fajar

silver yew bows to
war-torn stone and brick patchwork—
alhaya renews

-Rich Follett
*

Ash-coloured trees, a forest, a liquidated referential, perhaps
against the valley wall. There’s a thousand-year-old olive tree,
somewhere, in a mountain town, where a child serves coffee,
and burgers. Outside, grandmother’s goat stew – blow it first,
child, with a cold spoon, intricate handle, intricately handled.
There are some parts to this world we will never understand.
Ash-coloured trees in the night are like, I don’t want to say it.

*

A page of Baudrillard is a fatal strategy
avoid meaning indefinitely, bore them
with a senseless finality – reverse evil.
Poetry as ecstatic object, secret qualities,
sworn to extremes and quiet synthesis,
the visible to the hidden, more hidden
metamorphosis, (Kafka as a lonely man

laughing at the still living, the digitalised
still life – still born). Illusion plays speech
instantaneously – the nature of seduction,
nostalgic slowness as a merry-go-round.
Silenced once; the silent dialogue of signs.
Fashioned vapid character, aesthetic form,
immoral form, fragile, sentimental desire

shapes superlative power, the objective;
an achieved attraction, our only passion.

-Alex Mazey

..albert & Victoria..

how to tell a picture in words?
egfrasic & I cannot spell
it only in placid moments.

do we describe what we see or maybe
tell the tale inside

albert and victoria
a safe place now
yet round the corner on the wall
are the bullet holes while in dublin
the same on a statue

blood shed
they killed horses too when they
fired their guns, dropped the bombs
what then oh butterflies wing?

I can spell ekphrastic here
but not up there

today there is no image
nor a recording of the voice
just look at the holes in walls.

-sbm.

Life after all

This is where it happened.

You weren’t there,
not that you were ever there

whenever I needed you there.

I’ve often dipped my fingers
in the hollows grief makes.

Here is where it happened.

We climb, but our feet slip,
we don’t fall, but we dangle.

How I needed you there,
to save me from
being myself being there.

Whose life was it, after all?

-Elizabeth Moura

Walls Are

Bed bent wall bound,
less human now as
broken into this square.

Run five fingers
feather light, to
feel walls behind
these closed eyes.

A stony glance
holds a soul
eternal captive, hate
an emotional geometry.

Stone four squared.
Secrets whispered
ear to ear.
Shed tears, wet straw.
Awake, a greeting of
dawn light under the door.

Dream in winds
and creaking trees,
a soul free to run
and run,
until breath is not sufficient.

©️ Dai Fry 7th May 2020.

The Institute

White noise cracking in my headspace

Phantoms in their nightly forced circus

A horse dancing on a rainbow beckoning

Me to follow – I just want to lie my head

down and crawl through my safety tunnel

where I can hear myself think maybe whistle

my favourite tune – Where I choose the paths

in the backstreets of my mind, master of my

own symphony unlike the invasive unwelcome

poking into my private psyche room where

my mental defences are muted by unstable

needy self-elected pharaohs enacting random

healing punishments – I am so done with this!

Dear Self

I am slowly drowning in this mental haze choking

me repeatedly – I need to hear your voice

again even just a faint whisper to remind me

I am still here. Here comes that choking red

Mist again, darkening my vision – My existential

Failed mission no escape… Are you there?

The Trees are Dead

Sour earth neglected responsibilities

toxic oxygen the result of inaction by

Clueless wise men waving their untested

theories yet ignoring increasing revelatory

fatalities from untested remedies meant to

heal nations – Our mortality affected by

inept irrational policy makers hoping to

gain one more vote but we are all in the

same boat – Frantically trying to stay afloat

but worrying cracks are deepening our

livelihoods darkening, so we gather en masse

to finally protest along a charred boulevard

hoping in vain but it is of no use when the

guilty refuse to attempt to reverse recalculate

regenerate for future generations all nations

so we keep the faith even though the trees are dead.

