Today Mbizo Chirasha, founder and curator of Wombwords Literary Press, announced a Call for Submissions to the June 2020 edition themed Imagining Life After COVID-19.
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
IMAGINING LIFE AFTER COVID-19
“The June edition is to be edited by our Poet Laureate and USA Associate to the Womawords Hall of Fame, Jamie Dedes.
“The call is open to women poets from May 20 through June 20.
“Ten poems and poets will be selected from the submissions, which should include a short third-person bio of thirty-to-sixty words and your photograph.
TO ENTER
“Submissions to be forwarded to BOTH
Mbizo Chirasha womawordpress@gmail.com
and cc’d Jamie Dedes at thepoetbyday@gmail.com”
About Womawords Literary Press
Womawords, an international eZine based in Africa, is the heart child of multi-award winning Zimbabwean poet in exile, Mbizo Chirasha. It was established to support women and girls through the publication of activist poetry by women. Current projects are
The past of those passed
collected on felled trees,
on stones that mattered.
We have written out our lives,
thrown a few words
against the social wind;
maybe a few have clung
to the dying willows.
I doubt it. We’re transients
on this earth. We don’t know
how to live with this earth.
A silent species, a thousand
thousand years from now,
will have nothing from us
to touch with the wonder
only the fingers can translate.
-Elizabeth Moura
,power and glory.
do you feel like two people
that one is split in two
that the other one does
look a bit like you
only more so
do you fetch out your older clothes and boots
now and make longer sentences that do not quite match the others
feel happy now as the chap you are
will you go back when your hair was commanded
where the bidding predicted
the power house reflected
elected
james?
will this all be for nothing
if you make no changes
live in glass houses
and throw stones
about
james
-sbm
Cycles
Ancient Syrian
Glass beads were made
From sea-turned sand –
Displaced granules
Plus, scalding heat
Created the change.
Solid became liquid,
Became solid once more.
The babies have been bombed
There, you know,
While the Western world
Is willingly blind
(Probably from the glare
Of glass-faced skyscrapers).
But glass and water and time
Have seen it all.
-st
“augury
close your eyes … TIGHTLY.
lightning flashes dance and swirl,
neon colors pulsing:
in childhood, an escape—
in adulthood, a nightmare.
we stare into the vortex
behind our eyes
searching for meaning but
meaning eludes us
(it’s a metaphor).
if there is a message—
a lesson is to be learned or
a moral to light our path—
perhaps it is merely
the comfort of knowing that
this chaos, however frightening,
is inherently ours:
we may return to it in the blink of an eye
(or at least in one tight squeeze)
and it will be as we left it.
however senseless it may seem,
it is and always will be a vision beyond vision—
perhaps the only glimpse we get, as mortals,
of life without the burden of flesh.
-Rich Follett
*
Once led to believe, one time, the second tallest building in Xiamen,
now a pizza hut, sells unlimited juice and coffee for twenty renminbi.
American style pancakes are stacked pancakes with bacon and syrup.
Every world has reflections, every building – fire exits, that should
be observed without question. Guilty pleasures are the backlit, exit-
signs of cinema screens, the warm glow of a stone fire, out back with
a buried chicken, and fire eggs, and perfect, red grapes beside the river.
*
Versions of your doppelgängers,
lead to these smooth horizons –
vaporwave swimming pools, etc.
Once added a tomato to my rice
cooker, and mixed it in to form
tomato rice.
Exquisite, modern living.
-Alex Mazey
Versions of Us
Floating whispers fade into toxic ash
raining daily to nourish our forgotten
failures in secret mental corners
morphing into fierce creatures spitting
jealous speeches to proclaim our fake
emotional seizures for false larks to
vaguely maybe see us but we mask
our deepest darkest thoughts igniting
silent wars whilst flashing dagger smiles
of sometimes unknown causes shutting
personal borders as we daily drown in
echoes of screeching sounds and clone
flawed weak versions of us before
turning into choking dust…
Urban Citadel
Confined confused voices
rising up from unplanned urban
hell holes confined spaces breeding
nasty haters looking down on determined
individuals escaping their limitations
igniting explosive emotions spilling
over all corners infecting nourishing
willing recipients in a network of
tensions electrifies dormant
confrontations releasing hidden forces
casting long-lasting shadows over concrete
dead meadows of fallen souls unable to
deal with what life has confronted them
with in mundane lives caused by paper
cloud dreams melting into their personal
urban citadel hell with no-one left to tell.
-Don Beukes
Electron Dreamer
I am the neon burner,
golem walker, dream stalker
on night-ma-red roads.
