Friday, 6 December 2024

Patrick Deeley: Wicker Man

Old lank nexus of brooms, old
purple-black loft of leafage,
old rib-cage with thickened gams 
and stiff-stretched arms,
old frightener at the garden’s end,

you become a wicker man
in my imaginings. And although
you contain no sacrifice,
no penned cattle, pigs or goats,
no trussed-up hens or geese,

no captive human being in panic
or forlorn beseechment –
with only insects and songbirds
flitting among your twigs,
nurtured, maybe even charmed –

still there is the haughty
towering buoyancy you possess,
the grim, glowering look
you throw that hooks me deepest
at sunset or by moonlight,

when the smudge-mark
of sadness feeds off your outline,
and I see nature funning
with itself and with us, in one place
a firestorm ravishing

the forest, in another a torrent
breaking its sides laughing,
the world no less a grief than a joy,
and, in your wicker dance,
the light tangling with the dark.


Patrick Deeley is a poet, memoirist and children’s writer from Loughrea.  Keepsake, his tenth collection of poems, appeared from Dedalus Press in 2024. www.patrickdeeley.net

Wednesday, 4 December 2024

Alyssa Curcio: A Death in the Family

When our family rabbit died, it was the doldrums of January, 
All grey and biting and spitting down snow. 
A cold year for Virginia. 
The ground was still frozen, too hard to dig him a grave deep enough
To keep the rain from turning him up again. 
So we tucked him away in a shoebox, decorated with hearts and stickers, 
And folded our thoughts of him delicately away 
In the industrial freezer we kept in the garage
While we waited for spring to thaw the red clay. 
Eventually, the sun broke through and the daffodils sprouted, 
And a shovel could finally cut through the baby grass. 
The red clay loosened, unfolding itself to make way for
Shoots and blooms. 
Out came the box. 
Out of some morbid fascination, I opened it and peeked inside. 
Trick lay there on his side, 
His tufted spots sparkling slightly with frost. 
You may not know this, but because of the shape of bunnies’ spines, 
They have to flop over on their side before they can rearrange their 
Little bones into a laying position. 
That’s how he looked—mid-flop, ready to snuggle up 
Once his frame was flush with the ground. 
But instead, he was cast in perfect stillness. 
Suspended somewhere between life and death.
No longer with us, but corporeally tethered to us still. 

I can’t put you in the freezer and delay your departure that way. 
You wouldn’t fit, for starters. You don’t fit anywhere now. 
Not at the empty kitchen chair you used to haunt, 
Not rattling at the other end of an unstable phone line. 
Not by the window folding the yellowing pages of your Bible
Again and again and again. 
I find myself in some liminal space, defying July’s fiery sun 
With the permafrost that holds me here, 
Sunken into the tundra of your laughter 
And your smile lines
And your puttering around a holiday kitchen. 
I’m left banging my fists on the cold, hard ground, 
Wondering how to hold on to you
Now that you no longer exist.


Alyssa Curcio is a reproductive justice activist and lawyer. Her scholarship has been published in the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law and the Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum. A Virginia native, Alyssa currently lives in New York City. 

Monday, 2 December 2024

Tristan Moss: Poetry seekth

“The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”

     - from Milton’s Paradise Lost 

 

metres meet

across this field
the plough has shared its sheen
with the smooth-cut planes    
on these dark clods of clay

community & form

take the bucket away 
and soon the sand 
falls apart

sandstone takes 
thousands of years 
to form and then
is prone to erode
whereas glass 
is made in no time 
at all

a subtle line

often there’s a thin line 
between poems being so subtle 
that most don’t notice their subtleties, 
and there being little to notice at all 
and most noticing 
and saying nothing

markings on a polished pebble

signs of having fallen
at speed
through our atmosphere 

and/or

small fossilised columns 
of coral 
running through 
it and down its sides


Tristan Moss has had many poems published in online and paper journals. Most recently he has had poems published in Litter Magazine. Last year, he published a pamphlet called 'Ligaments' with The Red Ceilings Press. 

Saturday, 30 November 2024

James Penha: The Capriciousness of Crackers

For an unusually short haul of potatoes from Long Island to the Bronx market I got to ride with my father in the cab of his truck. Rare gift enough, but he said the real treat was  a chilli lunch at Red’s—I figured that meant cold cuts—but when we hauled into the parking lot the sign didn’t say Red’s, it said The Big Road Rest, so I asked why Dad had changed his mind. “Oh, don’t worry, son, this is Red’s all right. You’ll see why.” And I did. The owner had a carrot-top head of hair and more freckles than all the beans in the pot out of which he ladled us bowls of chilli. It was the thickest soup I ever had, and I made myself like it cause Dad loved it and he hoped I would. What I really loved were these hexagonal puffs of saltines Red called oyster crackers when he offered me more to crush into my chili which wasn’t chilly at all, and I found no oysters in it or any pearls in the crackers which was fine with me as I was having a lot of what Dad called rights of passage.


Expat New Yorker James Penha (he/him🌈) lives in Indonesia. Nominated for Pushcart Prizes in fiction and poetry, his work is widely published. His newest chapbook of poems American Daguerreotypes is available for Kindle. Penha edits The New Verse News, an online journal of current-events poetry.

Friday, 29 November 2024

Angel Altamirano: I have two dogs

One of them lunges at me in my sleep. 
I awake with a startle. 
The other presses her cold wet nose to my face.
I awake with a smile.

On my walks, one dog leaps into my stomach, taking me by surprise.
I feel the wind knocked out of me.
The other dog walks beside me, looking around at the birds, sniffing the crisp air.
I breathe in the air with her. 

