Published Pulsar Poems

The following poets had their work published in the September 2008 edition, #50, of Pulsar Poetry Magazine: Michael Newman, Andrew Frolish, Maureen Anne Browne, Chris Hardy, Steve Breese, Fergus Chadwick, Neil Brooks, Sue Chadd, Ken Champion, Michael Estabrook, Suzanne Richardson Harvey, Calvin Green, Abegail Morley, Michael Jennings, Raud Kennedy, Gill McEvoy, Alan Morrison, Keith Moul, John Murphy, Alleliah Amabelle Nugid, Kathleen Kenny, Anne Rees, Gordon Scapens, M. A. Schaffner, A K Whitehead, Paul Tanner, Poul Webb, F. J. Williams, John Brantingham, Kate Edwards.  see poems below: (471 poets published, up to and including September 2008).  

The following poems were published in the September 2008 edition of Pulsar Poetry Magazine # 50

English Riviera              Pulsar Poetry Competition 2007/08 – Winning Poem

South.  To the south

Always the south.

Lanes lead from English Easter

Towards a Mediterranean Mystery,

Indigenous trees give way to exotics,

While the sun draws caravans

Across the Steppes of Central Cornwall.

I watch as boats

Take on outboard motors;

Oilskin-clad, children work up

A modern shanty; Far Harbour,

Parents mutter below-decibel.

The bay growls with two-stroke tuning.

Beach talk.  Tide turn.  Tide Town.

Wagtails amaze, picking away

At wet sand,

Their low loping flight characteristic.

But the smew that bobs on waves

Could be rubber duck,

Up and down a turbulent bath.

Far-out, ocean liners balance

On the earth’s rim,

Defy identification.

I attempt to focus binoculars,

Name my own inadequacy.

A dozen turnstones fly in,

Stand sentinel over shingle,

And work their patch.

I stealth a presence

Across the rocks, but am seen.

A dozen turnstones fly off,

Leaving emptiness.

Now the boats return from day-long Odyssey,

And the faithful tractor waits.

Michael Newman,

Bishops Cleeve, Cheltenham

Bones

We return to the clearing night after night

expecting to see that white glow

peel itself off the moon again:

the owl swooping between spiny trees

and the slick currents of polluted clouds.

At night, when we stoop silently

under low boughs and heavy skies,

the earth comes alive with crackling

and the scratching of prey finding cover,

shivering through pauses in the hunting.

On the third night, we find the owl’s perch,

a tree stump, rotting in its coat of fungus.

Pellets litter the dirt below: little furry sacks

of indigestible waste, the undesirable

aspects of the lives consumed the previous night.

Poking through the compressed fur,

delicate bones, like wooden splinters,

snag the earth.  Imagine the retching,

the coughing, the mouthful of unwanted

bitterness spat in a fury in the clearing each night.

Stumbling our way home down unlit paths

where the fingernails of nightened trees

scrape the flesh from our cheeks,

I look at you as the moon slips from your face

and I feel the bones catching in my throat.

Andrew Frolish

Layham, Suffolk

Pulsar Poetry Competition 2007/08 – Runner Up

Breaking Point

His tendency to complain

Remained after he’d gone to work:

A shadow, hovering

As she tackled a mountain of ironing

And headed towards dusk.

From where she stood

She could see Benevenagh

Drowning in mist

And felt,

Her sense of self drowning with it.

She reached for the last shirt:

Meticulously ironing

Around buttons

The colour of pearl barley,

Collar, pockets, pleats, placket, cuffs.

She wished she’d done his first –

He was fussy about his shirts.

She hurriedly put the ironing-board back.

Left nothing to chance:

Gave the mirror a quick look,

For reassurance:

Her lipstick was fine.

Used to concealing things

She deleted the dark bits under her eyes,

Downed a glass of wine,

Then – scrutinised:

All those things that shouldn’t be there

She removed,

For the last time.

She felt him closing in,

Just like the night,

Heard the crunch of rubber on stones

And knew

Something, definitely, wouldn’t be right.

