*

Once bought a bottle of Jack Daniels for forty euros,
in a truck stop, somewhere, and drank it, snowed in,
on a grey-peak mountainside, and when vomited, early
into white, coffee mugs, wondered how bad the head
would be in three to four hours, when the sun would not
rise, but would gleam again across the snow pine forests,
an old tree stump, halved tuna sandwich with St. Bernard.

-Alex Mazey

Exposing the Light

In the farmhouse
Of my youth,
Remnants of
Wallpaper over wallpaper
Peeled from walls to
Reveal crumbling plaster underneath
Dried in place on ancient lath.
I didn’t know not to pull and pick at it,
Dropping crusty bits to the hardwood floors
To be swept up later.
Peering curious eyes
Behind the layers to see inside –
All the while, making it worse.
Sometimes, streams of sunlight
Would shine through.
Probing messy situations
Can shed light.

-st

Hidden Patterns

A gentle fading,
apparent under grey paint.
Beauty from passing times.

As lonely words woken
from a shoebox diary.
Lifted from lace dreams
by curious children.
Sepia ink, pressed petals
all tied with yellow ribbon.
Bedded in lilac tissue.

Bitter at the old decay
Sleeping years have wrought,
I stare… but you
will not resolve for me.

As old pain lessens
a new loss presents.
Fresh with a hurt that is
not immediately clear.

©️ Dai Fry 11th May 2020.

Journey to Fluweeltjie
(Part Two)

Memories of Tiervlei – As Sekueb Nodmai bravely entered the
treacherous lake of souls, feeling an ominous stirring of water boiling,
he could not help thinking of his foretold quest to save his beloved
kingdom, ruled by his brave father, Tenamêske – A land of many
suns and moons, of friends and enemies, of secrets and stories, of
ancient bones and stones, now whispering through his whole being –
Guiding him to bravely swim through this lake of souls, not knowing
What will become of him but his own fears compares to nothing
Just thinking of what will be unleashed if he fails in this foretold
mission to secure eons more of the lives of his mense in Tiervlei.
Only he can ensure the survival of his proud nation, his final mission.

Lake of Souls – It began as a mere ripple over the surface of the
Lake but Sekueb knew this was the moment he was born for –
Crossing the lake of souls alive, to reach the source of lewe
in a place called Fluweeltjie. He could sense several hands
trying to drag him below to this bottomless lake but they could
not possibly know what the Oracle presented to him –
Powder of boegoe, dust of knoffel and tears from suurvygies.
He dived below and released his precious gifts, instantly killing
these souls who dared to challenge him, underestimating him!

In the distance, beyond the iron tree forest, he could see the
glow of a Skeeloog guardian, holding up what he came for –
A beker containing essence of Vroteiers, gathered from
the tears of a Skoenderlap, a giver of life, before its own
sacrificial death, its wings disintegrating as her tears were falling –
The Skeeloog beckoned Sekueb to take the precious beker and
Pointed the way out, beyond the pillar of klopdisselboom, where
a meisie was waiting to take him back through the screeching
waterfall to emerge unscathed at the gates of Tiervlei…

©Don Beukes

12.
continuing from 10 + 11

totalling 21 and the nightmare
continues into another day the

orange thing reappearing even
on andrew marr

I always imagined watching that
on tv
if I did not work on sunday, now
on furlough find I can
yet the colour comes again

smothering thoughts of a pleasant day
suffocating, melding mouth and those

shades defining

now I have to say that I usually like
the colour as items yet maybe not
as entity

I face the slate
grey
and bleed red

I dare not think on tomorrow

-sbm

Troubled

The plaster is cracked
everywhere;
in the stately rooms, off limits
day and night,
scraps of wallpaper
flutter, like blind butterflies.
Floorboards all creak; some
splinter under the weight
of memory. Memory.
There, where a forehead
poked a rounded hole;
there where many hands
crawled up and down
the discolored lead paint,
discolored even then.
Even then.
Lastly, the windows;
they are gloriously smashed.
Wind brings in quiet dust,
And I ask myself,
who was this?

-Elizabeth Moura

Callimachus doomed the Minotaur

They immortalised his bellowing as cruel
and the ghost of that word travelled
with its knee pressed into his spine
just above the place his tail swept for stars.

We are so willing to forget
that he was Asterion
the son of the silver-chased vault
not an earthly beast at all – but then
we always lusted for understandable monsters.

