Father insisted flower pots be mended,
Because he regarded them as old friends.
I assisted him each spring with the pot
Pilgrimage from his musty dirt cellar,
Though these last few years, we’d go later
In that most fecund season.
How he loved those old clay pots,
Scratchy to the touch, a soothing color
He said reminded him of better days.
When one mysteriously broke
During their hibernation, he saved
The pieces for the bottom of others.
The last spring of his life, he couldn’t
Raise himself to work on his garden.
He didn’t want me to help him.
Perhaps he knew his spring season,
Quickly ebbing, would not become summer.

-Elizabeth Moura

feathers & colors

a mourning dove landed on a branch above me
attempting to capture my attention
they say that means an angel is watching
it means

spring is easter
& flowers
/hope/
& think about
flowers &
/peace/
planting & thinking
about planting
/hope & peace/
& spring greens you
haven’t seen & it

seems like there has
only been soft brown
& alabaster

primrose

petals surprise
&
thought they would
freeze when removing
dried maple
leaves, she
wore, she swore, she woke up
in abril

there are mas flores
y ella brags
her color even
when no one looks

/wild convoluting rojas y rosas/

crimsons/bloods

saffron/anaranjados/sage/lavender/verdes

& she said
they made him pull his
garden up & I thought
que triste
-Constance Bacchus

(First published in mineral lit mag: ​feathers & colors by Connie Bacchus – mineral lit mag

Pleeeeeeeease, Mow the Lawn Dad
MAY 19, 2016
Pleeeeeeeease, mow the lawn Dad
It’s like a jungle out there
Full of lemurs, llamas, pythons, piranhas
Raccoons, baboons and grizzly bears

There’s a pretty pink porpoise
In love with a tortoise
A huge hippopotamus too
A bobtailed cat
A hog that’s too fat
Who escaped from the local zoo

I spy a chinchilla
Chest-beating gorillas
A herd of wild horses stampeding
A sunbathing slug
All kinds of weird bugs
Plus a clever rhinoceros reading

A mountain goat’s
Entertaining a stoat
By doing a dance with a fox
While a hoverfly sighs
As she passes by
And sits herself down on an ox

Pleeeeeeeease, mow the lawn Dad
Or at least make a start on the weeding
Salamanders and pandas
Swing from high verandas
And I can hear hyenas screeching

There’s a large land snail
Checking his email
A leopard, a leech and a lark
While moles, voles and rats
And four flapping bats
Are venturing out when it’s dark

On top of a sheep
(Out cold, fast asleep)
Is a dingo devouring his lunch
A wombat and wolf
Hide under the gorse
While holding their noses near skunks

So pleeeeeeeease, mow the lawn Dad
Or this problem we have will not pass
The police will be round
And new animals found
If you don’t get rid of that grass!

-Neal Zetter

In Grandma’s Garden

Old, gnarled trees give hugs.
Roses smell of antiseptic.
Especially when you’ve grazed
your knees. Dew is a sloppy kiss
And leaves a red mark.

Her arguments with Grandad
Are unmown grass, unweeded borders,
Magnolia bushes that need a prune,
Daisies between the cracks of flagstones.
My pocket money is her laughter.

Gradually even the raised beds
Need a hired gardener. She sits
In a white plastic chair at a white plastic
Table on the patio flagged by her son in law
And granddaughter and says
I’m going to have to move.
That sun is in my eyes.

-Paul Brookes

How Not To Maintain Your Mother’s Garden

The green thumb hewn by chance and misfortune
still gardens every other day; the other days my mother
reads the almanacs – in those later days,
downloaded from the net, and I watch the lad
looking for a fascinating illustration,
reading some adult advertisements,
skipping stones along the brick path
between two bushes of blooms of some obscure pedigrees;
I watch him and imagine him growing old enough to be me,
tired, sighing, sniffing the flowers gone wild,

so wild that those bark at the full moon when my dreams darken.

