Day Four

 

-Barbara Leonhard (She says: This is an original image I created. It’s a neurographica piece.)

Not Alone
Loneliness
an illusion –
we’re always connected
by threads of light
dreamt and drawn –
this webbing cradles
our minds
our hearts
our souls
like bones
that form a whole –
we’re not alone –
if only we can see
our connections in time
and space
without squinting.

-Barbara Leonhard

Loneliness

-photo by Rachel Deering

-Sarah Reeson

The Slick Street Part of the World
after AM/TRAK by Amiri Baraka

Arriving in town with a one way ticket —
scream, history, love, search;
need a place to eat — play here says
the smiling vertical medusa: the disused
telephone exchange, the basement
table; it’s the slick street part of the world
in more ways than one — Spanish Harlem.
Sit down — done ticket; the hip band,
blows hard, you stare long at the postcard art,
smoke the numbers, speak the clocks,
eat the meal of cultural appropriation,
the tisane of petals, the foraged creation;
squid ink poured over warm, smooth pebbles,
on the longest day, on the year’s midsummer.

-Cy Forrest

The Loneliness of the Condemned

There was a wildness in the rage of his eyes:
‘Let’s hold hands when they tie us to the stake!’ he urged

his fellow prisoners, groaning under the whip,
toiling uphill to the place of ritual sacrifice.

Sweat dripped from tormented brows,
blood oozed from open wounds – a nauseous stench
of burning flesh licked at quivering nostrils.

He watched the girl in the sari crossing the field below,
carrying a pitcher of holy water on her shoulder

She didn’t look up at him. Her feet burned
as she crossed the scorching ground, water leaking

from the cracked pitcher, dripping down her jewelled sari
Innocent droplets splashing onto the ochre dirt track

He grew frantic, calling out to the condemned –
They had to listen! ‘ Solidarity, brothers,
Let’s hold hands. Our last stand!’

But their ears were blind, their eyes deaf, their minds numb
The girl in the sari reached the edge of the field
and disappeared into oblivion.

-Margaret Royall

My Bella

There for me when wacked I trudge in from work.
There for me when I am ill, barely lift
my head from the pillow. Lays beside my hurt.
Stroke her hair she arches her back, a gift.

Now nothing calms my heart as she once did.
Hollowness in my lap, no soft greeting
as I arrive. No brushing my cheek. Rid
of her tenderness, I dream of seeing

her once more. How will she return to me?
Her tenderness is the warm non-verbal
I lack from my wife. Physicality
our lass balks at, and calls her daddies girl.

She was abandoned, thrown out of her home.
When I don’t see her for days I’m alone.

-Paul Brookes

Bios And Links

-Barbara Leonhard’s

work is published in Anti-Heroin Chic, Free Verse Revolution, October Hill Magazine, Vita Brevis, Silver Birch Press, Amethyst Review, PhoebeMD: Medicine & Poetry, among others. Barbara won prizes and awards for her poetry in the anthology Well Versed 2021 and Spillwords, where she was voted Author of the Month of October 2021, nominated Author of the Year for 2021, and recognized as a Spillwords Socialite of the Year in 2021. You can follow Barbara on her blog site, https://www.extraordinarysunshineweaver.com.

-Rachel Deering

lives in Bath with a cat. She writes poetry and takes the occasional photo whilst walking.

-Dana Clark-Millar

Over the past 2 years Dana has taken a deep dive into the world of haiku. When her fingers are not occupied counting out syllables, she is using them to weed and plant her garden. You can also find her cooking, canning and preserving foods, birdwatching, taking photos, playing out on the trails or enjoying a book while her 3 dogs and 2 cats attempt to out-cute one another. 

-Cy Forrest

is state-educated, Manchester, now living in Wiltshire. MA Creative Writing, Goldsmiths, University of London. Elvis at the Golden Shovel appeared in February’s issue of The Honest Ulsterman, the first in a set of four sestinas using end words from Gwendolyn Brooks’ twenty-four word poem, The Pool Players, Seven at the Golden Shovel. Billy Collins longlisted another in the set of four for the 2021 Fish Prize. Poems have been placed at Icefloe Press and here in The Wombwell Rainbow. Two are due to appear in Stand Magazine later this year. A full collection reached stage two in The North’s March 2021 open call.

