Day 30
Visitors by Terry Chipp
Rose by Mj Saucer
(Visitors (2))
“End of a Night Walk”
Sunrise followed an all night walk
Sunlight touched the forest in a way uncanny
As to highlight only certain trees and
In my unrested state I thought I saw three visitors approach
Before realising the visitor was surely me
-Lydia Wist
Cherokee Roses
In 1838, my mother’s people left gold-rich lands to walk
the Trail of Tears. ‘Left’ is white man’s euphemism
for ‘abducted’: men arrested in fields, women and children
forced at the end of musket barrels to march without
moccasins. ‘Walk’ is white man’s doublespeak for death
march: 1200 miles, brutal and bleak. In November’s freeze
the Cherokee marched, slept in snow under blankets of stars,
stalked by hunger and disease, to cross the Mississippi
in pig traders’ boats. Lives annihilated by greed. No screeds
of protest when Van Buren ignored the Supreme Court
decision granting sovereignty to tribes. Demoralized
by years of occupation, my relatives hid in mountain regions,
changing their name to ‘Rose’. Under colonization, even names
are victims of genocide. The rose was our Scottish ancestor’s
emblem. Stokes Pruitt married a Cherokee, helped disguise her
people’s identity until soldiers came, flushed them out. They
marched with 16,000. Four thousand died. The grandmothers
cried, fearful for survival of the children. Every day they marched
and wept until Great Spirit told them in a dream: come sunrise,
look back upon the trail; a sign hope would be revealed.
In dawn’s early light they saw, winding back towards home,
for every fallen tear, white roses bloomed,
amid a plant with seven leaves,
one for each clan of the Cherokee.
And if today you peer in morning’s brume,
along the road they marched,
you may see footprints,
white petals opening in their wake.
— Gayle J. Greenlea
Visit Rose
it seemed
a good idea
us, and that
combined, except
beautiful contemplation;
begins, anew
-Sarah Reeson
day 30.
:: two::
52.59.3.
two voices softly said
“yes”
they cannot
understand the numbers
nor find their families
***
the rose was gently pressed
between pages
***
it is a birthday today
..sbm..
Visitors (2) and Rose
Experiences
after Emily Dickinson’s A Rose
They may come bearing thorns,
searing pain of mourning,
not honey but stingers. Two,
no, three faces through gauzy breeze
whisper the wisdom of trees
and leave behind a rose.
-Holly York
TC30
Visitors
Faces floating out of the wall
of memory, the dead speak
but we don’t listen,
we were fed in nothingness
the empty dialog of moving images
passed through our mouths,
such wings that we grew
advertised our terrible purpose,
the dead offer us words
we burn, each utterance
licked by flame,
the dead come, ephemeral
as always, but we offer
nothing but ash
and ask no news
of those gone on.
-Peach Delphine
Night visitors
Silent
between the wardrobe and the door
made of shadow and shifting moonlight
they were always there
still are but now I know who they are
and why they are here.
Their eyes have lost the piercing questioning
and smile gravely
welcoming me to join the endless chain
back and forth stitched with shreds
and shards and sighs of sorrow
cradling moon-pale bones and the sepia rose.
-Jane Dougherty
THE VISITORS
Visitors bring
their esoteric truths,
kabbalistic and misunderstood.
For their strangeness
in itself, is
a kind of blinding.
Hermetic truth
hidden amongst
bales of perceived treasure.
None see what is cloaked.
Glitter and finery really
promise fugacious riches.
But the truth is always
lost in plain day sight.
And the road to these treasures
is metalled and wide.
Leaving death and extinction
in its wake.
© Dai Fry 29th November 2020.
Bios and Links
-Terry Chipp
grew up in Thurnscoe and ia now living in Doncaster via Wath Grammar school, Doncaster Art College, Bede College in Durham and 30 years teaching.
He sold his first painting at the Goldthorpe Welfare Hall annual exhibition at the age of 17 and he haven’t stopped painting since.
He escaped the classroom 20 years ago to devote more time to his artwork. Since then he has set up his own studio in Doncaster, exhibited across the north of England as a member of the Leeds Fine Artists group and had his painting demonstrations featured on the SAA’s Painting and drawing TV channel. Further afield he has accepted invitations to work with international artists’ groups in Spain, Macedonia, Montenegro and USA where his paintings are held in public and private collections. In 2018 he had a solo exhibition in Warsaw, Poland and a joint exhibition in Germany.
His pictures cover a wide range of styles and subjects from abstract to photo-realism though he frequently returns to his main loves of landscape and people.
Visitors are welcome at his studio in the old Art College on Church View, Doncaster.
e-mail: terry@terrychipp.co.uk
Facebook: Terry Chipp Fine Art Painting
Instagram: @chippko.art
-Marcel Herms
is a Dutch visual artist. He is also one of the two men behind the publishing house Petrichor. Freedom is very important in the visual work of Marcel Herms. In his paintings he can express who he really is in complete freedom. Without the social barriers of everyday life.