-Kushal Poddar

SUMMER MEADOWS
Cooperation is the buzzword;
harmonious consensus.
Opulent symphonies with
Nature the sentient conductor.
Poppy, ranunculus and kingcup
rising and falling in gentle cadence
with cornflower, salvia and forget-me-not;
a fragrant patchwork in the sweet grass,
like an eco rainbow, tipping the earth,
radiant with inner beauty.
A ballet of delicate blooms
dressed in powder-puff tutus,
thoughtfully choreographed,
dancing to the tune of sun, wind and rain.

Wildflower meadows echo the vibe
of cottage gardens in a bygone age….
Green spaces flourishing
with aphids, beetles, butterflies,
moths and caterpillars,
bumble bee numbers multiplied tenfold –
that gentle, hypnotic hum reassuring
as they delve in the throats of foxgloves.
The project enhances both water and soil,
a winning outcome for biota.
This wild beauty brings closer
the goal of a greener future.
Just stop and look!
Paradise stretches out
before your eyes,
a triumph of rewilding

-Margaret Royall

SISSINGHURST AT MIDSUMMER

A veil lifts between earth and sky,
Revealing a lush green paradise,
its mullioned windows thrown open
to the gardens….

Mood music captivates:
Harp song through tall grass,
bees crooning in lupin throats,
swallows darting overhead.
The ambiance is relaxing,
sight, smell and sound seamlessly
fused together in a heady symphony.
Bouquet of rose, lavender and herbs
tease the sharpening senses.
Crooked chimneys peer down onto
exquisite garden-rooms blooming
with a riot of colour.

Oast houses nestle in the shade
of the castle tower.
Along paved walks bemused statues
observe the constant parade of visitors,
all curious to experience this romantic
idyll created by Vita and Harold*….
An enchanted corner of Kent, wrapping
visitors in a cloak of midsummer magic.

*Vita Sackville West and Harold Nicholson, creators of Sissinghurst gardens

-Margaret Royall

Day 14

-Jane Cornwell

Sheffield

-John Law

Shadow people

-Kerfe Roig

Tanka for the Flowers
(inspired by JC14)

Beyond castle walls
flowers blooming in mauve hues
remind me of you
A kiss we shared in Springtime
lingers in the Autumn dusk

-Susan Richardson

Urban plan

When it dawns you are a city
it’s a heavy responsibility. In your streets
everyone is hungry all the time, eating
of your dust. I read that skin flakes are, to a mite,
something like a bowl of cornflakes. After breakfast,
I will the behemoth to its feet, an earthquake
of indecision, my somewheres sounding tiny sirens.
Should I warn them about this latest inevitable change
of climate, what will befall us all
when I subside into the sea, one flawed brick
at a time? It might be easier on everyone
not to see it coming. I’ve run along the crumbly edge
of these cliffs so many times, matter-of-fact
that rocks bounce free, that soles slip
of their own accord. There’s never been any plan
except to finally reach the wide field beyond
the walls, to sink down into grass so cool, so sweet,
everything you carry leaps to feed it.

-Ankh Spice

Creeping up on the city from ground level,
Newcomers let’s be, gazing between stems and stalks
Petals and leaves, at that glowing settlement ahead
Its lights stealing stars from our skies and eyes
Its tendrils reaching out for everything

Out of this dawn reverie let us step
Into the centre of some teeming town
Schools of architecture clashing, zoning incoherent
Factories and shops and godowns and apartments
A hive that makes nothing quite so sweet as honey

And there, in a corner, let’s get closer,
A clearing, some earth, some trees, some shade
A bench. Let’s sit and talk about shadow people
About black-eyed kids, about tulpas and skinwalkers
Let’s talk about how all the ways we contrive
To look at each other from across an uncanny valley

Let’s drop down to ground level now, shrug off
Panorama and human scale
Now we can see them. In shadows. Like faded inkblots
On the torn paper of the frayed ends of the city
And its dispensation to use and produce and nurture and shelter

Shadow people. Barely seen.

Zoom out.

Palimpsest of building styles

Zoom out.

City afar, seen through stems and stalks

Zoom out.

Zoom out.

Shadows and stars. Clouds and dust.