Maureen Anne Browne, Newtownards, C. Down, N. Ireland  

Pulsar Poetry Competition 2007/08 – Third Prize

   Masinko      

When she says this city

is cold and sad

I know she makes it so

wishing she was back

in the city

without shops or money

hawks at the window

where she’s from.

They play a violin

with one horsehair string

sing to you your own song

of welcome and faith

nothing else but the song

is always new

made by two musicians

one plays, makes the words

both make the tune

until they stop, take a coin

and go, with a staff

across their shoulders

to loop and rest the arms

walking home uphill

in the dark finding the way

like swallows.

At night

the cold black sky

flows in the unlit streets

like glass, you see

between the stars

where God might be

if you choose to look

and silence offers all

you’ll ever need or get,

dawn, the singing

of the fire, birds,

feet at the door.

Chris Hardy

London  

Masinko – Ethiopian violin

Pulsar Poetry Competition, Recommended Poem

I don’t know why . . .

There on the restaurant table beside me

A recently cleaned table

A discarded empty ketchup sachet

I don’t know why this is worth mentioning

It just feels important to me

My wife sits opposite

Both of us coming to terms with the difficult news we’ve just heard

Words are non-existent when hope is asked for.

I look around the restaurant

In hope of some respite

Egged on by his friends

A man goes to the counter for a second helping of caramel apple pie.

He returns to his seat and consumes it as though the world is ending

A child repeatedly bangs a can of lilt loudly on the table

His parents ignore this, immune to the crescendo

Looking further I see a woman’s face

Skin a deathly white

A small clump of hair on the rear of her scalp is all that’s left

The cancer is beating her.

She looks straight back at me,

Her eyes a brilliant blue and within them courage and fear.

Hope is still there.

She smiles

I try to smile back but I am embarrassed of my staring.

And there on the restaurant table beside me

A recently cleaned table

A discarded empty ketchup sachet

I don’t know why this is worth mentioning

It just feels important to me.

Steve Breese

Kelsall, Cheshire                             

Pulsar Poetry Competition, Recommended Poem

Windfall Bucket

They’ve been acting strangely ever since

                the apples ripened,

yellow red, and fell plucked to the grass

                by earth and time.

How easy the magnificent insects

                can expect to find

their nectar habit, sizing up the zinc

                buckets of windfalls.

Apples undergo an art of liquefaction,

                a palette of bruises

from the orchard’s knocks; from cancerous

                tan, to white spots,

from Van Dyke brown, finally to dull

                black – skin collapsed

under the irritant miniscule chainsaw

                of surgeon wasps.

Strange appetite, weird thirst, the juice

                a clear liquor

expressed from mouldy wounds - lures

fit aficionados.

Weighed down by topload of canvas,

                one lies flat out;

another leans into the drink with torn

                stunsails like a yacht.

You laugh perhaps, and think me shameless;

                these wings that suffer

addictions thirtieth daily death, aren’t

                quite the fun I imagined.

Under clattering colours, they lift

                to drop Red Admiral

gliders in a choppy alcoholic sea,

            to drown, intoxicated, lost.

Fergus Chadwick

Thames Ditton, Surrey

The Egret

Best told by its snowy plume

it waits in the brackish water

thin yellow feet as still as mud.

Beak of blue jade darts at the

shadow of fish on the meander.

It was once hunted by man

for its crest.

In nesting season the egret

has been know to bark

and when startled

it flies silently like a white

blossom on the evening

wind.

Neil Brooks

Marlborough

Watching swifts in the rain

Below the buckram of cloud

they form aerial patterns

on the branchings of air

they stroke

their spirits wane

between the raindrops

and gravity

I watch them snip flies

in their delicate beaks

in a pelt of frantic flight

like dark arrows

in an invisible hoop

they dash in flash

of stealth

it carries on raining

they stay in my mind

on a wet day

in a empty house.

Neil Brooks

Configurations

I am drawn to you.

An iron filing,

magnetised

by the power of stars.

You move; I shadow,

mirror your image,

like all your fans.