After he fell, his spirit fled from the hillock
of his great heavy hide
left stinking in the Knossos sun,
and into the cool grey mountains, still
trailing that cruel-mouthed kite, its mortalling tongue.
Written the wrong shape to ascend.

Perhaps he did bellow as he ran
but tone travels dimly between worlds.
Perhaps he bellows still, just like the mountain itself
always has, the groanings
of its quake-tortured bones
so very much like an enormous bull
anticipating the mythic – his true name lost,
in monstrous distress.

-Ankh Spice

alpha

Shamash and Kali
whirl in molten ecstasy—
thus, new worlds are born

-Rich Follett

Poem for day 12 #2

One’s life
Could be seen in two ways
Like a broken pottery beyond repair
Or
Like a journey filled with peaks and valleys.

-Carrie Ann Golden

A Cracked Mountain

murals isolation on an inside wall.
Wear a mask against the dust.
climb over boulders, down valleys
of sinew and bone caught in these four walls.

Listen to your own heartbeat,
increased bird calls through an open window,
slap of your own slippers, crackle of crisp
packets put away after a shop expedition
where you wait patiently, watch for other
folk coming too close, wait behind lines.

Cross the road when others are in your path.
Arrive home to the loud radio, tell yourself
you put it on only for your pet cockatiel.
Unpack the bread, the pasta, the wine bottle
of fears, tidy them away into reasonable
cupboards. Watch another boxset of recent drama
in which all characters shake hands, hug,
unmasked, ungloved: domestic dramas are alien worlds.

A cracked and pealing wall is a vista of mountains
you climb everyday for the fresh air of another place.

-Paul Brookes

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.’

Twitter: @AlexzanderMazey

Instagram: alexmazey

Here is my interview of Alex:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/12/18/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-alex-mazey/

-Rich Follett

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.

Here is my interview of sonja benskin mesher:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/10/16/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-sonja-benskin-mesher/

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2019/11/02/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-don-beukes/

eleven is ten continued..

I sat on the wall a while
further up a guy was painting
a cat
I watched him
clever
I heard a small noise to the left
turned
found the bloody orange thing was back
fussing around colouring up the air
smelling slightly warm
and damp

mid sucking noises the face appeared
black and white

from the bloody orange thingy.

-sbm

Murakami is my favourite Japanese writer, I remember
vaguely, a time when he did not show his face in public.
Showed his face as a series of cats. Some days, it is like
cats are the loneliest animals on the planet. I think, again,
of a book, by an author I cannot remember. I think, again,
of a time beyond myself, of these dead things, side roads,
memorialised, beyond face value; it’s more than we know.

-Alex Mazey

Journey to Fluweeltjie

The secret Map – It has been passed on by generations of
Meesters, protectors of their families and heirs to the kingdom
of Tiervlei. An existential secret map showing the way to the
land of Fluweeltjie, where essence of an eternal life force
would only be accessible to a worthy young warrior,
who would survive the treacherous Kaapse Vlaktes –
an underworld marshland filled with exploding
vrekwarm flames from below the sunken city of
Fluweeltjie – There to collect essence of the revered
Bitterbessie, ensuring longevity for all who deserve it –

The honour of collecting the precious bitterbessie
was bestowed on Sekueb Nodmai, heir to the kingdom
of Tiervlei. He followed the ancient path shown on the map,
and made his way to the secret entrance only he knew –
In the distance he spotted a lonely figure hovering just
above the ground, guarding the entrance. Sekueb
noticed that he hovered just above the ground, waiting.

Battle of the Kaapse Vlaktes – As soon as he crossed over
he was confronted by a sonskyn soldaat, ordered to
prevent any attempt at entering the dreaded Kaapse Vlaktes.
As donderwolke clouds exploded in the skies above,
the soldaat suddenly hurled a tokkelos at Sekueb, a fierce
creature which could instantly melt him, however Sekueb
only had to throw dust of poeier into its eyes to avoid
certain death. That opened the path to the gateway to
to the borrelende land of Fluweeltjie – What he did not know
was that he had to swim through the lake of souls, they who
have suffered the curse of failed missions – Looking to welcome
one more, as the water started to boil and stir…

(to be continued)

-Don Beukes

Hunters

I savor the rainbows
on wet streets,
and the pigeons without sense
who peck at nothing.
The streets are empty,
dehumanized.
As it should be, as it is.
I feel the rumbling
not of wheels or thunder;
it is the precious honey bee,
another hunter
as effortless as myself.
It’s hunting in unkept lots
the modest dandelions.
My feet dance
over faded chalk;
I fear nothing.