Shadows. People.

Fade out.

-Jayaprakash Satyamurphy

Wildflowers
Inspired by all three images

On the edge of every town
there’s a derelict place,
where the wildflowers grow
among tumbled stones
of an industry long dead
and a past we’ve all forgot.

And among the peaceful stones
where the wildflowers blow,
in the arches still left standing
where trams once slept,
or where rail tracks crossed the river
where stevedores barked,
are encampments of the outcasts
where the shadow people live.

On the edge of every town,
at the end of every tether,
at the back of every mind,
and the limit of its patience,

is a mired misunderstanding
on both sides, and the outcome
is, instead of peace and wildflowers,
grow the burning seeds of hatred.

-Jane Dougherty

Steel City

City and folk alike calved from White rose and Black stone
Forged, purified, cast by pals, thee, thine, in the crucible of home
Industrial roots washed and watered, fed and nourished
On the Don, Sheaf, Loxley, Rivelin and Porter Brook flourished
Strong steel skeleton holding all up proud
Molten metal in the veins of this Yorkshire crowd
On each day of the week not just Wednesday, all united
Across river deep or mountain high one day all re-united.

-Tony Walker

Inspired by all three works of art

The Shadow People

It began—after The Before. You remember?
When the world was colored with optimism,
primary colors and pastels, sun-spackled roofs, rose gardens,
blue skies? Even the winter ice sparkled with trapped starlight.
We went to work and school and shows,
traveling on buses and trains through the city.

I used to make up stories about the people we saw in the windows—
the little girl with the dandelion, the woman
who danced in a red dress? All those windows dark now.
Please say you remember.

Then cough by cough, the world turned greyer.
The flowers lost their brilliant hues, fragrances disappeared.
And the shadow people came.

They walked out of my dreams
to gather around the TV set–strangely drawn to it.
They follow me now, almost eagerly, like ghost puppies.

They have no faces, but they look like me. Haunted.

-Merril D Smith

Sheffield 1979

A city, whose blood was molten steel,
waited for me in September sun.
Concrete flats loomed over the station
as the diesel fumes of weary trains
lay in the valley air.

Long gone, the veil of sulphur
that clogged this city’s lungs
to the sound of rattling cream trams.
Still, it had a hole in its road

and arches on the Wicker. Pride
in its knives, sharp and without stain.
There I rode a paternoster
(for no good reason), breathed in Hendo’s,

discovered the 2p bus fare
on the number 60 to Crimicar Lane,
treacly beer at the Frog and Parrot
and the love of my life.

-Tim Fellows

Shadow People Before My Eyes – A Triple Triolet

Shadow people before my eyes
Drifting aimlessly through their lives
Foggy as rainy crying skies
Shadow people before my eyes
Fading as sorrow’s darkness rise
Remembering just negatives
Shadow people before my eyes
Drifting aimlessly through their lives

Nobody holds then as they cry
No one a kind helping hand gives
Sorrow without friends multiply
Nobody holds then as they cry
Nobody these souls fortify
They are dark depressions captives
Nobody holds then as they cry
No one a kind helping hand gives

Shadow people before my eyes
What can get then to see bright life
Fading away ‘til their souls dies
Shadow people before my eyes
Unable to see the blue skies
Lost without finding hope inside
Shadow people before my eyes
What can get then to see bright life

-©RedCat

Shadows’ Identities Interchange

(Inspired by Kerfe Roig’s 14th Painting – Shadow People and Jane Cornwell’s 14th Painting)

Buried in his own garden,
my uncle stares at those roots
hung at his eye-level,
night-blooms flourished inches above –
his heaven, an eternal screensaver
slowly shifting with the seasons,
and then there sit those shadow people
on the pavement outside,
and sometimes while
trying to converse with those,
he realizes some are alive. He forgets.
He disremembers what being alive leads to,
and he repeats every act again and again.