We form a group, moving together,

amorphous amoeba that’s bent on you;

your voice, your words,

your breath, your essence.

We flock this way and that, instinctive,

as salt waves after the moon,

as starlings kaleidoscope

dark patterns against a winter sky.

Single, I am no one

I am weak, ineffective,

in a million years

you would never notice me.

But you have to love us,

don’t you?

Together,

our configurations demand

your attention.

We possess the sky,

filling it with a hurling, screaming, seething mass

tumbling down to the reed beds

to suck you dry.

Sue Chadd

Malmesbury

Napier Road

Don’t know how it began; couple of kids in an East End school,

the bell ringing at the end of a lesson marking another round, me

drawing Spitfires, zigzag propeller circles, rushing out from Art

to find him as he runs from the Science lab, punch his head, he

pulls my hair, hands smelling of bad eggs; run to our next class,

he to Geography, atlas upside down on his meager knees, thinks

Paris is the capital of Rome, me to Woodwork, planing smooth

a model racer, Mister May smiling; miss him at break, probably

writing fifty lines, I must werk harder, see him after Maths - top

again – as he hops towards me, eyes wide, tears over his face, kicks,

then scurries off to R.I., picture of a halo’d Jesus, arm round a black

boy, Chinese girl, me to P.E. where I leap over the vaulting horse

somersault on the coconut matting and score two goals in the five-

a-side in the hall, and between History and English pull him round

the parquet floor because he rakes my face with a pen he hardly

knows how to hold; then the last bell, and it ceases.  Saw him

recently, still lives in his council house, didn’t answer when

I reminded him, laughing, asked how it started.

Ken Champion

Goodmayes, Essex

to Patti

That steroid injection

I had this morning

in my spine – well,

I thought you

were the only thing

that took my breath away.

Michael Estabrook

Acton, MA, USA

Victory Song at the Custer Monument

You led them to the lip

Of a bowl called Little Big Horn

Chiefs, warriors, braves
You breathed into their spirit
A will of steel
To shatter a fortress of raped land
Slaughtered buffalo

Souvenir seekers bow their head
Before a stone planted
In memory of the man who fought for glory
No marker for you
Strategist of justice
Engineer of victory.

Suzanne Richardson Harvey

Alamo, California, USA

Terminal Dwelling

Her spirit's shrunk

To fit a dwelling

Unchosen

Such a diminutive prison

Its walls contract

The room diminishes

To a building block

In a child's nursery set

She fondles the furniture of greeting cards

Devours perfunctory get well wishes

Caressed with

Flawed precision

The carnation withers

The narcissus fade in a florist vase

A solitary iris languishes

In a dish garden gone dry

She knows one pronoun only

The importunate I

She extracts her tribute

In inelegant retreat.

Suzanne Richardson Harvey

Landscape with Ruins

The camellias are awakening, pink

and crimson, their eyes aware of the cold

moon.  All winter the garden was rank

with sodden leaves, fat persimmons hung blanched

with mildew.  Within, a stillness, a thought.

White carnations shimmered in a bronze vase.

I sat back and waited for the onslaught.

The crows assembled by the water-race.

In the silence your ghost stalks the stone paths,

sparrows chatter among the shaken leaves.

I sense your presence, a raven laughs,

gone is the gossamer the spider weaves.

Tonight, stars are streaming with memory.

In the distance, crows swarm the widow tree.

Calvin Green

Santa Clara, CA, USA

On the Brink

From the curve bow of the horizon

I watch you walk away.

Earlier we sat in the pew

cold visitors, unholy

in our separate togetherness

Abegail Morley

Cranbrook, Kent

The House Says

You ask if I will travel with you

to see the world.

The house says

I have to mow the lawn.

You ask if I will study with you

to understand the world.

The house says

I have to paint the ceiling.

You ask if I will pray with you

to love the world.

The house says

there are blinds to be put up.

The house says

would I fry myself with some garlic

and sprinkle on a little parsley.

Michael Jennings

Keyworth, Nottinghamshire

Learning to Yawn

She always said to cough

with your mouth closed.

