…….Kingston Apartments

…….rice in the pot, fat
…….lice eating a big bread; red
…….lime and orange on the line; women
…….mime distance-words; turds
…….baking on the cracked concrete; beat
…….dancing on the balcony; harmony,
…….no money; toilet paper fills holes
…….in the walls, plaster; rasta
…….man smoking a cigar; tar
…….melting liquid-black; crack,
…….weed, cocaine; train
…….rattles window panes, stones
…….and old men's bones; love-baby
…….syndrome, sick-smell home,
…….making paint stretch over
…….hardboard; cardboard door
…….panels, channels running down
…….walls, halls hallowed by the shallow
…….prayer of the briefcased, door-stalker
…….twins.

……. © Laura Sheridan

A June Afternoon

The afternoon wore on.
My father picked stones
that cropped like potatoes
among the weak tremblings
of his new lawn,
washing pegged on the line
untroubled by the faint
chance of a sun shower.
I sat by a slow stream
With a punctured crust
On its dry mud bank
In a field off the Burren Road.

He lay finger-caged,
Red-throated pouted kiss
Blown in an alien mist,
Flicker-light slowly fading
As cage became cup and
Cup became a beggar’s hands,
A draining, sorrowful mount
reverently framed.
Sail-struck stickleback,
beached schooner
demasted and alone
scared as a fish can be.

I showed little purpose
in this unholy baptism
other than the power
which bathes in the glory
of self-righteous control
that keeps spiders in matchboxes
and harvests frogspawn
from the very same stream.
He tried to speak
But I could not hear him.
As I tilted my hands
He slipped silently away.

© Brendan Flannagan

…….somewhere milometers are hummin / hymnin us toward/s the next …….set ov zeros

…….& northumberland streets snowin
…….the wet kiss ov expectation
…….ov black & white movie streets
…….silverin down to a soft shoe shuffle
…….us in slow motion freeze frame
…….in the now we are all yr kids
…….film extras forgettin ourselves
…….mouthin wide the great soft flakes
…….like the song ov the ice cream van
…….on this the coldest day
…….its sheer unexpectedness
…….summonin us back down years

…….© Sean Burn

Native

this is my native country, a forearm
of island where fishermen are painters,
and the bays stick up a thumb for the church
and a knuckle for the sculptor's garden,
where I sit, and the sun rubs my arm as
it rubs the bronze skin of the artist's hands,
the same sun that rubs the palm of the veldt,
with its farm calluses and river folds
and thumb of a cape, not my ownmost land
this iodine and salt-scoured fist of a
mountain, but yours; I circumnavigate,
this Atlantic holds our hands together,
this light faces north and paints the fynbos,
this sea casts your coast, this sun rubs your skin. 

…….…….Cowpe

…….…….Smashed by the Ice Giant's massive fist,
…….…….the fields of Cowpe are crumpled baize,
…….…….riven and ripped by spattering sheep:
…….…….a brutally murdered billiard table,
…….…….lying in a ring of flinders.

…….…….Amongst terminal tangle
…….…….and the entrails of tractors,
…….…….deranged dogs rattle their chains and chew planks,
…….…….whilst kittens hunt shrews,
…….…….robins scold wrens,
…….…….and a milk of mist rises to dilute the cobalt sky.

…….…….Hogging the head of the valley,
…….…….at Boarsgreave,
…….…….a yarn dyers hums on a stiltwork of conduits;
…….…….oaken doors lean open
…….…….to admit a glimpse of fireclay,
…….…….but spiders spin gossamer locks on the gate.

…….…….Lofted high above the ramparts of the reservoir
…….…….shelters, unshielded, yield to despair.
…….…….Deep in the roots and the ruins of resolve
…….…….like outcast wraiths of incestuous love
…….…….two sycamores intertwine.

…….…….© John Carley first appeared in Plume

Town Where I Live

Listen for a moment. That rumble,
almost a mile away
comes from the Schrade factory.
Vibrations creep through the ground
to hum your feet. Manufacture of high
quality knives and cutlery.
Fine craftsmanship is the mark
of every pocketknife in every pocket
in this village. My neighbor
works there. Her husband works
as a prison guard in a high security
facility two miles from here.
He also serves on the village board.

According to the weekly Press,
Village Officials are concerned
with barking dogs. Disturbance
of The Peace. Noise Pollution.
Pooper-Scooper enforcement.

The neighbor across the street
works at Burger King. Her son
raises dogs. Apparently six dogs
makes a kennel, which is against the law
within village limits. It's a mystery
how many dogs he actually has.
They all look the same, come and go
in shifts, quite similar to the factory
and prison, except for the Whippet,
which belongs to his sister and the cats
who aren't permitted outdoors.

Next door on the right
is the sewage processing plant.
It's always in the process
of creating an ungodly smell. It's too costly
to upgrade, so we eat barbecue indoors
and wait for the winds to change.

 
…….After Much Rain

…….nights shine like Hollywood: good taste and bad
…….slug it out in retail windows; a bus slews through puddles,
…….picks up celluloid passengers, heads for suburb silences.
…….Overhead, clouds inland threatening worse:

…….something's not quite said by headlamps sharp
…….as filmsets: strained colour, shopsign flash,
…….scraps of information on disc,
…….that swim in my head like alcohol round arteries,

…….roads a bad imitation of day. A loud shirt shouts
…….abuse among the parked-up meters: the beginning
…….of plot but he hails a black cab, drives into

…….the empty space of his story. A man worshipped by rain,
…….I don't know anyone; but watch as their eyes light up
…….when I enter the pub, bring cash and a smile to the bar.

 …….© Steven Waling

 
Compiling Editor: Helen Clare

Associate Editors: Gary Blankenship, Terri Eynon

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