Tonight the shadow people endures a drizzle;
wind dissolves them into one; for a tick
they become a watercolor of one large hair ball;
when they part, their souls and ids have been exchanged.
Buried, my uncle breathes in the rain.
The flowers lash at each other as if
their household hosts a party,
and a quarrel has sprawled over a decision
regarding those shadows watching
them cavort from the insurmountable social-distance.
Ah, drama! Chuckles my uncle,
wishes he could have invited me to observe
the way we used to, like invisibles,
like shadows watching others.

-Kushal Poddar

JC14
spring thoughts spring feeling
flowers scissored blue paper
always alive now

-Simon Williams

My Ancestors

are shadow people who appear in wills,
advertisements and newspapers, no photos.
Take William Laurence who lived on a hill,
a Quaker incomer to Sheffield’s roads.

A Linen Draper up Moorfields where thieves
stole linen from front of the shop. All I know.
Wildflowers, shadow flowers, whose names leave
my head as I see them in a meadow.

One has name but no image, one image
but no name. I wonder at delicate
shape of stems and petals. Absorb page
after page of Victorians love and hate.

I try to make some kind of rounded sense
based on a scarcity of evidence.

-Paul Brookes

Bios and Links

-John Law

“Am 68. Live in Mexborough. Retired teacher. Artist; musician; poet. Recently included in ‘Viral Verses’ poetry volume. Married. 2 kids; 3 grandkids.”

-Jane Cornwell

likes drawing and painting children, animals, landscapes and food. She specialises in watercolour, mixed media, coloured pencil, lino cut and print, textile design. Jane can help you out with adobe indesign for your layout needs, photoshop and adobe illustrator. She graduated with a ba(hons) design from Glasgow School of art, age 20.

She has exhibited with the rsw at the national gallery of scotland, SSA, Knock Castle Gallery, Glasgow Group, Paisley Art Institute, MacMillan Exhibition at Bonhams, Edinburgh, The House For An Art Lover, Pittenweem Arts Festival, Compass Gallery, The Revive Show, East Linton Art Exhibition and Strathkelvin Annual Art Exhibition.

Her website is: https://www.janecornwell.co.uk/

-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/

-Tim Fellows

 is a poet and writer from Chesterfield whose poetry is heavily influenced by his background in the Derbyshire coalfields – family, mining, politics, and that mix of industry and countryside that so many mining areas had. People can email me at timothyjfellows@gmail.com for a copy of the pamphlet or visit http://timfellows13.blogspot.com for recent poems

-Jayaprakash Satyamurthy

is a writer based in Bangalore, India. His books include the novella Strength Of Water (2019) and the poetry collection Broken Cup (2020). He used to write horror, but now it’s anyone’s guess. 

-Anjum Wasim Dar

Born in Srinagar (Indian Occupied )Kashmir,Migrant Pakistani.Educated at St Anne’s Presentation Convent Rawalpindi. MA in English MA in History ( Ancient Indo-Pak Elective) CPE Cert.of Proficiency in English Cambridge UK. -Dip.TEFL AIOU Open Uni. Islamabad Pakistan.Writing poems articles and stories since 1980.Published Poet.Awarded Poet of Merit Bronze Medal 2000 USA .Worked as Creative Writer Teacher Trainer. Educational Consultant by Profession.Published http://Poet.Author of 3 Adventure Novels (Series) 7 Times Winner NANOWRIMO 2011- 2019.

-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/

-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.

-Tony Walker

By day Tony climbs the greasy pole of clinical hierarchy. Not yet at the top but high enough to feel the pole sway and have his grip challenged by the envious wind of achievement. Looking down on the pates and gazes of his own history, at times he feels dizzy with lonely pride. By night he takes solace, swapping scalpel for scripts and begins his training and climbing again, in the creative world of writing. His writing is an attempt to unify the twenty-four hours. @surgicalscribe seeks to connect the clinical and creative arts of surgery, science and writing. Hoping to do for medicine and surgery through creative writing what Prof Cox has done for physics with television.

So, he practices his art.

-Ankh Spice

 is a sea-obsessed poet from Aotearoa. His work has been widely published internationally, in print and online, and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He’s a co-editor at Ice Floe Press and a poetry contributing editor at Barren Magazine. You’ll find him and a lot of sea photography on Twitter @SeaGoatScreams or on Facebook @AnkhSpiceSeaGoatScreamsPoetry.