Behind, pavements
lie murking shadows
in trenches to the side.
Silent drifting, these
sleeping cities dreaming
they still wake.
Deep ocean hunter
under my own light.
Cold fire will call,
from high lines
to dream tides,
washed in the
flotsam and jetsam
of your night.
Outside our dreams piped
to the periphery of life.
See us reborn into
sleep’s despair,
as lizard brains must
warm on moonlit rocks.
Entrance Not for Everyone, For Madmen Only.
There were too many of me
to make sense.
Hawkwind’s Steppenwolf led me to Hermann Hesse
in an effort to find myself. A season in hell
I am the wolf who wishes to feast on all flesh.
I am the man who asks to be reasonable.
The wolf would eat the man raw.
The man who would be sensible.
I am the dragon in both
the man and the wolf.
I am too many.
Kes, the book not the film
ends in a cinema. As I read
I am Billy. Big Billy. Billy
on the screen, Billy sat
in the cinema watching Billy
on the screen. I am Paul
watching Billy sat in the
cinema watching Billy.
I sit with my late grandad
musky with pipesmoke
in the cinema.
I am watching 2001:
A Space Odyssey. I am
Paul watching Dave
in a spacesuit watching
Old Dave in bed.
I am Dave.
I am the dragon who watches Paul
watching Billy and Dave.
I am dragonwolf, I am wolfdragon.
I am BillyDave, I am DaveBilly.
I am adolescent.
Grandad prefers Bond films.
-Paul Brookes
Cento 4
I am the neon burner,
golem walker, dream stalker
on night-ma-red roads,
glass and water and time,
Bios and Links
-Alex Mazey
(b.1991) received his MA (distinction) from Keele University in 2017. He later won The Roy Fisher Prize for Poetry with his debut pamphlet, ‘Bread and Salt’ (Flarestack, TBA). He was also the recipient of a Creative Future Writers’ Award in 2019. His poetry has featured regularly in anthologies and literary press magazines, most notably in The London Magazine. His collection of essays, ‘Living in Disneyland’, will be available from Broken Sleep Books in October 2020. Alex spent 2018 as a resident of The People’s Republic of China, where he taught the English Language in a school run by the Ministry of Education. His writing has been described as ‘wry and knowing,’ with ‘an edge that tears rather than cuts or deals blows.’
is a High School English and Creative Writing teacher who has been writing poems and songs for more than forty years. His poems have been featured in numerous online and print journals, including BlazeVox, The Montucky Review, Paraphilia, Leaf Garden Press and the late Felino Soriano’s CounterExample Poetics, for which he was a featured artist. Three volumes of poetry, Responsorials (with Constance Stadler), Silence, Inhabited, and Human &c. are available through NeoPoiesis Press (www.neopoiesispress.com.)
As a singer-songwriter, Rich has released five albums of independent contemporary folk music. His latest. Somewhere in the Stars, is available at http://www.richfollett.com. He lives with his wife Mary Ruth Alred Follett in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where he also pursues his interests as a professional actor, playwright, and director.
-Ankh Spice
is a sea-obsessed poet from Aotearoa (NZ). His poetry has appeared in a wide range of international publications and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He truly believes that words have the power to change the place we’re in, and you’ll find him doing his best to prove it on
Twitter: @SeaGoatScreams
or on Facebook: @AnkhSpiceSeaGoatScreamsPoetry
-Carrie Ann Golden
is a deafblind writer from the mystical Adirondack Mountains now living on a farmstead in northeastern North Dakota. She writes dark fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in places like Piker Press, Edify Fiction, Doll Hospital Journal, The Hungry Chimera, GFT Press, Asylum Ink, and Visual Verse.
-sonja benskin mesher
born , Bournemouth.
now
lives and works in North Wales
as an independent artist
‘i am a multidisciplinary artist, crafting paint, charcoal, words and whatever comes to hand, to explain ideas and issues
words have not come easily. I draw on experience, remember and write. speak of a small life’.
Elected as a member of the Royal Cambrian Academy and the United Artists Society
The work has been in solo exhibitions through Wales and England, and in selected and solo worldwide.
