February 2nd

-Marcel Herms “Toenaderingspoging”

-Christine O’Connor

-Kerfe Roig “Wet Sunlight”

Light Sparkle in the Pool of Tears – A Pantoum

Light sparkle in the pool of tears
Rising to the surface lustrous pearls
Crafting paths that through the murk spear
Freed soul fire unseen wonders unfurls

Rising to the surface lustrous pearls
Transforming a life lived in fear
Freed soul fire unseen wonders unfurls
Bright ray of hope trauma shackles shears

Transforming a life lived in fear
A heart that passionately yearns
Bright ray of hope trauma shackles shears
Finding there’s power in these words

A heart that passionately yearns
Crafting paths that through the murk spear
Finding there’s power in these words
Light sparkle in the pool of tears

-©RedCat

The Coast Path (CO2Feb)

The flecked sea seethes
out beyond the headland.
It’s a day of gust and foam
the wiry grass blown to one side
leaning in with the stumps
of gorse clinging to the cliff top.
I’ll sleep tonight
this vision of home
blustering through my mind
howls a tunnel clean through
until, stripped by the West wind
I roll soft and grey-green to the deep horizon.

-Hilary Otto

Responding to CO2Feb, KR “Wet Sunlight,” and MHFeb2

Every Winter, but Especially This One

In a blanket fuzzy-soft with woven dreams
muted in the winter days of daze and grey-fog haze—

cozy-wrapped to window-watch the whipping winds
kiss the rocks and lick sand-blasted cheeks and chins.

But muted blues and greys, turn brighter as clouds part,
and dawn streaks the sky, and we try to reconcile, this art

of rapprochement, the unfurled fury with the sight
of so much beauty, so much light

hidden, so much forbidden, in history resurrected,
the monsters walk among us—sometimes undetected–

but see the sunshine, through the clouds,
and glowing now, vivid summer-loud.

Winter tears evaporate to fall as spring rain,
the patterns repeat—again

the woven patterns form straight lines of vibrant hue
to circle, cuddled in brumous blue–

to wait for what? Who knows
how or why a flower grows

in a crack,
and then comes back

like a beloved voice, a brilliant smile,
the sparkling scintillation soaring across miles–

glowing, flashing—the sight
of color flowing from, rising to the white.

-Merril D Smith

Wet Sunlight – KR2F

Dank, dreary day.
It shouldn’t be like this in Tenerife.
Grey cloud massed above keeps sending sleet.
Hiding under cafe canopy, getting wet feet.

Cloud meets blue sky in razor sharp line.
Five minutes to a flood of beautiful sunshine.
Burst into view, the light of my dream.
Get the pesetas out, I’ll have an icecream.

1,Feb,2021 for the second of.
-Alan Gary Smith, inspired by Paul Brookes and the painter Kerfe Roig.

Bios And Links

-Kerfe Roig

A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new.  Her poetry and art have been featured online by Right Hand Pointing, Silver Birch Press, Yellow Chair Review, The song is…, Pure Haiku, Visual Verse, The Light Ekphrastic, Scribe Base, The Zen Space, and The Wild Word, and published in Ella@100, Incandescent Mind, Pea River Journal, Fiction International: Fool, Noctua Review, The Raw Art Review, and several Nature Inspired anthologies. Follow her explorations on her blogs, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/  (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/, and see more of her work on her website http://kerferoig.com/

-Christine O’Connor

is an artist working in glass, metal, fibre and paint. Sometimes her work is based on photographs, but more often, she creates in the moment. She loves to play with texture and colour.

Christine O'Connor

-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

=Redcat

RedCat’s love for music and dance sings clearly in The Poet’s Symphony (Raw Earth Ink, 2020). Passion for rhythms and rhymes, syllabic feets and metres. All born out of childhood and adolescence spent reading, singing, dancing and acting.

Her writing spans love, life, mythology, environment, depression and surviving trauma.

Originally from the deep woods, this fiery redhead now makes home in Stockholm, Sweden, where you might normally run into her dancing the night away in one of the city’s techno clubs.

Read more at redcat.wordpress.com

-Merril D Smith

is a historian and poet. She lives in southern New Jersey, where she is inspired by her walks along the Delaware River. She’s the author of several books on history, gender, and sexuality. Her poetry has been published in journals and anthologies, including Black Bough Poetry, Nightingale and Sparrow, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Fevers of the Mind.

-Godefroy Dronsart

is a writer, teacher, and musician currently residing near Paris. His poetry has appeared in Lunar Poetry, PostBLANK, Paris Lit Up, The Belleville Park Pages, and Twin Pies Literary among others. His first chapbook, “The Manual” (Sweat Drenched Press, 2020), explores the space between poetry, prose, and gamebooks. He has a sweet tooth for all things experimental, modernist, and strange. Follow him on Twitter and his Bandcamp for electronic explorations.

-Joy Fleming

Born in County Down, Joy has studied, mothered and worked in Scotland since 1980. Brief excursions to follow her heart, back to NI mid-1990’s and England for first round Covid-lockdown ’19, Joy is currently back living in Glasgow. Joy’s first poem was accepted as part of the C. S. Lewis themed Poetry Jukebox curation A Deeper Country in Belfast in 2019. This poem, Ricochet was published in The Poets’ Republic Issue 8 Autumn 2020. A love of reading poetry is now accompanied by sporadic writing of poetic lines which spill out as an apparent by-product of processing dark and sorrowful days.   

-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.

-Alan Gary Smith

A Lincolnshire Ludensian living in Grimsby who built up his poetic stance after visiting Doncaster and Mexborough during his real ale and comedic music searches. Surprised to find a recent DNA check leaned heavily towards being a strong mix of Scottish, East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. A sixty year old baldy who loves Julie, astronomy and chocolate; after giving up on football and telly.

-Hilary Otto

is an English poet based in Barcelona. Her work has featured in Popshot, Black Bough Poetry, AIOTB, Ink, Sweat and Tears, and The Blue Nib, among other publications. She received her first Pushcart Prize Nomination and performed at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. She tweets at @hilaryotto

-Jim young

 is an old poet living in Mumbles on The Gower. He does most of his writing from his beach hut at Rotherslade – still waiting for the blue plaque

Anjum Wasim Dar was born in Srinagar (Indian Occupied )Kashmir, She is a migrant Pakistani.Educated at
St Anne’s Presentation Convent Rawalpindi she has a Masters degree  in English Literature and  History (
Ancient Indo-Pak  Elective) CPE Cert.of Proficiency in English from Cambridge
UK. , a Diploma in TEFL from AIOU Open Uni. Islamabad Pakistan. She has been writing poems,

 articles and stories since 1980.A published  poet Anjum was awarded  Poet of Merit Bronze Medal in  2000 by ISP International Society of Poets and poetry.com USA .

She has worked as Creative Writer at Channel 7 Adv. Company Islamabad, and as a Teacher Educator for  Fauji Foundation Education Network Inservice Teachers  

Educational Consultant by Profession. 

Author of 3 Adventure Novels (Series) Fiction..