-Simon Williams

lives and works in Edinburgh, where running clears his head and creates space for ideas. He publishes short stories and poems on www.simonsalento.com

Paul Brookes

Paul is a shop assistant, who lives in a cat house full of teddy bears. His first play was performed at The Gulbenkian Theatre, Hull.  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. Had work broadcast on BBC Radio 3 The Verb and videos of his Self Isolation sonnet sequence featured by Barnsley Museums and Hear My Voice Barnsley. He also does photography commissions and his family history articles have appeared in The Liverpool Family History magazine.

Library

The soft mud plump buddha librarian,
too timid to send me a postcard
and an email following to remind me
that the books I have borrowed
need to wing back to their nest,
does not even call the number I registered;

see, there has been this pestilence,
and no one dares to ring
someone and hear he has fallen;
I know he will not visit my home
to see if I am alive and reading
those books again and again,
and if in some lazy afternoons, I see
the aged library in those crinkly
and rusting pages – that somnolent place,
and the window full of spring
by the rocker where I used to lull a book
into dream of a reader finding its deeper meaning.

-Kushal Poddar

Day 13

mysteries waving in every direction

-Kerfe Roig

Scarborough Harbour

-John Law

Jane Cornwell

The Stars Are Out Tonight – A Villanelle

The stars are out tonight
Shining for you and me
Beacons in the dark night

Lending their guiding light
So we can the road see
The stars are out tonight

Guiding our hasty flight
As we loneliness flee
Beacons in the dark night

You hold my hand so tight
Less I fall, scrape a knee
The stars are out tonight

We’re hasting to the site
Towards the white abbey
Beacon in the dark night

Tonight we future write
When you will marry me
The stars are out tonight
Beacons in the dark night

-©RedCat

Every Wrong Direction Thrown At Us By Monsoon

(Inspired by John Law’s 13th Painting – Mysteries Waving in Every Direction)

Monsoon comes into the metropolis
and sweeps away the aging tees
and those ancient streets
the authority forces to walk at night
wearing heavy makeup to hide
their time-rot,
just when we, townsmen, think the rain,
not generic rain, but the days of rhythmic
and incessant drizzles will skip this year.

Monsoon will not leave.

Over a cup of coffee, we can argue –
this in no monsoon; it is a mess
of tenderness in the ocean;
it is a letter to the future that wrong directions
will befall in every journey you, have embarked on.
Keep our eyes open and turn blind to the past,
we can reach anywhere, not the destination
we have in our mind, but an alternative to that,
or perhaps not even a substitute,
a spot churned out of the sea, where,
while sinking we need to shout, see – we live, and yes,
I still need you.

Monsoon. We say nonsense nothings.

-Kushal Poddar

Inspired by all three works of art

Once

Once the harbor was a bustling place
of summer light, with salty tang– the sky a vivid blue,
all day and night, we gathered and chattered–of clouds no trace.
Once the harbor was a bustling place,
full of hope and sweet mysteries–our love was new,
but star-crossed by autumn storms–gone ship, captain, crew, you.
Once–the harbor was a bustling place
of summer light, with salty tang, the sky a vivid blue.

-Merril D Smith

The Harbour

It wasn’t the day I expected it to be.
The seabirds now seem strangely quiet
as they make their patterns in the sky.
The tide has lapped to the wooden steps
as if it wants to climb and roam the town.

Check in to a B&B, climb the steep
and creaking stairs to the tiniest room
full of doll’s house furniture. A pint
and a glass of wine in a seafront pub,
fish and chips, ice-cream and a stroll
around the windy headland.

Until the lure of the moon pulls
it back, leaving the attic room
drenched in salt, only puddles
on the cobblestones and the sad boat
left high and dry.

My world turned to sepia.