Much of the work is now in both private, and public collections, and has been featured in several television documentaries, radio programmes and magazines.
is an American poet whose work emphasizes emotional integrity and social justice. She is the author of several eBooks including, Learning from Pompeii, Coffee for Neanderthals, Disgracing Lady Justice and others, available on smashwords.com and its affiliates.Chapbook:Ebola (West Chester University Poetry Center, 2014)
is a South African and British writer. He is the author of ‘The Salamander Chronicles’ (CTU) and ‘Icarus Rising-Volume 1’ (ABP), an ekphrastic collection. He taught English and Geography in both South Africa and the UK. His poetry has been anthologized in numerous collections and translated into Afrikaans, Persian, French and Albanian. He was nominated by Roxana Nastase, editor of Scarlet Leaf Review for the ‘Best of the Net’ in 2017 as well as the Pushcart Poetry Prize (USA) in 2016. He was published in his first SA Anthology ‘In Pursuit of Poetic Perfection’ in 2018 (Libbo Publishers) and his second ‘Cape Sounds’ in 2019 (Gavin Joachims Publishing). He is also an amateur photographer and his debut Photographic publication appeared in Spirit Fire Review in June 2019. His new book, ‘Sic Transit Gloria Mundi’/Thus Passes the Glory of this World’ is due to be published by Concrete Mist Press.
is an old new poet. He worked in social care but now has no day job. A keen photographer and eater of literature and lurid covers. Fascinated by nature, physics, pagans, sea and storm. His poetry seeks to capture image and tell philosophical tales. Published in Black Bough Poetry, Re-Side, The Hellebore Press and the Pangolin Review. He can be seen reading on #InternationalPoetryCircle and regularly appears on #TopTweetTuesday.
Twitter. @thnargg
Web seekingthedarklight.co.uk
lives in a converted factory and works with elders. She has had poetry, flash fiction or photographs published in online and print publications Human/Kind Journal, Rose Quartz Poetry Magazine, Hawk & Whippoorwill, The Cormorant, Radical: A Lit Zine, Chrysanthemum, Occulum, Flash, Paragraph Planet, and Flash Fiction Magazine. On Twitter @mourapoet, Instagram mourathepoet and mourastudio.wordpress.com.
-Paul Brookes
is a shop asst. Lives in a cat house full of teddy bears. His chapbooks include The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley, (Dearne Community Arts, 1993). The Headpoke and Firewedding (Alien Buddha Press, 2017), A World Where and She Needs That Edge (Nixes Mate Press, 2017, 2018) The Spermbot Blues (OpPRESS, 2017), Port Of Souls (Alien Buddha Press, 2018), Please Take Change (Cyberwit.net, 2018), Stubborn Sod, with Marcel Herms (artist) (Alien Buddha Press, 2019), As Folk Over Yonder ( Afterworld Books, 2019). Forthcoming Khoshhali with Hiva Moazed (artist), Our Ghost’s Holiday (Final book of threesome “A Pagan’s Year”) . He is a contributing writer of Literati Magazine and Editor of Wombwell Rainbow Interviews.
-Mary Frances
is an artist and writer based in the UK. She takes a few photos every day, for inspiration and to use in her work. The images for this project were all taken in the last two years on walks during in the month of May. Her words and images have been published by Penteract Press, Metambesen, Ice Floe Press, Burning House Press, Inside the Outside, Luvina Rivista Literaria, and Lone Women in Flashes of Wilderness.
Twitter:
@maryfrancesness
-James Knight
is an experimental poet and digital artist. His books include Void Voices (Hesterglock Press) and Self Portrait by Night (Sampson Low). His visual poems have been published in several places, including the Penteract Press anthology Reflections and Temporary Spaces (Pamenar Press). Chimera, a book of visual poems, is due from Penteract Press in July 2020.
is an admin worker, currently not in work Married, 2 sons. Loves poetry and words. She considers herself a writer of scribble rather than a poet. She has written a novel and is using her spare time to finally get it published (self-publishing) which has been an ambition of her for the last 10 years.
Murakami’s cats, the peeling memory, an unhealthy preoccupation
with Studio Ghibli animation, an unhealthy preoccupation with
certain social media accounts, with line breaks that you have to
get over – eventually. Ninety-percent of my life is devoted to
upsetting people with a line break, forming only at the preposition.
It seems, most of the time, this is more upsetting to / some people
than the combined human rights violations of, say, North Korea.
-Alex Mazey
.foam.
foam is ok , like this sea stuff
yet pea foam leaves me wanting for regular
food
without the mouth sensation
unlike mousse which is more like
solid froth
or should I say foam again
and spoil the muse
light is wonderful
lifts the brain and limbs
beyond
sparkles rain the morning
once again we have the repetition
of words
shapes fly
foam flies
the salted wind
by the sea
seagulls fly
over
-sbm
The Gift
You never asked what happened
to your favourite mug. On my way to the ocean
I walk past the home for the elderly around the corner
from where I now live. Me, this unanticipated adult.