Only open it to eat,

or to say something intelligent.

Not something that sounded intelligent,

but was intelligent.

She didn’t expect to hear

much from me,

only the sound of my chewing,

lips tightly shut.

But I surprised her

when she got older

and life wasn’t so clear

as the numbers on her ruler,

but mauve and pastel.

Behind her back

I’d learned to yawn, to grin,

to show my teeth.

Raud Kennedy, Portland OR, USA

Plugged In

Stuck behind a Prius on Barbur Blvd.

Watching the driver’s head

bob like a bobble head

as she blabs on her cell phone.

Her head nods, “Yes,”

and shakes, “No,”

as if who she’s speaking to

is right in front of her

about to be crushed

by her battery powered car.

Raud Kennedy

Waxwings

Under my feet the bridge rings out its metal song;

wind sopranos through the punched-out holes

in chain-link sides that place a hopeful

ban on would-be suicides.

The tracks fin out like bones of opened fans;

trains shark towards the station’s desolation.

Elsewhere tides are bringing in the flights of birds,

wheeling, skirling, resolute in dive and dip.

Edging the tracks like stand-by signal lights,

rowan trees are red with autumn flame.

I stop to look at them, then see

that every tree is full of waxwings feeding.

What wind, what tide brought these,

these startling rowans of the air?

Gill McEvoy

Chester

Elocution Lessons

They detected without Sherlockian nous

I scrubbed up from humble origins

by how my second-hand clothes wore me out

of pocket, kept up stay-pressed pretensions 

of ‘well-heeled’; clipped articulation –

practically accentless – betraying

state-school culling, Redbrick-pressing:

too conscious of aitches to pass for one

above my fricative station.

Old-tie school boys de-liced my foibles

as psychiatrists their patients’ phobias,

with lackadaisical lazy-lashed flicks –

You lack that air…  Flat diagnosis –

didn’t rattle me, salted with socialist distaste

for privilege-peppered classes;

though I resented those ironed tongues

flattening my vernacular creases.

Naturally snatches of taut consonants,

cavalier vowels, rubbed off on my palette

but not that lofty atmosphere

orbiting moon-cool composure;

gravity-defying, gravitas-supplying,

tripping high satellites of expectation.

Alan Morrison

Brighton

A Morning Visitor

Poised, to inquire or pounce,

one paw arched

as though pointing the finger

of guilt, this Siamese

hungers at new wrinkles

in my yard’s universe:

even light levitating

the edges of shadows;

red cherries rotting

inwardly to their pits;

rose hips sinking in heat,

cuddled by petals

peeling like skin:

a forgotten homage

of piled stones:

this is not my cat.

My cat turns its world inside out

and preys

In private.

Keith Moul

Blaine, WA, USA

Burden

You are my burden and I am yours

Nothing can free us from time and place

Time’s moments, so human, so incomplete,

Add to our sum of hours all that was late

And drive us towards the final place

Where we part, we always part,

Each prior place

A cenotaph to the day you left.

Nothing can free us

Nothing is enough

When every place

In shadow and in catafalque reveals

Your face, your lovely face

The living foreground of places I now hate

Their ruined mosaic our burdens tessellate.

John Murphy

Dublin, Ireland

Diana in Massachusetts

We live without protest.
I walk the eggshell path that leads to you,
past autumn colors we never knew.
Cambridge doesn't need you like I do.

Peripheral vision guides us through.
We meet unfailingly at the dividing line
of sight and fabrication, and we rest.
I am the master of mêlée,
and you, the harbinger of false hope,
reliving the creased memories of when

we subsisted on fissures.

Alleliah Amabelle Nuguid

Fremont, CA, USA

New Blood

I smell fresh breath

warm again on my hair,

feel my claws involuntarily

open, then close, then open.

Kathleen Kenny

Newcastle upon Tyne

Wildwood

In April the hybrid cherry blossoms frail pink tissues,

blowsy, copious petals, easily bruised, and smothering their stamens,

bees cannot penetrate: the tree cannot do right by bearing fruit.