-Tim Fellows

JC13

Her kind of blues, was rubbed with salt,
And stardust no one talks about.
Those were nights of smoke so thick
Everyone’s eyes were hooded;
The reddest lips became pearly pink
Shores, hidden in the heaviness.
Her kind of blues, they were my kind.
We summered and wintered in them,
They were part of our world’s skin,
And bone, and anxiety and sorrow.
The stars know what I’m talking about.

Elizabeth Moura

The Shape of Dragons
(inspired by JC13)

I am a creature of the night,
a bomb in the mouth of a full moon.
My voice bleeds onto a darkened canvas,
blues and purples that saturate the sky,
exploding in parcels of light.

Stars fall in shapes of dragons
that spackle my skin and burn up inhibitions,
lending my heart to the pursuit of defiance.
I am a transformation of breath and blood,
a howl that conquers the quiet of 3am,
sweltering words that tremble on an eager tongue.

I delight in the caress of nightfall,
an unleashing of frenzy and fire.
Disguised by the sounds of darkness,
I fly through chaos with open eyes,
unafraid, beautiful.

When the sun rises,
I slip into the skin of shadows,
impenetrable
unbreakable
silence.

-Susan Richardson

Harbourside

Chilling black waves splash my fragile vessel in the enveloping pitch.
Before warm welcoming lights pierce the dark night,
guiding me home.
Bitter, salty reminders of the long dark loneliness drip from my prow, taunting, punishing.
Before voices rise and fall, ebb and flow,
company carried on the wind.
Relentless rolling, splashing slapping swamping, nature bullying, belittling me.
Before calm, quiet, sheltered still waters
offer protection and comfort.
My cold, cut, calloused hands, sacrificed for safe passage through life’s journey.
Before crews and teams guid and welcome
me home to the harbour.

-Tony Walker

In 1987 we flew to arcturus in a box labelled ‘roofing nails’

All the doors are closed and what we build we secure
with long pins. My house, yours, stuck
through the belly, supposed dead on the board. Listen,
at night, like your guts depend on it – something like dreams still
oozes from the hole in the shell. Quietly, stone bangs against stone
determined to summon the mountain, the molten summers
of childhood. In the rough isobars of four-by-two, there’s weather
sheared clean, pine still muttering about the cone. What kind of afterlife
is it to see everything you must protect contain itself, admiring the shine
of each nail knocked into the dark crate. Beetle, beetle, break the glass.
A cardboard box will do. Take this ship to the stars.

-Ankh Spice

JC13

So much of what there is to see is unseen
So much is beyond the reach of our eyes
So much of what there is, is beyond us
Beyond our small world, our small fuss
They say a universe in the darkness lies
And they say starlight is sometimes corpse-sheen

Deep in the blue, deep in the violet, where light is slow
Somewhere worlds live and die in the furthest glow

What is nearest in this sky above me
Is further still than the furthest earthly shore
The deepest purple, the purest indigo – spectral colours
Inviting us to gaze, transfixed, to stare for hours
To imagine what lies further than we can see
To dream a world of pure glow, sheer sheen

And in this ethereal world, it’s the stars that ground,
That remind us our feet are planted on the ground

-Jayaprakash Satyamurphy

Ocean Is

inside, and all around us landlocked folk.
We rise up to join waves of sky and cloud.
We fall upon the world in downpours soak.
We run down windows, gutters river loud.

We swap pleasures seas between each other.
Lobster potting boat Venture Who Cares rests
on cobbles like a caught ancient lobster,
lobbed back as it’s paid its dues, worked its best.because its paid its dues

Awaits ocean to cover it once more
We are the tides pulled to and fro by moon.
We are lap whose wash and crash shapes the shore,
whose stillness reflects constellations womb.

Water never rests and neither do we.
We are droplets, each one an Inland sea.

-Paul Brookes

Bios and Links

-John Law

“Am 68. Live in Mexborough. Retired teacher. Artist; musician; poet. Recently included in ‘Viral Verses’ poetry volume. Married. 2 kids; 3 grandkids.”