Elizabeth Moura

Koi feeding

You save the stale crusts from the good brown loaf.
On your early walk through the city gardens, there is a round mirror

to crumble them into, and in it an unfamiliar creature,
folded and loose in his aspect. He watches you from the water.

You have never met his eyes, although you sense they are kind.
This morning autumn has nodded at the trees

and the ember of the squalling sun catches
a plume at his throat, and he blushes bright ¬— young

with newborn flame. The wind arrives
to spread the blaze outwards in ripples

from the man standing with his hands full
of burning bread, and when the fish surface

their mouths make round holes in his body.
In one tiny circle after another

the fire goes out. Cool water ¬— O O O ¬—
welling dark and smooth. It was always the truth.

What feeds on us that steals our fire.
What we feed to remember what we are.

-Ankh Spice

 

Identity Crisis

Colorful patterns
Etched into
Our lives,
Reveal truths
We often try to hide.

Denying reality
Doesn’t cease to
Make it so.
Call a cat a turtle.
It won’t hurt his ego.

But it does cause confusion.
Then, while we’re all mixed up
Arguing over semantics,
Inscriptions become clear –
Our identity betrays us.

-st

Stripe’s the given name
Latched on anything ‘till me
Now Clingon’s your name.

-Carrie Ann Golden

Practical Cats for Gen-Z

Sandburg’s cat did not have neon feet—
time passes; things change.

Kodachrome bas-relief kitty’s impress:

JPS –
just pussy-footing silently …
but

is neon ever silent?

as it is with humans, so with felines:
we always wish
against our nature.

Eliot’s three-name theory
would not seem to apply here
unless loud, louder, loudest
are on the list …

so, is kitty a success or a failure?

impossible to say
until we know his aim—
his ineffable, effable
(f***in’ ineffable)
deep and inscrutable singular

aim …

-Rich Follett

Of Cats And Gods

It is told in the oldest book that
all cats must have two dreams.
The second a tale
of the fertile crescent,
land of Nebuchadnezzar.
A place of long ago.

Only to leave,
for reasons of their own.
On a great adventure.
Maybe they first travelled
on Abraham’s road to Canaan.

Before they became gods,
and tellers of riddles,
on the banks of that north
flowing river.

“Where one gives birth to the other,
who in turn gives birth to the first”

©️ Dai Fry 10th May 2020.

Cat Called Nothing

JPS calls me Nothing.

Catness carries being at its heart.
I am condemned to be free.
If I tremble at the slightest noise,
if each creak announces me a look

This is because I am already in the state
of being-looked-at.

Catness haunts being. Hell is other people.
Catness lies coiled at the heart of being
like a worm.

Consciousness is a being,
the nature of which is to be conscious
of the catness of its being.

-Paul Brookes

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.’

Twitter: @AlexzanderMazey

Instagram: alexmazey

Here is my interview of Alex:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/12/18/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-alex-mazey/

-Rich Follett

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

Here is my interview of Ankh Spice: https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2019/09/15/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-ankh-spice/

-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.

Here is my interview of sonja benskin mesher:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/10/16/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-sonja-benskin-mesher/

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2019/11/02/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-don-beukes/

orange it came flaring
while I was
minding
my business as always
looking at to sea hoping
for a boat

on the horizon
I got this thing whizzing round my face
warm emulsifying, wreaking havoc with
the serenity
buzzed my ears and stayed there
until defeated I moved to the wall
and sat there a while

undeniably tracing honesty in air
with one finger
pointing

it came clear later

-sbm.

*

Most people have a penchant for rocks – dry stone walls
with spiders inside. I once shook the leaves by a wall
to see what fell out, and every night, when I came home,
picked handfuls on my way, breadcrumb leaves to tear,
carefully, like prayer beads once blessed by spit, by piss,
by rain fall. Nobody knows why they do these things,
least of all, tear leaves, and tear, and scatter leaves away.

*

I have always imagined / galaxies shaped like / the inside of a pomegranate fruit. /
Authenticity interspersed with a tragic sense of irony. / Why do we write / like this?

-Alex Mazey

The Dream

I plunge into the depths of

nowhere, of empty uninhabited

space glowing like s beacon almost

beckoning like an empty womb ready

to cocoon new life – Expectant

nourishing, life-giving.

I fall further reaching unexplored cavities

of my questioning mind, witnessing

memories not even born yet, of

revelations still to come – I hear

faint whispers of familiar voices guiding

me teaching me protecting me.