It squeezes snake-like roots, it kneads its paws like a cat,

ruptures the asphalt pavement, grips my wall’s foundations and gives such a pull

the wall tilts aslant, a gap yawns, it leans heavily towards the pavement.

Its oblique threat weighs darkly on my heart, but

the council, told of the threat of toppling tons of bricks

sends a clever clogs to put the stupid housewife right:

It’s not “root damage,” but “soil slippage.”  Smart arse!

My neighbour works my worries up, he is a twisted little crook, if I

pay him five hundred pounds in cash today, he’ll “mend” my wall, he offers greedily.

Meanwhile, sly in its bronze-ringed trunk, the cherry

flexes destructive roots again, the wall tilts at a worse angle,

its own weight will pull it down, there’s neither King’s nor democratic council’s justice.

Thwarted in its maternity the angry hybrid trees grip in

with all the vengefulness of armies bringing Birnham Wood to Dunsinane.

Anne Rees

Walthamstow, London

Unchained Malady

As a thin young person

during the 1970s

pensions and long-term prospects

appeared on the periphery

as absurdities, nonentities . . .

the diagnostics of good sense

were viewed as being from another dimension

and seldom addressed

or were treated with bored indifference,

perhaps a nod

followed by a glazed expression.

It was all light years away

if you reached those years at all,

when you’d be decrepit, bald

and more dead than alive,

time seemed to stand still

as experience boiled over from one heated grill

to another.

Pensions were for pensioners

shrunken old dodderers

ageing plodders,

not for kids

with the world to expand

then time sped up a bit,

got out of hand . . .

David Pike

Swindon, Wiltshire

Two Faces

A sharp intake of breath

is a clue to a threshold.

Your hate is insubstantial

but as pure as hunger.

I am every worn-out name,

a light beneath horizons,

my words have no currency.

Later, a coded sigh

is a language that talks

without need of words.

Your love is a gentle force

sweeping inquests before it

into a framed solution

to hang on the wall of my life.

The world is a flower, opening.

I can’t leave the war

for I’d lose the peace.

Gordon Scapens

Penwortham, Preston

The Midnight Cat

The shout in the night

that eats into your sleep

is only the midnight cat

and none of your business.

The sound of glass breaking

is only his paw on wind chimes

and none of your business.

The shriek echoing your nerves

is only a freshly caught mouse

and none of your business.

Don’t mistake yourself

for someone else,

sweeten your instincts

with a liar’s excuse

and go back to sleep.

Cowardice can be comfortable

when you get used to it,

its journey weightless.

Gordon Scapens

ID Check

The leash laws hang oppressively around

my office worker neck.  Each morning I walk

through a park that could be beautiful without

its customary residents, and makes

it equally clear that in the wilderness

baby squirrels are nature’s way of turning

oak trees into hawks.  Which makes me wonder

what type of transformation people serve -

say, turning sodas into lines of code,

artisanal beer to regulations,

or pizza into overflowing landfills.

Then the door appears, as out of nowhere,

complete with guards and others crowding in

like cattle, sheep, or cars that seek the fast lane.

M. A. Schaffner

Arlington, VA, USA

A Writer

His poems stirred one like a crossword puzzle:

you either knew or scratted for the clue

or had to read in all the rest the creed,

a hidden stratagem revealed poem

by poem as the requiem advanced

and each half-round letter was found to reach

its own hexagonal overblown hole.

A K Whitehead

Purston Jaglin, Pontefract, Yorkshire

Our Spiritual Sores Are Dainty In This Moonlight

She’s wriggling along the kerb like

it’s a tightrope

and a car farts alongside her,

‘Ay, get in baby!’ squeals the driver

as his mates in the back

woof and whistle,

‘Do I know youse?’ she asks,

‘Get in the car an yer soon will!’

one of them yells

so she throws the bottle

of whatever she’s drank

onto the grass

without a sound

and gets in the back with them.

The car speeds off.

I spit

but the wind turns it around,

slaps it right back onto my mouth.