There is a strong relationship with music. Like music, Herms’ art is about autonomy, freedom, passion, color and rhythm. You can hear the rhythm of the colors, the rhythm of the brushstrokes, the raging cry of the pencil, the subtle melody of a collage. The figures in his paintings rotate around you in shock, they are heavily abstracted, making it unclear what they are doing. Sometimes they look like people, monsters, children or animals, or something in between. Sometimes they disappear to be replaced immediately or to take on a different guise. The paintings invite the viewer to join this journey. Free-spirited.
He collaborates with many different authors, poets, visual artists and audio artists from around the world and his work is published by many different publishers.
www.marcelherms.nl
www.uitgeverijpetrichor.nl
-Jane Dougherty
writes novels, short stories and lots of poems. Among her publications is her first chapbook of poetry, thicker than water. She is also a regular contributor to Visual Verse and the Ekphrastic Review. You can find her on twitter @MJDougherty33 and on her blog https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/
-Peach Delphine
is a queer poet from Tampa, Florida. Infatuated with what remains of the undeveloped Gulf coast. Former cook. Has had poems in Cypress Press, Feral Poetry, IceFloe Press, Petrichor. Can be found on Twitter@Peach Delphine
-Dai Fry
is a poet living on the south coast of England. Originally from Swansea. Wales was and still is a huge influence on everything. My pen is my brush. Twitter:
@thnargg
Web: http://seekingthedarklight.co.uk
-Susan Darlington
Susan Darlington’s poetry regularly explores the female experience through nature-based symbolism and stories of transformation. It has been published in Fragmented Voices, Algebra Of Owls, Dreams Walking, and Anti-Heroin Chic among others. Her debut collection, ‘Under The Devil’s Moon’, was published by Penniless Press Publications (2015). Follow her @S_sanDarlington
-Holly York
lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her two large, frightening lapdogs. A PhD in French language and literature, she has retired from teaching French to university students, as well as from fierce competition in martial arts and distance running. She has produced the chapbooks Backwards Through the Rekroy Wen, Scapes, and Postcard Poetry 2020. When she isn’t hard at work writing poems in English, she might be found reading them in French to her long-suffering grandchildren, who don’t yet speak French.
-Gayle J. Greenlea
is an award-winning poet and counselor for survivors of sexual and gender-related violence. Her poem, “Wonderland”, received the Australian Poetry Prod Award in 2011. She shortlisted and longlisted for the Fish Poetry Prize in 2013, and debuted her first novel Zero Gravity at the KGB Literary Bar in Manhattan in 2016. Her work has been published in St. Julian Press, Rebelle Society, A Time to Speak, Astronomy Magazine, Headline Poetry and Press and The Australian Health Review.
-Lydia Wist
Like someone who tries out hats or other samples before making a final decision, experimenting with different ideas and techniques is how Lydia spends some of her time. This allows for other portions of time to speak through the lens of fiction, creative nonfiction and art. You can find her work at Cargo Collective , Lydia Wist Creative and on Twitter @Lydiawist.
Website links:
https://cargocollective.com/lydiawist
https://www.facebook.com/lydiawistcreative/
-Sarah Connor
lives in the wild, wet, south-west of England, surrounded by mud and apple trees. She writes poems to make sense of the world, and would rather weed than wash up.
-sonja benskin mesher
-Liam Stainsby
holds a bachelor in English Literature and Creative Writing and is a secondary school teacher of English and Creative Writing. Liam is currently writing his first, professional collection of poetry entitled Borders that explores poetry from all around the world. Liam also Co-Hosts a movie discussion podcast entitled: The Pick and Mix Podcast. Liam writes under the pseudonym ‘Michael The Poet’
Links: WordPress: https://michael-the-poet.com/
Twitter: stainsby_liam
Instagram: Michael The Poet
-Sarah Reeson
is 54, married and a mother of two, who has been writing and telling stories since childhood. Over the last decade she has utilised writing not just as entertainment, but as a means to improve personal communication skills. That process unexpectedly uncovered increasingly difficult and unpleasant feelings, many forgotten for decades. Diagnosed as a historic trauma survivor in May 2019, Mental health issues had previously hindered the entirety of her adult life: the shift into writing as expression and part of a larger journey into self-awareness began to slowly unwind for her from the past, providing inspiration and focus for a late career change as a multidisciplined artist.
Website: http://internetofwords.com
-Gaynor Kane
is a Northern Irish poet from Belfast. She has two poetry pamphlets, and a full collection, from Hedgehog Poetry Press, they are Circling the Sun, Memory Forest and Venus in pink marble (2018, 2019 and Summer 2020 respectively). She is co-author, along with Karen Mooney, of Penned In a poetry pamphlet written in response to the pandemic and due for release 30th November 2020. Follow her on Twitter @gaynorkane or read more at www.gaynorkane.com.
Anindita Sengupta
is the author of Walk Like Monsters (Paperwall, 2016) and City of Water (Sahitya Akademi, 2010). Her work has appeared in anthologies and journals such as Plume, 580 Split, One and Breakwater Review. She is Contributing Editor, Poetry, at Barren Magazine. She has received fellowships and awards from the Charles Wallace Trust India, the International Reporting Project, TFA India and Muse India. She currently lives in Los Angeles, California. Her website is http://aninditasengupta.com
The Wombwell Rainbow 