-Don Beukes

Take Me Around Again

Carousel horses,
Are all your circles meant to comfort, or to mock?
And, where will you take me today?
To that bustling park
In West Endicott,
Near the house we almost bought?

Or maybe, all the way back to my childhood dinner time,
When everyone else had moved from home,
And you were three sad napkin rings,
Trotting repetitively around the lonely table. You know
Your steady pace marks time perfectly, while I’m distracted by the bright colors and scenery,
Until I’m caught between once, and today.

-st

For #1 of Day Eight:

The Shaft

Within the mine’s walls
I hear the dead’s calls
As my feet pound these halls
Blinded by charging fireballs

#2 of Day Eight:

I remember as a child an elder spoke
of a ghost town deep in the mountains
where a single wall’s all that remained
Its crumbling façade brimmed with untold stories
Of former residents trapped within the wailing barrier

-Carrie Ann Golden

My Olive

tree is a horse whose mane of leaves
shakes in a gust, whose bark whinnies
when she moves. When I press myself
into her flanks she is the oil
that brightens my meals.

I am calm under her canopy of mane.
Her favourite place is beside the pitted wall.
A Roman wall with close knit red bricks and stone.
The stone is sculpted by round ammunition holes,
but has not fallen. They did not break through here.

I look down at my horse, the olive tree beside the wall
from my balcony. History is always here.

-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/

psychic caterwaul

one dimension away
Hieronymus Bosch’s housecats frolic
beneath a papier-mâché moon
howling and miaowing
in a demonic felid mardis gras

here on earth,
a fair trade toyshop window—
nothing to fear
and yet …

-Rich Follett

Act like you were never for sale

Those were the days in which we felt our flutter
hard and bright as a burning, painted thing, and
those were the days when we painted our feelings
on each others’ faces with pure sugar and unguent-of-anthers, and
those were the days when faces would touch cheeks
intimately, brief and baked electric with proper unsaids, and
those were the days when the electric that moved us
moved us in that little pond of footlights
like a swirl of young eels, so slender, such good teeth, and
those were the days when company meant
we played together well and no-one forgot their lines
or missed a step, or when they did the painted faces
laughed kindly, and not like they had smelled blood in the water
or finally seen the glass, the tags, and some of that last part
is a lie. But a pretty lie, sticky with fertile anthers, and
we bite into it again and again, this cake so sweet
we know it only makes us sick

-Ankh Spice

.mouse.

are you dancing there
you tiny creatures and
are you happy with this
music

should I cut it straight and hard
in layers or leave it to grow?

are you dancing there together
to your own tunes and remarkable
tangents

or
will you advise on the steps to take
while moving ahead

most people’s hair looks gentle natural

there is no need for masquerade
or pantomimes
we cannot have the gatherings these days

you know
he cut my hair for years and we became good
friends . visited charleston together the
farm house not the jig
though the style would have suited
the era
so the
mouse

keeps dancing jim

-sonja benskin mesher

Little Gods

Artists and scientists are
Little gods who make the
World make sense, make
Things fit together, or do not–
At their discretion.
Chaos and order,
Macro and micro,
Beauty and disgust,
Must meet, hold hands
Like humans used to
Before we were all
Forced off the canvass,
Becoming scattered pieces instead.

-st

Pussy Cat Pussy Cat

Patient quiet shadowed, still.
Not blink, but glide wet eyes.
My whiskers sing electric song
and muscles ripple, as claws
give flex, in deep forever breath.

A present, payment for my board.
Fresh meat for the clumsy,
They that cannot hunt.
While I eat flies and wasps that sting.

Pain is fine its just a thing.
So busy grooming, hunting
and holding my lands.
I sleep where I want
and how I please.
I have no master.

Under sun, on soil
paper or wool,
its all the one to me.

And to those too big
to hunt and kill,
I spread my scent.
This meat is mine.

©️ Dai Fry May 6th 2020.