Paul Tanner

Thingwall, Wirral

Feline

She sits alone in her
basement flat, a gloomy place
that lets in little natural light,
not helped by the décor –
hot reds with gold detailing –
more of a boudoir really.
Most evenings she strangles
an electric organ until it howls
like a lost cat.
 
She wears those pointy spectacles –
like butterfly wings –
the diamante cluster-tip.
Not speaking, she has a way
of fixing my gaze until
my eyes fall away,
rest on her shapely legs.
 
She wriggles in her seat
allowing her skirt to ride
up above her knees.
I sense her predatory smile,
tongue caught between glossy red lips.
I am the mouse. She is the cat.

Poul Webb

Tunbridge Wells, Kent

Private Islands

As tans and sunburns fade

with the soft cruise, beach sports

and little tin shovels rust beneath the chalet,

we come back to the office

where just getting straight

means a 30-second lunch

in the small configuration

of bits-and-bobs and desk lamp.

The options flashing on the Xerox

make our blind evolutionary drift

look like private islands,

and filling the blanks with zig-zags

we use in the corporate shrine

a tired sky raining on the fire escape.

F.J. Williams

Alsager, Stoke-on-Trent

Rush Hour

We sit there dying in the conference lounge

with ‘Five Habits of Successful People’

jumping out of focus on the screen.

So we carry our portfolios through the clang of the lift,

and drive home with the commuters in some jihad.

Time abolishes its big world plan

and we stop outside the sandwich shop

for Thursday’s lunch, a paper and the wine

thankful for its brilliant cans

and someone draining potatoes in a steamy sink

like our lost Zen breathing,

the big bright flash on gas mark three,

the only place the gods might be.

F.J. Williams

Edouard Manet’s Still Life with Fish and Shrimp

The fish lies

on the cutting board,

eviscerated, cold,

with a starkness

which reminds us

that all animals

are just meat, waiting

to become food

for other animals.

The colors and the focus

on detail would make

the fish beautiful,

stunning, if it were

swimming with its friends,

or if it were cooked

and prepared until it

were unrecognizable,

and, probably, it is

beautiful to anyone

who can see beyond

what it is and what

it suggests about

where we are all heading.

John Brantingham

Upland, CA, USA

The following poets had their work published in the March 2008 edition, #49, of Pulsar Poetry Magazine: Harrison Alechenu Akoh, Ben Barton, Elizabeth Birchall, Nicola O'Rourke, Jonathan Culley, Michael Estabrook, Jim Murdoch, Andrew Frolish, Alex Galper, Wendy French, David Gill, Calvin Green, Alan Hardy, Stephanie Hiteshew, Raud Kennedy, Edward Lee, Arthur Leung, Martin RB Cook, Fergus Chadwick, Kathleen Kenny, Will Daunt, Gerard Melia, Michael Newman, John Plevin, Maggie Andrews, Linda Leedy Schneider, Kenneth Steven, Carol Thistlethwaite, Paul Tanner, Ivan Wallace, Gwilym Williams, F. J. Williams, Alessio Zanelli and Chris Hardy; see poems below: (454 poets published, up to and including March 2008).  

The following poems were published in the March 2008 edition of Pulsar Poetry Magazine # 49

To Wondo Genet

We hit the asphalt with time to spare,

Before the sun pierced through

The ambience of a new dawn

Before the cock had crowed.

Slowly we galloped down the crooked trail

Thick, dark exhaust plumed behind like a shadow.

As we heaved forward

The sound was deafening

and my thoughts were restricted

To pleasure and the downward ride.

We landed from the air with ease

and speeded faster than a cheetah

with trees to the left and right.

Macaques lay nearby, hiding from the sun’s rays,

Ostriches could be seen in a wired compound

While goats roamed in lush vegetation;

They seemed to swing and dance to the tune played

By the soft clean breeze that swept the plain.

We halted in Sheshemane – Rasta dwelling –

After Nazret, Debre Zeit;

At the end of first phase, we connected

In a jalopy for eleven but holding twice that amount

On the hilly non-railed death-road

Swallowed by dirt heap traps

Squeezed like ripe oranges

Compressed to the brim.