With these unscheduled steps.
Sometimes I look up
at the little bubbles of convex windows, angled
to catch the last of the sunlight. Treated to rainbows.
The last we spoke I was fourteen
and you were alive and I was barely.
The last word you said to me was ‘anything’.
One of those windows heard anything you spoke last
of all. I smashed that mug on purpose, and I took the bits
to the ocean and I fed them to the sea. She swallowed them
without a sound – broken pieces
far too small to make a splash.
Decades in the dark change a thing.
This fragment of tidegift blue in my palm is heavy
and has no sharp edges at all.
-Ankh Spice
A Sea Spat
You leave treasures
on your golden table,
swept crumb clean
by tiny waves.
Taken home and placed
on sun bleached pine,
with sprigs of sea’s weed
and pebble soothed glass.
When age takes away
the wave and sandy shore.
When sight dims and
eyes fill with rheum.
Then touch her treasures,
smell her salty airs,
remember the crash
and rattle of sea scree.
Draw each breath
and with it,
memories of sand winds
and young limbs.
Remembering when
gulls cried their fish hunger,
and sun backed silhouettes
passed in wet sea skies.
Wistfulness marks you,
a desire for foam and dunes
where land gets up from the sea.
A bringing of comfort, this
distillation of mindfulness,
as a pause in your day.
In a dawn filled room
flax bed and polish, sense
curtains caught in sea breeze.
These billowing angels greet
you on this, your last day.
I long to be consistent through change,
On blue sky days,
Or in city stink claustrophobia.
Repeatedly sharing life energy,
Repeatedly sharing life energy,
Repeatedly.
Duplicate skeletons
With a singular message –
Love, love, love, love, love.
-st
minutiae
a shard of delft cradled in seafoam
has survived four centuries of fortunes made and lost,
piracy, war, and brave exploration
perhaps its story is our story;
perhaps it is just a castaway—
why should we even wonder?
still, one thought remains,
unyielding to time and tide—
if this montage truly does not signify,
how is it that one fragment
tossed by wind and waves
can come to rest as
a splendid mountain range
across a lilliputian continent of spume?
-Rich Follett
The Visitors
They came on a moonless night
shedding black rain on us
our bodies
folded and melted
like some block cheese
drip, dripping over a plate
’till only the skeletons
greeted the rising sun
-Carrie Ann Golden
Phantoms in my Mind
Demon Alley – Each liquid dead of night nightmare
continues to deliver a blinding glare of my inner
light darkened by familiar fears snuffed out by
freezing whispers of false rumours of my former
self – My childhood nightmares and insecurities
clashing in a nightly showdown of my inner sanctum
my perceived existential survival, compounded
by recurrent mocking voices singing their cutting
questioning of my existence, my brave resistance –
I used to take their punches even their toxic
repetitive slashing remarks but I am better
now, so I willingly enter demon alley – Just
to make sure none of them is left to jeer and
sneer or chiselling my former brittle veneer.
Emergence – My mind now calmer as I reflect
On my former neglect of my inner core my
personal war but I have won that battle against
myself as I emerge renewed healing my mood…
New Atlantis
Earth barren and bare
Our oceans chalk dry no
No surprise we just did not
Care so we still question our
Actions but we all know the truth –
Humanity complacent ignoring the signs
Mocking the science of those in the know
Dismissing rumours of the final day so here
We dwell in our new Atlantis no more the
Masters of our former existence, having
To journey far just to hope and find
Even just a drop of water – To
Touch our parched lips which cannot
Even speak our regret of our former
Proud existence – Now a mere
Ancient memory in our
New Atlantis…
-Don Beukes
In Our Skulls
of multi story car parks
that foam at the mouth
with the spit of the sea,
ogres and demons deep in the waves
wash the bairn of you clean,
scatter your old ash with their tides.
Multi story car parks are epics,
mountains to be read or heard.
with their twists and turns,
as you try to park your message
safe and secure in the company
of other folk’s narratives.
-Paul Brookes Cento 3
When sight dims and
eyes fill with rheum
in city stink claustrophobia
we dwell in our new Atlantis
no more the Masters
of our former existence
safe and secure in the company
of other folk’s narratives.
Decades in the dark change a thing.