-Jane Cornwell

likes drawing and painting children, animals, landscapes and food. She specialises in watercolour, mixed media, coloured pencil, lino cut and print, textile design. Jane can help you out with adobe indesign for your layout needs, photoshop and adobe illustrator. She graduated with a ba(hons) design from Glasgow School of art, age 20.

She has exhibited with the rsw at the national gallery of scotland, SSA, Knock Castle Gallery, Glasgow Group, Paisley Art Institute, MacMillan Exhibition at Bonhams, Edinburgh, The House For An Art Lover, Pittenweem Arts Festival, Compass Gallery, The Revive Show, East Linton Art Exhibition and Strathkelvin Annual Art Exhibition.

Her website is: https://www.janecornwell.co.uk/

-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/

-Tim Fellows

 is a poet and writer from Chesterfield whose poetry is heavily influenced by his background in the Derbyshire coalfields – family, mining, politics, and that mix of industry and countryside that so many mining areas had. People can email me at timothyjfellows@gmail.com for a copy of the pamphlet or visit http://timfellows13.blogspot.com for recent poems

-Jayaprakash Satyamurthy

is a writer based in Bangalore, India. His books include the novella Strength Of Water (2019) and the poetry collection Broken Cup (2020). He used to write horror, but now it’s anyone’s guess. 

-Anjum Wasim Dar

Born in Srinagar (Indian Occupied )Kashmir,Migrant Pakistani.Educated at St Anne’s Presentation Convent Rawalpindi. MA in English MA in History ( Ancient Indo-Pak Elective) CPE Cert.of Proficiency in English Cambridge UK. -Dip.TEFL AIOU Open Uni. Islamabad Pakistan.Writing poems articles and stories since 1980.Published Poet.Awarded Poet of Merit Bronze Medal 2000 USA .Worked as Creative Writer Teacher Trainer. Educational Consultant by Profession.Published http://Poet.Author of 3 Adventure Novels (Series) 7 Times Winner NANOWRIMO 2011- 2019.

-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/

-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.

-Tony Walker

By day Tony climbs the greasy pole of clinical hierarchy. Not yet at the top but high enough to feel the pole sway and have his grip challenged by the envious wind of achievement. Looking down on the pates and gazes of his own history, at times he feels dizzy with lonely pride. By night he takes solace, swapping scalpel for scripts and begins his training and climbing again, in the creative world of writing. His writing is an attempt to unify the twenty-four hours. @surgicalscribe seeks to connect the clinical and creative arts of surgery, science and writing. Hoping to do for medicine and surgery through creative writing what Prof Cox has done for physics with television.

So, he practices his art.

-Ankh Spice

 is a sea-obsessed poet from Aotearoa. His work has been widely published internationally, in print and online, and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He’s a co-editor at Ice Floe Press and a poetry contributing editor at Barren Magazine. You’ll find him and a lot of sea photography on Twitter @SeaGoatScreams or on Facebook @AnkhSpiceSeaGoatScreamsPoetry.

-Simon Williams

lives and works in Edinburgh, where running clears his head and creates space for ideas. He publishes short stories and poems on www.simonsalento.com

-Anne Arbuthnot

·  Poet, Writer, Author, Small Press Publisher/Editor, Mentor/Tutor/Coach

Living a rural life, inspired and surrounded by nature, pondering and writing about life’s many puzzles and complexities, a gentle activist.

·  2008 – current Mansfield A&P Show poetry judge

·  2010 Hay Festival Most Beautiful Tweet shortlist

·  2018 Mansfield Haiku on the Footpath competition winner

·  2020 Mansfield Bushy Tales Poetry Award winner “Musing in the time of Covid”

·  2020 Mansfield Bushy Tales Chapbook contributor

Links

·  Twitter @gentleanne

Paul Brookes

Paul is a shop assistant, who lives in a cat house full of teddy bears. His first play was performed at The Gulbenkian Theatre, Hull.  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. Had work broadcast on BBC Radio 3 The Verb and videos of his Self Isolation sonnet sequence featured by Barnsley Museums and Hear My Voice Barnsley. He also does photography commissions and his family history articles have appeared in The Liverpool Family History magazine.