We reached Wondo Genet after just a moment

On Garri, assailed by sweet-smelling nature.

The end of a ride worth dieing for 

Harrison Alechenu Akoh

Sabo, Kaduna, Nigeria

 * * *

Canidae

He stares at us rolling up the carpet

like it’s the apocalypse –

the end of his world anyway.

Wet eyes beaded

and tail on full jabber,

with his paws he kneads the underlay.

            Bed moved, chewed

rat, smelly charity shop

blanket – all relocated to

the inner sanctum;

The utility room.

I know he’s worried,

he’s untrusting like that,

always has been.

Imbued with a cat’s nerves.

            The furniture unfamiliar,

he scurries by my feet

sniffing my ankles

and gazing up, dejected.

I know he’s thinking

what error or misdemeanour

            has been let out today

to warrant these intrusions.

Ben Barton

Folkestone, Kent

 What’s New?

 Critics expect a contemporary

Pastoral to conjure novelty from

The familiar delights of hedge and field

But that motor which some call God does not,

Simply to gobsmack us with cleverness,

In this third millennium paint them blue

Or change our deeply programmed response

To lengthening days, the laughing triumph

Of daffodils or rain splats in puddles

After drought.  Sun unbuttons us. Stretching

A stick across a ditch for blackberries

Crooks a lifetime.  Snow silences discord.

            Reaching out to greet each revolving year

            We relish our roots in the biosphere.

Elizabeth Birchall,

Enstone, Oxfordshire

  * * *

Demon

Hidden behind a mask; behind a cliché.

So many euphemisms.

Yet the pleasantries do not fool me.

"A joy-inducing anaesthesia,"

often clear as ice, and indeed as numbing,

yet the spectators feel shattering glass.

A celebration. A holiday. A weekend.

An excuse.

A substance; uncontrolled, unbalanced,

even inhuman.

Already, my tolerance is waning.

And I am not even old enough,

for the demon to touch my lips.

Nicola O’Rourke,

Dundee

 * * *

Balloon Flight

I stand beyond the stile and the dogs
criss-cross the track ahead.
Some of the voices from a knot of people
tangle across to me between the trees
and the spring bulb pushes through the canopy,
dwarfing the building nearby.
It was an elegant country house that weathered
the transition to prep school only to be
crudely converted to satisfactorily incarcerate
a new wave of settlers, adults with head injuries,
bludgeoned people amidst bludgeoned architecture.
The perfectly sprung jelly rises soundlessly
above the trees, its tongue of flame babbling
 into the hidden void with the noise
of a childhood earache.  Like the fresh, sticky
dragonfly on a reed, it gradually eases itself
into the landscape, the size a balloon should be,
distant and remote, catching the setting sun,
the basket shrivelling into the knotted end
that gives so much trouble before parties.
And, as she hangs, dwindling against an unfocused sky,
and dimly senses the warmth of achievement
once more, her eyes shift from the skeins of geese
to the veins of roads and she sees the pack
setting out after her, led by the trailered 4x4,
 to scent her out and bring her back.

 Jonathan Culley

Petersfield, Hampshire

My Grandma Sadie

One of the survey questions

was to name a few

of the key influential people in my life.

I didn’t have to think about it long:

Shakespeare, Dante, Mozart,

Whitman, Thoreau, and my Grandma Sadie.

just noticed that none of them

are still alive, but that doesn’t

stop me from talking

to them regularly. Fortunately,

I suppose, my Grandma Sadie

is the only one who ever

feels impelled to talk back.

Michael Estabrook

Acton, MA, USA

 * * *

The Art of Breathing

To find room for the new

you have to let go of

the old

so to learn how to write

I had to forget how

to breathe

and for a time I thought

I had to write to keep

breathing

which makes such perfect sense

but only if you're a

poet.

Jim Murdoch,

Faifley, Clydebank

 * * *

Scabs

After that I saw her less, only by chance.

She was a rare bird who flitted in and out