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.
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
I peered through the glass
And saw all these evergreens
Guardians of souls
-Carrie Ann Golden
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.’
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.
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.
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.’
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.
“There have been so many days that we shared the same stages, platforms with you, our intellectual and artist friends. With those we couldn’t share the same stage, we had the honor of making art for a more fair and livable world. We have also experienced the oppression of the dominant powers who are fed by people’s remaining ignorant and unorganized . . . ” excerpt from İbrahim Gökçek’s letter of April 30.
We join with PEN America and other organizations that support free speech and freedom of artistic expression in our relief to learn that Turkish musician İbrahim Gökçek, a member of the music collective Grup Yorum, suspended his hunger strike as of Wednesday. Mr.Gökçek is receiving medical treatment. This news comes a day after it was announced that his…
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
*
A shop window like Hunter S. Thompson, at eleven o’clock,
on a week day. A medium to large dose of LSD that I have
never tried. In Mark Fisher’s Ghosts, Burial never went to a
rave in the 90s, which informs, the apparition, the residue
of what’s left. People have a perverse interest in windows,
shop windows, specifically, glass operating as both a means
of access and exclusion. This is the Baudrillardian analysis.
*
Impressed
with the circulation
of the body
my entire outlook
becomes the deconstruction
of the human being
into a clockwork machine.
-Alex Mazey
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.
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.’
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.
“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.” Henri Nouwen
I have memorized you, like a sacred hymn
a precious gem in the necklace of friendship
ever shining star of the night skies, though dim.
You are with me, a spirit like a cherubim,
comforting, blowing away painful sadness I have memorized you like…
Cover from one of
Photograph courtesy of 
The Wombwell Rainbow 