My vision now clearer as I enter the
domain of forever – My former melancholy
turning into a joyous cacophony of encompassing
love. I breathe again. I laugh again. I live again…

Memories of Us

I still sometimes hear the
echoes of our laugher as we
reminisce of our shared happiness –
Our joy of creating new planting borders
Of days languishing in the sun until
the moonrise beckoned daily
reflections of love in various sessions,
of togetherness of silliness of happiness.

I feel such a fool not having shared more
thoughts with you, or not having told you
I forgive you for misinterpreted heated
arguments, of hating my foolish pride
but I cannot linger on anything bitter
as I still feel you with me in poignant
memories of us…

-Don Beukes

Wild Imagination

Yesterday I walked down a path in the woods
And spied a crumbling cornerstone of a building
Lost to past floods
Hidden in its base was a hole
Nearly encased in the shadows of hardwoods
Unsure if it was created by some mole
I moved near the edge and spotted a thick coiled string
Most of it vanished in the dried mud
Vivid images of mystical places down below
Filled my mind to the point that was maddening
With a headache I reluctantly returned to my neighborhood

-Carrie Ann Golden

Shiva’s Dance

All stones, a conglomeration
of illusion and desire.
All dawns, pre-set to rise and fall
breathe and grow
and yet…
all are followed by a drowning sun.

Not a stone story or tellers myth.
For souls so bound in greed and gold.
My house is as opium dreams…
in these whispers of life.

No movement, in still darkling corners
where life and dust move so slowly that
luxing shadows, low and subdued, can
hold a spirit in sleeping deeps.

So dance the ring of fire
without question,
for being must flow
in these meriel seas
and shaded rivers.
Apocalypse and creation
my coin.
You my currency.

Your hair is made
of flowers and death,
your breath mud baked
yet star sparkle sweet.
Your compassion always
greater than your parts.

So dance your dance
on life’s highest mountain,
in low dead seas.
No choice no chance
All else illusion’s flattery.

©️ Dai Fry 9th May 2020.

colloquy

chestnut and stone wall
speaking of patience and time
passersby know naught

-Rich Follett

Interstellar Connections

You are a small planet,
Unique in every way.
I reach out the solid branch
Of my being, as far as I can
To see if I can touch your greatness,
Learn more about the mysterious

Known and unknown parts
And the pre-existing orbit
Of my earthbound heart,
Causing me to overcome all fears,
To cross the void of space and find
What happens when we collide.

-st

Ishigaki music (the ballad of Rat and Cat)

Each day of that hot summer
the stonemason let the river sing to him
as he ate his noon meal, the moonsweet rice
the pink auras of salmon and ginger
and from his front hedge of rushes
crept sleek black Rat with his shinobue tail
and from the temple’s gap-toothed wall
ambled marmalade Cat with her koto miaow
and for a few grains of lunar rice
Rat conjured a rill of silver notes from his flute
and for a sliver of translucent spirit-fish
Cat would wail her strange ghost’s vibrato
and the inkbrush river shushed its rhythm
onto the clean white page of each day.
For a whole season the stonemason laid every rock
with songs in his head and his hands and his heart
and should you visit the temple
you will see the black Rat and the ginger Cat
who live forever in his tendered wall
and should you put your ear to the sweet stones
all placed just so, the music there
in the neat grains of them
will build and build inside you
a thousand years of comfort.

-Ankh Spice

Stars

Stars, are they the lost group of family?
Mists as memories, I long to see their faces
The navy sky lit by a sparkle of joy
ancestors in their glowing blessings looking
down, as the perfumed night air wafts gently.
A rare manuscript, an album of belonging
Generations bound by dna blood sweat and tears
A remembrance this darkest day of November
I turn the pages of love and belonging
a feeling of euphoria before the melancholy
sets in clinging like the frost on a rose bud
remembering ancestors, the stars in my eyes.

-Leela Soma

My Night

is a bag of nerve dripped stars
under lit lamposts.

Silence is a window strummed
by shadows.

Stone is a cloud announced as married
to dizzy soil.

Walls are rainbowed unicorn skin and bone
petrified by virgins.

Sugar is a grumble made by galaxies seen
by cardboard homeless.

Darkness is the locked door of a whisper
you cannot fully hear.

-Paul Brookes

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.’

Twitter: @AlexzanderMazey

Instagram: alexmazey

Here is my interview of Alex:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/12/18/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-alex-mazey/

-Rich Follett

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.