The Gamdroela

I roam this galaxy alone searching aimlessly
for signs of my origins with only infinity as my
reality but I yearn to touch a dead star maybe
even lick the frozen remains of an ancient comet
long gone – I sometimes hear the echoes of far
flung cosmic explosions and I can feel the empty
of nothing expanding yet I am not swallowed up
into black holes transporting me to other dimensions –

I once felt the touch of a solar flare kindling my
whole being as I absorbed its embracing aura, so
I kept it hugged it caressed it, if just to confirm I
am not really alone – You might look at me most
curiously even curse me with pursed ignorant lips
but allow me to gently kiss you and share my multi-
colored nature with you then maybe you can realise
who I really am but that is not meant to be as I am
not destined to be relevant in this reality – Not
even in your fantasy, so I roam this galaxy alone,

I came from nothing – Forever waiting…

Chorus of the Haters

Playground Show – Quick look have you seen what
she is wearing oh my – Wait, what? Never, no!
Surely not? Aw, hey look at that – You’re kidding me!
Is he really wearing trainers? Oh yeah, I heard his
mom had to sell his shoes so he could have something
to eat this morning, jeeze really now! Sorry what?
Who gave you permission to squeak? Let me go!
He asked for it. Let go of me!

Stranger Danger – Hey, you! Let go of his arm! Uh
who the hell are you? You what? Check this out
guys, I – What the… Ooh look at ow! I told you so!
Let’s get out of here. We’ll get her later, ok? You
gonna have your chance later. Why so gloomy?
I guess I’m okay but what do I say to my mom?
Just tell her the truth. Don’t worry, now hurry!
I cannot always save you. You can let go of my
hand now. Will I see you later? Got something to
say to you…

Backstreets of mind – I wish we could move again
but I felt something today. I hate it here though.
Those bastards never accept me. I need to be free,
To be me…This is not healthy for me. I am slipping
but I have finally connected to someone. A warrior
a friend – A saviour.

-Don Beukes

Petite

abandoned, lives in discarded boxes and bags,
bigger, savage males she seduces so they don’t
injure, don’t bite wounds, break her delicate bones,

washes and cleans herself, anoints herself
brings them live prey, breathing for play.
Lives on cold pizza, crisps, rainwater.

Never lost her lioness head, knows ancestors
bred for mummification, how worship becomes
mass slaughter. Small does not mean less wick.

Chooses who lives with her, whom she dances,
who wraps her fur around, curls up in a lawnmower
grass box, brings live gifts into her house as presents.

=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/

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers three options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger, or an interview about their latest book, or a combination of these.

The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

Dena Rod

is currently the assistant creative nonfiction editor for Homology Lit and the author of the chapbook swallow a beginning. Dena works to illuminate their diasporic experiences of Iranian-American heritage and queer identity, combating negative stereotypes of their intersections in the mainstream media. Their poetry and creative nonfiction essays have appeared in the recently published anthology My Shadow is My Skin: Voices from the Iranian Diaspora, Endangered Species, Enduring Values, Forum Literary Magazine, Beyond Bloodlines (funded in part by the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts), and Imagoes: A Queer Anthology. Catch them on Twitter @alightningrod and denarod.com

The Interview

1. What inspired you to write poetry?

I took my first writing workshop back in 2016, which was in an Iranian identity writing workshop. Initially, I planned on writing about myself in creative nonfiction essays and maybe even a YA fantasy idea I had! However, within a few writing prompts poems kept appearing. I ended up taking advantage of San Francisco County’s new “Free City” program, where enrolling in SF City College was free for SF residents and signed up for poetry classes in order to refine my technique. Poetry has taken over my brain ever since and I’m still trying to get back to that darn YA idea!

