Magpie Negatives

How we might notice one then glance
around for another or, more relaxed,
anything black and white: a cow
in a distant field, an occasional priest

in full uniform. The reassurance
of joy ahead can be enough to lull
us into complacency. The single magpie
can set the day on edge.

We can look away,
pretend we didn't notice. Larger gatherings
can have us muttering beneath our breath
the stations of the rhyme: gold? A secret

never to be told? Such precise
predictions lead to doubt, our eyes past
ominous birds to a clear patch of sky,
a revelation of how things go

beyond us, flying off in all directions.
Closer in we see
the green blue feathers dazzling.

© Ciaran Parkes

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Markers
(from reading Selected Poems by Gillian Clarke)

He worked his way through somebody else's poems,
resuming each night by a lifted catch of memory:
page fifty, Yes, the year that I was born;
sixty seven, The number of our first house.

No bookmarks, this time, made from the usual
envelopes from small literary magazines
with carefully folded letters: "The Editor thanks you,
he enjoyed them, but regrets...." kept, for some reason.

He'd go out before reading, grateful for
fields, distance from cities, nets of breeze,
collecting: ditch's snake skin, deepening trees,
their tideflow; gathering of a lambswool sky.

The grass barometers were mercuryed vertical,
their spindled stalks set high and locked on Fair.
Hot breeze was stubborn East, lake's shuffled water
was shrinking among reeds. Back, opening her poetry book,

he read about a Welsh town, coming down,
reflections shattered, walls mugged, drizzling dust;
felled warehouse in a place no longer keeping
its trade links with the past. How she found skulls

on open hills, translated them to paper-
thinness, and surfaces for marks and sockets'
scooped pools, inked eyes. Her high view covering
owls' flight: writing of dusk in slow, looped letters.

© Martyn Halsall

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Reply to Your Impertinent Request

© Fred Longworth

(Reply to Your Impertinent Request: Editor's Choice of Christina Fletcher,'I've read this at least ten times and it still makes me chuckle and feel as if I am the maple syrup bottle. It's full of such wonderful imagery: the sinister gang of condiments, the fat woman whacking the bottle on the ass with her meaty palm. Every line in this poem makes me laugh. It's a joy to read.)

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More than the Body Tells

He views illumined x-rays,
Ribs and skulls.
Film against the light box.
What will he see when he looks close-
Rising and falling tides,
Slivers of thoughts collected
And organized into coherencies?
A library of memes?
Will they find the tartan plaid
In my genes? The Portuguese gardeners,
French seamstresses, early California
Makers of hats and lampshades?
The old orange groves go on forever.
At seven I was given a needle.
I learned many stitches.
At eleven I moved to the machine,
To more elegant creations.
Do my artisan relatives live inside
My cellular rooms?
The ornate plaster moldings in churches
Fashioned by immigrant grandfathers
Still exist.
But now there are few left
With knowledge of handmade moldings.
That x-ray only shows
The light and dark in two dimensions.
The existence of anomaly.
Even the geneticist reads findings
Without a full-spectrum.
All is extracted, non-inclusive.
If I believed in that world,
There would be no room for me,
An optical illusion set in flesh.
A hologram
Seeing itself seeing itself.

© Peggy Tahir

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Man Overboard

Shoulder our way into his cabin...room.
There's Robinson Crusoe by the bed
unread, and the shipping forecast drifting
through the porthole...window. We steal a look
in the log, fishing for clues. There are storm
clouds, true, but worse things happen at sea, and
nobody expects plain sailing. Not me,
anyway. All day, we chart courses he
might have taken, and someone remembers
waking, night after night, seeing the flares
go up. Not enough. I stick my oar in,
but it's too late. No one can fathom what's
happened. We're fog-bound, becalmed, run aground.
Anyone know how to turn this boat around?

© Matt Merritt

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Business as Usual

Even in August, more meetings.
Cicadas buzz to the tune of the Wall Street Blues
and sandpipers negotiate rocks and shells.
On Old Orchard Beach, near Kennebunkport, the lounge-chair
lobster spins the radio dial in a burlesque catalogue of
speech and song.

Understudies gather 'round the corporation
of his body; a rotundity that two young sons
do not envision for themselves, but which leaves
his wife amused; the exclamatory "O" of belly-button
(that once reflected the unholy moment
of their first full knowledge of each other)
having spread into a broad grin; matching logos
of middle age.

© Les Wolf

My angel is shaped from clouds, a purl
of dove-feathers, the maidenhead of snow
and sugar crystals, but at the core, an engine

turns and churns and steams to propel
his huge benevolence. White and winged
he trundles down the pavements and into shops,

secreting sides of salmon, brie, sheep's heads,
beneath his robes between blessings. A nun
genuflects in his shadow. He turns and smiles

and O the sun spins from the horizon,
gibbous glory blazes out upon the crowd,
the high street is transfigured. Shoppers weep

into their pockets as he passes by,
trailing tail-stream prayers and sweetness
like the kiss of an old contagion.