Here is my interview of sonja benskin mesher:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/10/16/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-sonja-benskin-mesher/

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2019/11/02/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-don-beukes/

*

There’s an office, twelfth floor, in Shenzhen, I have stared,
many times, I think, looked as far as the South China Sea.
These are not the branches of a cathaya forest, three conifers,
from this window. I cannot order a happy lemon in the mall,
cannot recite Matthew 4:9 in the people’s square in Chengdu.
Some days, I read Leo Tolstoy at the back of the public library,
III times translated, first to English, then to Russian, and so on.

*

Two eyes appear
from a bug
detecting misanthropy

forming the same
colours as the
Khmer Rouge.

-Alex Macey

Mobius musing

those who inhabit cubicles
and those who dwell among trees
have little in common
but there can be no doubt
each is necessary
to reflect upon the other

-Rich Follett

Pantoum for an isolated princess

In her glass coffin, what had flowed in the bone set sail alone
Beyond the bright vault the tree-crowds nodded
And meshed their long toes around the bubble
That carried the fallen log on down the stream

Beyond the bright vault the tree-crowds nodded
The wind stirring branches and passing the message
That carried the fallen log on down the stream
From synapse to synapse until every leaf knew her

The wind stirring branches and passing the message
Threw leaves on the glass to crew up the ship
And synapse to synapse, every leaf knew her
So the sky caught her name, turned her glass to a star

And the leaves on the glass who had crewed up the ship
Of her glass coffin, where what flowed in the bone had set sail alone
Saw the sky catch her name, saw her glass as a star
And fell to the earth to drift deep in the wound

-Ankh Spice

Gamma-Alpha-Light

Under glass I stretch,
out life, not to
smell tree sap or leaf.
Or breezing wind.
Catch rain that drops
on tipped toe tongues.

No horizons
lead crystal walls.
And beyond,
tangled imaginations,
a hunger of beasts.

I see my knees and
look in vain,
for the grazing
of a life not lived.

Under glass, dry tears,
await night’s shadow
to take the trees away.
Now danger only song in
this apocalyptic dark.

Hunters eyes dwell
beyond the confines,
of my glass walls.
I read and watch,
food bottled and tinned.

I gather up fear,
a glowing landscape
into which
I can never venture.

Soft song, sang a requiem.
Last of my line.

-© Dai Fry 8th May 2020.

Objects of Reflection

Reflections in windows in our hearts
Bring us closer to the pain of
Mirror images in those panes
Until, noses pushed against glass,

Seeking so hard to see,
With the steam and the strain,
We lose the imagery
Altogether, viewing

Only what’s inside.
Of course, it’s not what we were looking for.
We’re forced
To turn around, and find

The truth
Was always
In the object,
Not its likeness.

-st

Hum of the Drones

Society now an alternative reality

long adapted to forced acceptance of

a new dimension a stoic domination

of a higher order with murderous

intentions controlling a lockdown human

nation – An evolved consciousness

advanced through carefully engineered

experiments so with the arrival of these

deadly drones spying listening all-seeing

recalculating scheming deleting controlling

a fading tired humanity.

It happened gradually, unseen unheard

Their walls came down surrounding

Major cities concealing a doomsday

Countdown with the intoxicating deadly

Hum of the Drones…

-Don Beukes

parakeets in the park, wild now
holds up his hands and they fly
to take seed

clearly reflected while we stop
while we take coffee
while we breathe

deeply
thinking

of the things we have seen
whitworth

it came with fire with ferocity
depth that left me floating
isolating
isolation from the other
scheme of things. it was
red
very very red

he said it was his favourite colour
I have never seen him wear it

-sonja benskin mesher

Windows

are single eyed.
We move the back projection,
make clear the eyes corners.
What lies ahead, what lies in wait?

Enter house with hollow eyes
Inside its eyes fragrant as bad breath,
a dead leaf
delicate structure
crinkly soft, and wet
wallpaper peals like unheard bells.

Doors are mouths,
mothers polish,
lovers hump over,
by which decisions enter or leave,
from which dead leaves are brushed aside.

-Paul Brookes

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.’

Twitter: @AlexzanderMazey

Instagram: alexmazey

Here is my interview of Alex:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/12/18/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-alex-mazey/

-Rich Follett

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.

Here is my interview of sonja benskin mesher:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/10/16/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-sonja-benskin-mesher/

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2019/11/02/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-don-beukes/