2. Who introduced you to poetry?

My father. My father bought me my first book of poetry from Shakespeare & Co on Telegraph Ave in Berkeley. He would always read Hafez late at night. He sat in our living room next to his bookshelf after we had all gone to bed and I would watch him from the crack in my bedroom doorway. I was fascinated by these thick tomes with cracked spines and metallic bookplates, they were akin to magic to me, heightened by the fact that they were written in Persian so I couldn’t decipher the words within.

3. How aware were you of the dominating presence of older poets?

Growing up as a child, the poetry I was exposed to was written by men rather than women. As an English Literature major, I was very much aware of the Western Literary canon that formed the primary curriculum with writers like Shakespeare, Milton, and T.S. Eliot holding court over the syllabus. I definitely felt like we were indoctrinated with what was considered True Literature and the canon didn’t seem like it had room for writers like me. My knowledge of contemporary poets was vastly limited since there was very little cross-pollination from the Creative Writing department that housed the Poetry Center.

4. What is your daily writing routine?

I’m still working on developing one! I tend to do some form of writing daily, be it journaling, a timed free write, but the poems come when they come. I’m constantly inspired by the world around me and like to collage phrases together to describe what I see in new ways. I also just recently just finished writing thirty poems in thirty days for National Poetry Month, a goal I didn’t think I could achieve so I’m really proud of these poems.

5. What motivates you to write?

I strive to write the type of poetry that I needed when I was a literature undergrad. I feel indebted to Audre Lorde who wrote of her intersections staunchly. But I also feel called to document beauty as well. Certain sequences of words will get stuck in my head on a loop and I need to get them out of my head by painting with words .

6. What is your work ethic?

I have a very strong work ethic when it comes to other literary endeavors, such as editing submissions for Argot Magazine and Homology Lit but ultimately tend to put mine on the backburner. I’m trying to be better about that!

7. How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?

It’s hard to make a definitive list of my influences since there are so many. I grew up reading Tamora Pierce, JK Rowling, and Philip Pullman like most kids of my generation. I was attached to stories of extraordinary children who are thrust into a destiny they don’t quite want but still forged ahead.

I discovered poets like Audre Lorde, Gwendolyn Brooks, Adrienne Rich, Mariam Rukeyser in my undergraduate classes. It was such a breath of fresh air to see that this was poetry too; something that came into being catalyzed by the need to take action. I ended up writing my MA thesis on Audre Lorde’s biomythography, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, and Homi Bhabha’s theory of the “Third Space of Enunciation.” Post-colonial theory was my first foray in disrupting Western narratives that are commonly prevalent in the English literary canon and this has molded my artistic perspective immensely in ways that I’m still discovering as a creative writer (rather than an academic one).

8. Who of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?

I love what Adib Khorram is doing in YA literature, creating queer Iranian narratives and complexly delving into the rich interior lives of teenagers in the diaspora. I admire Michelle Tea and her career, how she is able to write seamlessly across memoir, YA novels, poetry, and journalism. A lot of writers in the community around me inspire me daily, those who organize tirelessly to bring the work of others to public readings like Shizue Siegal, Cassandra Dallett, MK Chavez, and Sharon Coleman. I also really appreciate what Gabby Rivera is doing with her work in comics, creating the representation for her community with work like bb.free!

9. Why do you write, as opposed to doing anything else?

Writing has always found its way to me, rather than the other way around. I have tried to ignore this urge for most of my life. Yet it comes in waves and bubbles forth in a way that I cannot deny my true nature that really enjoys writing!
10. What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”
You need to unflinchingly look at your work without ego and sentimentality. Write what you want to write and nothing else. Do not write what you think other people want to read because being conscious of your audience will get in the way of your creative process (especially if you are frozen by performance anxiety!)

10. Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment.

Currently, I finished my first poetry manuscript and submitting it to presses and publishers. I released my first chapbook, swallow a beginning, which had a limited print run of 100 copies that all sold out! I’m also working (slowly but surely) a YA Urban Fantasy novel with a queer Iranian American girl who finds out she can walk through fire unscathed and travel inter-dimensionally.