© M.A.Griffiths

( The Consuming Angel : Editor's Choice of Rose M.Kelleher, ' This delights me in all the usual ways: imaginative imagery, skillful sonics that make it a pleasure to read aloud. But beyond that, this poem is good in a way that can't be achieved by elbow grease alone; it's got an inexplicable, kooky magic, as if smiled on by angels. (Angels with pockets full of fish, of course.)'.

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O'Malley and the Beauty Queen

Mother Rosario reigned as Miss Los Petos 1948.
O'Malley tried to imagine Rosario in tiara, swimsuit,
high heels, but the image remained spectral beneath
starched habits and the convent's lysoled hallways

as he clattered toward the iron-studded door.
"Padré," Sister Evangelina slid aside; he passed
into a chamber scented of medicine, candle wax.
"You heeded my call," Rosario whispered

through cracked lips. "Naturally," he hugged
prayer book as though it were a life raft, "a last
sacrament from your Irish priest." A purple
chinkabutra monkey chattered outside. He joked,

"O'Malley, the organ grinder, and his monkey."
Rosario's laugh chimed in the cool shade.
He heard her sins, she swallowed the wafer.
He trudged from the room a drowned man.

© Christopher T. George

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Moonshine Shimmer

Once, Appalachia mourning,
I followed a guitar’s voice
into memories
made in a sapling forest
on the banks of a stream.

Clean, clear waters
sounded years of evening airs,
and blood-red skies sang
through a dark, far away wood.

Frog serenade croaked
‘round an old willow stand.
Between the stream
and a shadowed mountain,

moonshine and I shimmered.

© Calaya J. Williams

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Fools Gold in Norfolk

Because the words won't flow
I drive through flatlands,
speeding under flat skies until land ends
and sea takes up the slack.
I walk along its edge, eyes drawn
to the waves' hiss.
Agates, quartz, obsidians glisten,
tempting my eye to search for amber.
They'll lose their gleam
before I reach the car,
leaving me with pockets full
of sullen geology.

© Nessa O'Mahony

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Paris Blinks (Reason #5 to not Believe in God)

Speeding down Eisenhower
Frank tells me about his girlfriend,
the one whose name I carved
on the observation deck
of the Eiffel Tower.

I called her that night
August 9, 1999, drunk
and not knowing what to say
I hung up, walked down
Trocadero to the underground
and smoked a cigarette
with a man from London.
We watched the train fly by
then I made my way to Montmartre.

Frank tells me to slow down
or I'll get a ticket, I look out
the window at the Boston skyline;
remember painting the outline of her face
as the sun set behind Sacré Coeur.

© Alex Stolis

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Waiting For The Light

We sat there in the car and fought,
Waiting for the light,
We fought a fight we'd fought a lot,
Of what we had and hadn't got;
The argument grew loud and hot
Waiting for the light.

Everything was going wrong,
Waiting for the light:
The car ahead's exhaust was strong,
The speakers played some stupid song,
And traffic barely moved along,
Waiting for the light.

We sputtered to a silent chill
Waiting for the light;
And frozen will to frozen will
We waited for each other till
Too late. Too late. And now we're still
Waiting for the light. 

© Marcus Bales

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Autumnal Retirement

When old folks' final days are halcyon
and leave them something, even of this slow
awareness that is all we ever know,
they talk. Old ears enjoy the conversation;
their voices play up in the minor tone.
Their arcane, everyday arpeggio
moves to its own tunes, like the flow
of water in the tide charts of an ocean.

A cutting edge crests up upon a wave,
a stirring in the rising of the tide
but, where they once behaved heroically,
there is no challenge left to make them brave;
nothing to make, to alter, or decide.
Events occur now, tautologically.

© Peter Stewart Richards

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Zoom

Push - slap - waahh
mamma - dadda
ABC

pop - clothes - pills
second hand car
university

job - rent - bills
wife - brats
family

prostrate gland
write a will
eternity

© Mick Moss

It’s hard to see my way because
the leaves have fallen. Now
they’re drifting where a path once was—
it’s hard to see my way. Because
the light is brief, I dare not pause;
I’ll find the track somehow.
It’s hard to see my way because
the leaves have fallen now.

© David Anthony

( Passing Through the Woods : Editor's Choice of M.A.Griffiths,'I confess that the triolet is not one of my favourite forms, but here the repetitions and the restrained language create a poem with tremendous resonance. For me, it brings to mind the deceptive simplicity of Frost's 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening')

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Mr White

I'm clean and unexpected when I come --
to lick your hair and huddle on your coat
weaving my criss-cross patterns as I form
amnesic blankets. Touch me and I'll melt -
the icy lover turned to mush - but then
I chill in slippery sheets - invisible
under thin layers of myself. And when
you step on me I harden. But I'll fall
again and seep into your shoes to freeze
your toes. I'll bite your fingers too - you'll see -
and then I'll scald your ears and nip that nose
to send you snivelling to the surgery.
Shovel your salt and gravel by the ton -
one slip and I'll be there to snap a bone.

© Christina Fletcher

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Author's contact details:

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With special thanks to Les Wolf for additional editing.

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