Bios and Links
-Alex Mazey
(b.1991) received his MA (distinction) from Keele University in 2017. He later won The Roy Fisher Prize for Poetry with his debut pamphlet, ‘Bread and Salt’ (Flarestack, TBA). He was also the recipient of a Creative Future Writers’ Award in 2019. His poetry has featured regularly in anthologies and literary press magazines, most notably in The London Magazine. His collection of essays, ‘Living in Disneyland’, will be available from Broken Sleep Books in October 2020. Alex spent 2018 as a resident of The People’s Republic of China, where he taught the English Language in a school run by the Ministry of Education. His writing has been described as ‘wry and knowing,’ with ‘an edge that tears rather than cuts or deals blows.’
is a High School English and Creative Writing teacher who has been writing poems and songs for more than forty years. His poems have been featured in numerous online and print journals, including BlazeVox, The Montucky Review, Paraphilia, Leaf Garden Press and the late Felino Soriano’s CounterExample Poetics, for which he was a featured artist. Three volumes of poetry, Responsorials (with Constance Stadler), Silence, Inhabited, and Human &c. are available through NeoPoiesis Press (www.neopoiesispress.com.)
As a singer-songwriter, Rich has released five albums of independent contemporary folk music. His latest. Somewhere in the Stars, is available at http://www.richfollett.com. He lives with his wife Mary Ruth Alred Follett in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where he also pursues his interests as a professional actor, playwright, and director.
-Ankh Spice
is a sea-obsessed poet from Aotearoa (NZ). His poetry has appeared in a wide range of international publications and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He truly believes that words have the power to change the place we’re in, and you’ll find him doing his best to prove it on
Twitter: @SeaGoatScreams
or on Facebook: @AnkhSpiceSeaGoatScreamsPoetry
-Carrie Ann Golden
is a deafblind writer from the mystical Adirondack Mountains now living on a farmstead in northeastern North Dakota. She writes dark fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in places like Piker Press, Edify Fiction, Doll Hospital Journal, The Hungry Chimera, GFT Press, Asylum Ink, and Visual Verse.
-sonja benskin mesher
born , Bournemouth.
now
lives and works in North Wales
as an independent artist
‘i am a multidisciplinary artist, crafting paint, charcoal, words and whatever comes to hand, to explain ideas and issues
words have not come easily. I draw on experience, remember and write. speak of a small life’.
Elected as a member of the Royal Cambrian Academy and the United Artists Society
The work has been in solo exhibitions through Wales and England, and in selected and solo worldwide.
Much of the work is now in both private, and public collections, and has been featured in several television documentaries, radio programmes and magazines.
is an American poet whose work emphasizes emotional integrity and social justice. She is the author of several eBooks including, Learning from Pompeii, Coffee for Neanderthals, Disgracing Lady Justice and others, available on smashwords.com and its affiliates.Chapbook:Ebola (West Chester University Poetry Center, 2014)
is a South African and British writer. He is the author of ‘The Salamander Chronicles’ (CTU) and ‘Icarus Rising-Volume 1’ (ABP), an ekphrastic collection. He taught English and Geography in both South Africa and the UK. His poetry has been anthologized in numerous collections and translated into Afrikaans, Persian, French and Albanian. He was nominated by Roxana Nastase, editor of Scarlet Leaf Review for the ‘Best of the Net’ in 2017 as well as the Pushcart Poetry Prize (USA) in 2016. He was published in his first SA Anthology ‘In Pursuit of Poetic Perfection’ in 2018 (Libbo Publishers) and his second ‘Cape Sounds’ in 2019 (Gavin Joachims Publishing). He is also an amateur photographer and his debut Photographic publication appeared in Spirit Fire Review in June 2019. His new book, ‘Sic Transit Gloria Mundi’/Thus Passes the Glory of this World’ is due to be published by Concrete Mist Press.
is an old new poet. He worked in social care but now has no day job. A keen photographer and eater of literature and lurid covers. Fascinated by nature, physics, pagans, sea and storm. His poetry seeks to capture image and tell philosophical tales. Published in Black Bough Poetry, Re-Side, The Hellebore Press and the Pangolin Review. He can be seen reading on #InternationalPoetryCircle and regularly appears on #TopTweetTuesday.
Twitter. @thnargg
Web seekingthedarklight.co.uk
lives in a converted factory and works with elders. She has had poetry, flash fiction or photographs published in online and print publications Human/Kind Journal, Rose Quartz Poetry Magazine, Hawk & Whippoorwill, The Cormorant, Radical: A Lit Zine, Chrysanthemum, Occulum, Flash, Paragraph Planet, and Flash Fiction Magazine. On Twitter @mourapoet, Instagram mourathepoet and mourastudio.wordpress.com.
