cream off her fingers. The salesgirl brings more finger food. We need a
splash of colour in the palace, says Marie Antoinette, I ordered hundreds of paints online.
Strawberry Sherbet, Cherry Glaze, Carousel Purple, Pursuit of Happiness, and she giggles.
Then she calls the palace: More shoe-shaped cakes, she says, though it sounds more like an
order. She turns to the salesgirl: I’d like to buy the mannequin. She’s not for sale I’m afraid,
says the salesgirl, who’s been trained to say that, to whoever. I am not Whoever, says Marie
Antoinette, I’m the Queen. She takes the shoes off the counter and starts tearing them apart,
biting them, spitting thread and buckles out. One sparrow leaves her hair, bashes against the
mirror and drops dead. Marie Antoinette picks it up, trembling with rage, starts plucking its
feathers. The salesgirl dials 911. Let her eat cake, says the mannequin. Let her eat cake.

…

Nora Nadjarian is a Cypriot poet and writer who has been published internationally. Placed or commended in numerous competitions, she recently won the Anthropocene Valentine’s Day Poetry Competition 2022. She has work forthcoming from Broken Sleep books and Poetry International. @NoraNadj

My baby’s heartbeat – Joanna Ingham

~ Claire Walker ~ 5 Comments

My baby’s heartbeat

races to fill the midwife’s room,
unfeasibly fast and skittish.
She tells me it’s normal. I think of

Steve, one of my young offenders,
acned, eighteen, and a father,
how he has prepared me for this.

The trick is to listen for a train
or a horse, a boy or a girl.
It’s never wrong, he promised.

He sat in a place like this once,
beside his girlfriend, teeth in braces,
and heard his son rumble

over the tracks towards him.
He was there at the birth too,
for the first six weeks before

he went to jail. He still misses
the nappies, the careful craft
of nightfeeds, his son and the bottle.

Now it’s my turn, twenty years
older than he is, and I strain
for hooves galloping on hillsides,

the clackety clack of carriages.
I wish that Steve was with me, his ears,
because he knows these things.

…

Joanna Ingham lives in Suffolk and writes poetry and fiction. She has two pamphlets: Naming Bones (ignitionpress, 2019) and Ovarium (The Emma Press, forthcoming in June 2022). Her first full collection was shortlisted in Live Canon’s 2021 Collection Competition. Website: www.joannaingham.com Twitter: @ingham_joanna

I Visit the Museum and Make It About Me – Nina Parmenter

~ Claire Walker ~ 2 Comments

I Visit the Museum and Make It About Me

I stand by a stone sarcophagus 
roughly the length of my femur 
and I decide I have lived too long. I flinch 
at arrowheads drawn from the river
which are pinned to the wall in a swarm.
Those barbs make my ribs burn and itch.
I gag at a Roman choker
which is twisted too tightly to fit
my neck. So why make it? I pause 
by the handaxes lumped in a case
and lick at my palms like a cat
to test for the flint’s cold taste. I gape
at the gaggle of stone-age flutes
holed and scraped clean of their marrow.
Still, it may mean there’s use for my bones –
well, except for my busted elbow.

…

Nina Parmenter’s first collection ‘Split, Twist, Apocalypse’ will be published by Indigo Dreams in 2022. Her poetry has appeared in journals including Snakeskin, Honest Ulsterman, Light, Allegro Poetry and Ink Sweat and Tears. She lives in Wiltshire. Twitter: @ninaparmenter. Website: www.ninaparmenter.com  Facebook: @parmenterpoetry

When everything becomes again – Tim Kiely

~ Claire Walker ~ 2 Comments

When everything becomes again

When everything becomes again
it will be with the song of one grasshopper
filling its universe of blades;

it will be with the strike of a woodpecker’s beak
on tree-trunk, all its edges sweet,
embracing us, as the hills are filled

with the quiet breath we thought we lost,
face-down, dew-spattered, in hiding
from all that has happened. Heaving up,

almost unnoticed, shedding earth,
no lesser weight can smother us.
There are no stars we cannot claim.

…

Tim Kiely is a criminal barrister and poet based in London. He has been published by ‘Dreich’, ‘South Bank Poetry’, ‘Under the Radar’ and ‘Magma’. His poetry pamphlet ‘Hymn to the Smoke’ was a winner of the 2020 Indigo Dreams First Pamphlet Competition

No-one was with her – Nikki Robson

~ Claire Walker ~ 1 Comment

No-one was with her 2

I didn’t hear her fall
as she must have, perhaps from
the sharp apex that snicks the night sky.
She is lying on her back, bony talons tucked,
heart-face heavenward, fixed eyes shut
but not tightly, as if she expected
to use them again come nightfall.

Her call had wakened me
but I didn’t hear her fall.
Does she look at peace?
When I catch a glimpse
owls seem self-contained
and inquisitive. I hope that’s how it is
moving from one state to the next.

Tucked in bed with my daughter
under painted stars
we finished Charlotte’s Web,
crying together. In my adulthood
I had forgotten
both the spider’s end
and the starkness of the truth.

…

2 from Charlotte’s Web, E B White

Nikki is originally from Northern Ireland and currently lives in Scotland. She has had poems in journals and anthologies in print and online including Poetry Scotland, Acumen, Northwords Now, Under the Radar, the Lake and Scotia Extremis.