One dog sneaks around corners to pounce and bite at me.
I move about carefully, wondering when it will reappear.
The other dog lays in her usual spot, looking softly at me.
I always know where to find her.

At night one dog loudly bounds all around me, pulling at my hair. It demands attention.
I do not sleep.
The other dog gently snuggles in beside me, warming my side. She snores softly.
I doze off.

I have two dogs.
I’m not sure they get along.
One dog seems to fear the other.
It finds fault in her soft nature, her silly games seem only to frighten it.

I had two dogs, now I only have one. 
She’s a good dog. 


Angel Altamirano is a 32-year old Mexican American, working in software.

Wednesday, 27 November 2024

Stephen Boyce: Hem

You have cut the cloth
assembled the pieces
to make something useful
something that fits & adorns
You turn to the hem
– a womanly word
measured / tender/ strengthening
a word that needs breath
a soft outbreath
that ends
where the lips meet
You are bent to the task
in a trance of sewing
You fold & tack
the selvedge
stitch & trim
Just so
A threshold turned back
pressed
to leave a margin
a border
where cloth lies upon cloth
drawing a straight line
between something & nothing
I turn to you
wanting to fold back the years
with their creases
raw edges and loose threads
to lay the fabric of my dreams
upon yours
smooth the surface
stitch & trim
Just so


Stephen Boyce is the author of three poetry collections, Desire Lines (Arrowhead 2010), The Sisyphus Dog (Worple 2014) and The Blue Tree (Indigo Dreams 2019) and three pamphlets. He is co-founder of Winchester Poetry Festival and lives in north Dorset. stephenboycepoetry.com

Monday, 25 November 2024

Abigail Ottley: Widow's Walk

Evenings, she puts on her second-best hat
skewered by a tortoise shell pin,
buttons up her heart in her mohair coats and
goes out to pick a bone with the moon.

On the red-leaded step she scans the stars,
imagines them sparks from his hammer.
Her heart is fierce and as his chisel,
weighs like a bag of four inch nails.

In her pocket she’s packing a fistful of humbugs,
matches, twenty Players Weights.
She hears the black kettle hissing on the stove on stand-by,
the relentless ticking of the clock.

On her tongue, a retort fit to slice a man open.
In her head, a dozen what ifs.

[Originally published in Ink, Sweat & Tears, 2021]


Abigail Ottley writes poetry and short fiction, A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee and twice winner of the Wildfire 150, she came second in the 2024 Plaza Prose Poetry competition. Her debut collection will be published by Yaffle's Nest in May, 2025. She lives in Penzance in Cornwall.

Saturday, 23 November 2024

Maurice Devitt: Recidivist

It was only when he reached the house,
that he remembered he didn’t live there
anymore and that she had most likely
changed the locks. It’s funny how
the stresses of a day can cause us
to seek refuge in the patterns of the past.
Her family home, he still remembered
the first time, standing on the step,
wondering whether to knock or ring
(she had told him there was a strict house
preference, which he had quickly forgotten),
and hoping that she would answer,
not her father, it would be easier
to explain the forgotten corsage.


Maurice Devitt is the Curator of the Irish Centre for Poetry Studies site. His Pushcart-nominated poem, ‘The Lion Tamer Dreams of Office Work’, was the title poem of an anthology published by Hibernian Writers in 2015. His second collection, ‘Some of These Stories are True’, was published by Doire Press in 2023.  

Friday, 22 November 2024

Nick Browne: The Road to Ethiopia

i.
Each day at nursery you’d cling,
an angry monkey scarfed around my neck.
Detached with kindness from my arms,
I’d hover in the vestibule to wait
for Rosemary to whisper you were fine,
though leaving was a trick I had to learn.

ii.
Your leg meccanoed into place,
immobilised and morphined into calm,
I left you in the hospital in Leeds,
wrapped my car around a pillar on the way.
The motorway’s a rod that spanned the space
through me and to the setting of your bones.

iii.
The airport and your luggage for three years
teeters on a caravan of carts.
We’re masked and must be distanced in this hall,
a practise for the distancing to come.
And I the monkey scarfed around your neck,
this leaving is a trick I’ve yet to learn.


Nick Browne is an established novelist. Nick’s poetry has been published by Acumen, Ink Sweat & Tears, Blue Nib, Snakeskin, Archaeology Today, Anthropecene, Wivanhoe, Lunar Magazine and Dreich and has appeared in several anthologies. Nick has collaborated with award winning painter, Laura Matthews on her recent exhibition ‘Flux’.

Wednesday, 20 November 2024

M. Benjamin Thorne: The Commissar’s File

You sit at a desk, like ones you’ve seen before,
open the folder of all those who informed on you—
and eyes spill out, so many eyes. Brown ones,
blues, green, so many. The eyes of neighbours,
teachers, co-workers, cousins and uncles…friends.
You recognize them all. Even those of that odd
kid met in Komsomol. They gather on the floor
around your ankles as they fall, open wide, boring
into you. Some you expected, even greet with a nod.
Others lack the decency to look away in shame.

And then you open the other file, one you made
over years, sitting across cigarette haze,
and there is one final pair of eyes,
the only one to move, looking everywhere,
and blame gets choked down like bile—
you recognize them as your own,
and suddenly, you’re blind.


M. Benjamin Thorne is an Associate Professor of Modern European History at Wingate University. Possessed of a lifelong love of history and poetry, he is interested in exploring the synergy between the two. His poems appear or are forthcoming in Rogue Agent, Feral, Gyroscope Review, Molecule, Red Eft Review, and Thimble Lit Mag. He lives and sometimes sleeps in Charlotte, NC.