-Paul Brookes
is a shop asst. Lives in a cat house full of teddy bears. His chapbooks include The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley, (Dearne Community Arts, 1993). The Headpoke and Firewedding (Alien Buddha Press, 2017), A World Where and She Needs That Edge (Nixes Mate Press, 2017, 2018) The Spermbot Blues (OpPRESS, 2017), Port Of Souls (Alien Buddha Press, 2018), Please Take Change (Cyberwit.net, 2018), Stubborn Sod, with Marcel Herms (artist) (Alien Buddha Press, 2019), As Folk Over Yonder ( Afterworld Books, 2019). Forthcoming Khoshhali with Hiva Moazed (artist), Our Ghost’s Holiday (Final book of threesome “A Pagan’s Year”) . He is a contributing writer of Literati Magazine and Editor of Wombwell Rainbow Interviews.
-Mary Frances
is an artist and writer based in the UK. She takes a few photos every day, for inspiration and to use in her work. The images for this project were all taken in the last two years on walks during in the month of May. Her words and images have been published by Penteract Press, Metambesen, Ice Floe Press, Burning House Press, Inside the Outside, Luvina Rivista Literaria, and Lone Women in Flashes of Wilderness.
Twitter:
@maryfrancesness
-James Knight
is an experimental poet and digital artist. His books include Void Voices (Hesterglock Press) and Self Portrait by Night (Sampson Low). His visual poems have been published in several places, including the Penteract Press anthology Reflections and Temporary Spaces (Pamenar Press). Chimera, a book of visual poems, is due from Penteract Press in July 2020.
is an admin worker, currently not in work Married, 2 sons. Loves poetry and words. She considers herself a writer of scribble rather than a poet. She has written a novel and is using her spare time to finally get it published (self-publishing) which has been an ambition of her for the last 10 years.
As I get older, and with no children to root me and turn me to the future, I look for who I am in the places that I inhabit. I have lived here in north Yorkshire all my life. I have never moved more than twenty miles from the place where I was born. I live in a valley carved by glaciers. I am ringed by the north sea, The Wolds, The North York Moors and endless farmland reaching inland. I read a lot about ritual within landscape while I was researching for the PhD (which is on hold and I have no idea what will happen with scholarship applications next year) and how we interact with the landscape we live in, how it informs our sense of self. When I write for Yorkshire Life magazine I am writing about the sea, and facing…
This is a famous story retold by many poets, especially women poets. A tale of abuse and recovery. Male violence towards women, which I always see as cowardice.
I recall a dark room at English Heritage, a documentary showing
an eight-to-ten-minute introductory guide to big castle, wherever.
This is, perhaps, a simulated experience, curated with panoramic
cinematography – available in the gift shop for nine-ninety-five.
Every time, I find these dark rooms – showing a documentary,
I sit there for eight-to-ten-minutes, thoroughly enjoying the space,
imagining my life as an informative documentary; a screen wipe.
-Alex Mazey
The Walk
Few find the shrifted forest – a wanderer feels
their gait well weighed by trees and rock
to find how great the need for succour-paths.
If your feet, as heavy as they are, will carry you
for another week, a day, an hour
through the loosened sharps of the vale
some trivial thing will call you to your walking-on.
When the wet green hands of sentinels
wing a creature through this breach
its count of given steps was done and done.
And we could do much worse than to stop it here
we beasts who have been treading
so stilted since first we fell. Far worse than to drop
to our knees on this cushion of needles
beneath an unsuspected kindness of stones.
Sometimes you don’t see how much they love you
until their face is watching you leave.
The last walk done, and I’ll go laughing, all thin-
skin shiver in the warm wet breath of the rock
that has turned these bones, has spun us on
and on, every day since we arrived.
She gave us milk from the dirt
of her body. Every day opened the door
to the walk. You mourn your pets like family.
-Ankh Spice
The Spectre
You see me as a hideous invasive enemy oddity
but I see you as an existential anomaly hoping to remain free but it is not meant to be – Your
insatiable sensational lust for self-gratification
revealed your selfish nature neglecting your
intended function to willingly and selflessly
nurture but you have proven time and time again
your expected failure to prove your worth as a
temporary fleeting organism on a planet only meant
to temporarily tolerate your inherited generations –
Your neglect of each other and your dismissal of
of obvious signs and revelations in your darkest
dreams and ruby screams did not deter you from
darkening your absorbent soul as you hunted for
monetary riches, damning those who you deemed
unnecessary in an existence you craved to have
total dominance in unable to foresee you failed legacy.