-Louise Longson

cleared enough space in her spare room and head to start writing ‘properly’ during lockdown 2020. She is published by One Hand Clapping, Fly on the Wall, Nymphs, Ekphrastic Review, Obsessed with Pipework, Indigo Dreams Publishing, The Poetry Shed and others. She is a winner of  Dreich’s chapbook competition 2021 with Hanging Fire. A qualified psychotherapist, she works with historic trauma and the physical and emotional distresses caused by chronic loneliness. Lives with an orange cat and a silver Yorkshireman. In her head, sky is always blue, grass always green, leaves always golden. Needs to get out more.

Twitter @LouisePoetical  

-Gillian Winn

is a mature poet, currently studying Creative Writing with the Open University. She worked as a nurse for the NHS for 40 years. She lives in North Yorkshire.

-Teresa Durran

was born in London and lives in Hampshire but has rarely felt less English; the blood of Celtic ancestors flows through her veins. Being the daughter of immigrants has entirely informed her world view and she has always instinctively empathised with the outsider and the ‘other’.

She writes delicate poems for fragile times because she has to. She wanders and wonders and dreams, and she is always lost in music.

-Sue Finch’s

debut collection, ‘Magnifying Glass’, was published in 2020. Her work has also appeared in a number of online magazines. She lives with her wife in North Wales. She loves the coast, peculiar things and the scent of ice-cream freezers. You can often find her on Twitter @soopoftheday.

 –Margaret  Royall

has six books of poetry published. She has appeared widely in print, in webzines and  poetry anthologies. She has won or been short-listed in several competitions and her collection ‘Where Flora Sings’, published by Hedgehog Press, was nominated for the Laurel Prize in 2021. Her latest collection, ‘Immersed in Blue’ was published in January 2022 by Impspired Press. She leads a women’s poetry group in Nottinghamshire and takes part in open mic sessions online and in person. She is currently working on a third poetry collection.

Website: https://margaretroyall.com/ Twitter:@RoyallMargaret

-S Reeson [she/they] is 55, bisexual and married with two children: they have suffered anxiety for all of their life, and started telling stories as a ten-year-old in order to help them cope. Now, they write and record poetry, short stories and episodic fiction, whilst dissecting their unique creative process using both video and audio as the means to continue coping.

A considerable lived experience of mental health issues, a passion for niche arts and media and an undimmed enthusiasm for environmentalism combine, to allow creativity to emerge, and new stories and projects to be created. They love to experiment and push creative boundaries, and gain a huge amount of motivation and inspiration from talking about both the journey and continued evolution as a creative.

After winning a Poetry Society members’ contest (and reading that piece at the Poetry Café in Covent Garden) they attended the inaugural Mslexicon in 2019 and took part in their first ever Open Mic event. In that same year they wrote 24 poems about their home town for the Places of Poetry online initiative, one of which is included in the official anthology published for National Poetry Day in October 2020 by Bloomsbury and subsequently reproduced by the Sunday Telegraph.

Their work has been published by Flights / Quarterly ejournal, Green Ink Poetry, Fevers of the Mind, Acropolis Journal, Selcouth Station, Black Bough Poetry, Flapjack Press and Dreich, plus there have been performances at Gloucester Poetry Festival, Flight of the Dragonflies and the monthly event at Wordsworth Grasmere. They have read alongside countless poets, including Caroline Bird, Steve Camden, Deanna Roger, Jeremy Dixon, Julia Webb and Wendy Pratt, and in 2021 they read at the Essex Book Festival. They’ve also learnt and grown creatively via poetry courses run by Apples and Snakes, Kevin Higgins, Wendy Pratt and Jonathan Davidson. A self-produced poetry chapbook was produced in November 2020 (available to buy here).

In October 2021 they were nominated for the Best of the Net Award.

They enjoy living online, but also find great joy from lifting heavy weights, running and cycling in the meat-space. When not doing these, they are pursuing an ASD diagnosis on the NHS.