This is your final hour as your essence will be ended –
You do not deserve to be awarded this precious
Earthly existence so forget your expected inheritance…
-Don Beukes
Release
Looking at the red sky All I see is you
The ground trembles as I try
To hug the earth like glue
Closing my eyes struggling not to cry
Your angelic face fills my view
As I let go, my body wants to fly
and search for you in the heavenly blue
-Carrie Ann Golden
#MF 16
The nightmares and dreams of children
are carved of the same stone;
they are massive. Even the friendliest
glower, because of their weight.
All through their lives, these stones
follow all the children who ever were.
As adults, the stones loom, smaller in size,
but heavier, pressing down on hearts
and minds which don’t believe in dreams
or nightmares, but are certain of death.
#16
American bullet, barreling out, like an asteroid
racing to a pre-mediated hit.
It is red hot. It knows its way.
A finger has shot out before it.
It points. Like a diseased god, it chooses.
-Elizabeth Moura
Draw me to the eye
Center us down together
Stillness in your storm
-st
The heart of a tree
is a crack
in time.
A glimpse across galaxies
linked by wormholes
in xylem.
This giant is fallen:
a window on eternity
exposed,
though the roots still live.
Here – delicate in rotten bark –
sapling.
Time
is the crack
in a tree’s heart.
-Yvonne Marjot
The Lion
I am Hunger and look for a prey.
No animal, big or small,
as far as I can see.
I find a big cave,
There must be some animal here.
If so, come evening it will return
I will hide myself in the cave
and when it returns,
pounce on it and have a good meal.
Sun begins to set,
I hear a voice
“Hello cave,
I am your friend here.”
I do not reply
“Hello cave,
don’t you remember
the arrangement we made?
I have to shout when I arrive
and you will ask me to come in.
Without your green signal
I do not enter the cave.
Since you are silent,
I will go to some other cave.”
Ah, there seems to be an arrangement
between the cave and this animal.
Let me get him into my trap.
I will shout back a welcome
to him and he will walk in happily.”
I roar, “Hi jackal,
come in.
You are welcome.”
Nothing happens.
Nothing happens
My stomach is an empty cave
full of echoes.
-Paul Brookes
Cento 2
You do not deserve to be awarded this precious
earthly existence so forget your expected inheritance…
Stillness in your storm
Bios and Links
-Alex Mazey
(b.1991) received his MA (distinction) from Keele University in 2017. He later won The Roy Fisher Prize for Poetry with his debut pamphlet, ‘Bread and Salt’ (Flarestack, TBA). He was also the recipient of a Creative Future Writers’ Award in 2019. His poetry has featured regularly in anthologies and literary press magazines, most notably in The London Magazine. His collection of essays, ‘Living in Disneyland’, will be available from Broken Sleep Books in October 2020. Alex spent 2018 as a resident of The People’s Republic of China, where he taught the English Language in a school run by the Ministry of Education. His writing has been described as ‘wry and knowing,’ with ‘an edge that tears rather than cuts or deals blows.’
is a High School English and Creative Writing teacher who has been writing poems and songs for more than forty years. His poems have been featured in numerous online and print journals, including BlazeVox, The Montucky Review, Paraphilia, Leaf Garden Press and the late Felino Soriano’s CounterExample Poetics, for which he was a featured artist. Three volumes of poetry, Responsorials (with Constance Stadler), Silence, Inhabited, and Human &c. are available through NeoPoiesis Press (www.neopoiesispress.com.)
As a singer-songwriter, Rich has released five albums of independent contemporary folk music. His latest. Somewhere in the Stars, is available at http://www.richfollett.com. He lives with his wife Mary Ruth Alred Follett in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where he also pursues his interests as a professional actor, playwright, and director.
-Ankh Spice
is a sea-obsessed poet from Aotearoa (NZ). His poetry has appeared in a wide range of international publications and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He truly believes that words have the power to change the place we’re in, and you’ll find him doing his best to prove it on
Twitter: @SeaGoatScreams
or on Facebook: @AnkhSpiceSeaGoatScreamsPoetry
-Carrie Ann Golden
is a deafblind writer from the mystical Adirondack Mountains now living on a farmstead in northeastern North Dakota. She writes dark fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in places like Piker Press, Edify Fiction, Doll Hospital Journal, The Hungry Chimera, GFT Press, Asylum Ink, and Visual Verse.
-sonja benskin mesher
born , Bournemouth.
now
lives and works in North Wales
as an independent artist
‘i am a multidisciplinary artist, crafting paint, charcoal, words and whatever comes to hand, to explain ideas and issues
words have not come easily. I draw on experience, remember and write. speak of a small life’.
Elected as a member of the Royal Cambrian Academy and the United Artists Society
The work has been in solo exhibitions through Wales and England, and in selected and solo worldwide.
Much of the work is now in both private, and public collections, and has been featured in several television documentaries, radio programmes and magazines.
is an American poet whose work emphasizes emotional integrity and social justice. She is the author of several eBooks including, Learning from Pompeii, Coffee for Neanderthals, Disgracing Lady Justice and others, available on smashwords.com and its affiliates.Chapbook:Ebola (West Chester University Poetry Center, 2014)
is a South African and British writer. He is the author of ‘The Salamander Chronicles’ (CTU) and ‘Icarus Rising-Volume 1’ (ABP), an ekphrastic collection. He taught English and Geography in both South Africa and the UK. His poetry has been anthologized in numerous collections and translated into Afrikaans, Persian, French and Albanian. He was nominated by Roxana Nastase, editor of Scarlet Leaf Review for the ‘Best of the Net’ in 2017 as well as the Pushcart Poetry Prize (USA) in 2016. He was published in his first SA Anthology ‘In Pursuit of Poetic Perfection’ in 2018 (Libbo Publishers) and his second ‘Cape Sounds’ in 2019 (Gavin Joachims Publishing). He is also an amateur photographer and his debut Photographic publication appeared in Spirit Fire Review in June 2019. His new book, ‘Sic Transit Gloria Mundi’/Thus Passes the Glory of this World’ is due to be published by Concrete Mist Press.
is an old new poet. He worked in social care but now has no day job. A keen photographer and eater of literature and lurid covers. Fascinated by nature, physics, pagans, sea and storm. His poetry seeks to capture image and tell philosophical tales. Published in Black Bough Poetry, Re-Side, The Hellebore Press and the Pangolin Review. He can be seen reading on #InternationalPoetryCircle and regularly appears on #TopTweetTuesday.
Twitter. @thnargg
Web seekingthedarklight.co.uk
lives in a converted factory and works with elders. She has had poetry, flash fiction or photographs published in online and print publications Human/Kind Journal, Rose Quartz Poetry Magazine, Hawk & Whippoorwill, The Cormorant, Radical: A Lit Zine, Chrysanthemum, Occulum, Flash, Paragraph Planet, and Flash Fiction Magazine. On Twitter @mourapoet, Instagram mourathepoet and mourastudio.wordpress.com.
-Yvonne Marjot
is a lost kiwi, now living on a Scottish island. She has been making up stories and poems for as long as she can remember. Her first volume of poetry, The Knitted Curiosity Cabinet, won the Brit Writers Award for poetry in 2012. She has published four novels and a book of short stories.
Twitter handle:
@alayanabeth
-Paul Brookes
is a shop asst. Lives in a cat house full of teddy bears. His chapbooks include The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley, (Dearne Community Arts, 1993). The Headpoke and Firewedding (Alien Buddha Press, 2017), A World Where and She Needs That Edge (Nixes Mate Press, 2017, 2018) The Spermbot Blues (OpPRESS, 2017), Port Of Souls (Alien Buddha Press, 2018), Please Take Change (Cyberwit.net, 2018), Stubborn Sod, with Marcel Herms (artist) (Alien Buddha Press, 2019), As Folk Over Yonder ( Afterworld Books, 2019). Forthcoming Khoshhali with Hiva Moazed (artist), Our Ghost’s Holiday (Final book of threesome “A Pagan’s Year”) . He is a contributing writer of Literati Magazine and Editor of Wombwell Rainbow Interviews.
-Mary Frances
is an artist and writer based in the UK. She takes a few photos every day, for inspiration and to use in her work. The images for this project were all taken in the last two years on walks during in the month of May. Her words and images have been published by Penteract Press, Metambesen, Ice Floe Press, Burning House Press, Inside the Outside, Luvina Rivista Literaria, and Lone Women in Flashes of Wilderness.
Twitter:
@maryfrancesness
-James Knight
is an experimental poet and digital artist. His books include Void Voices (Hesterglock Press) and Self Portrait by Night (Sampson Low). His visual poems have been published in several places, including the Penteract Press anthology Reflections and Temporary Spaces (Pamenar Press). Chimera, a book of visual poems, is due from Penteract Press in July 2020.
is an admin worker, currently not in work Married, 2 sons. Loves poetry and words. She considers herself a writer of scribble rather than a poet. She has written a novel and is using her spare time to finally get it published (self-publishing) which has been an ambition of her for the last 10 years.
Photo by Adrian Dorobantu on 
The Wombwell Rainbow 