Menopause (On the World Menopause Day)

The red leaf I brought for my mother
from an exotic tree made her cry, and she
whispered, sending ripples across her
black Darjeeling, “Don’t mind me. Mood swings
in my autumn. Some days are salt. Some days
are blood.” I didn’t comprehend.

There were crow feathers cawing, “Good afternoon.”
There was a hiss midst the grass, “Hibernation, soon.”

“I could never have another son.” My mother murmured.
I could not comprehend.

-Kushal Poddar

The Menopause Diary:

A transition bloomed in my body.
My body is burning like a hot Sandwich griller.
My skin glowing like an ember is
exuding moisture profusely through its pores.
My granny used to say well-used vaginas on aging
dry and shrink. Maybe, this is the reason
pains are gripping me tightly while sitting, exercising, and peeing.
Dryness is flaring its bellows on my skin and in my eyes and mouth.
I fell while tight-roping my sleep.
My mood is drenched in mercurial rain.
No more fertility
for my womb is like a barren tree now.
A transition bloomed in my body.

-©Spriha Kant

Menopause

Not slept for nights on end but still hauling myself up
Pale enough to be asked if I’m feeling no better
But all I am is aching and exhausted tortured
By the craziest dreams and days of forgetfulness
Did I leave my glasses in the fridge again?

Horrible repetitive acid that boils whatever I eat
Some foods off the menu make it worse
And I’m sure I asked you to do that but you didn’t
You say I never even mentioned it
Am I losing my mind the tears come

Followed quickly by anger at anything and nothing
My joints ache creaking like stairs of an old house
Suddenly my face feels like an old sock worn out
Too many washe, full of holes, ready for the bin
Sleep with no covers on, windows open wide

Even on HRT I no longer feel quite like me
And I’m unable to pinpoint why that is yet
I don’t accept the things I used to just ignore
The people that would bully me for sport are told
Unequivocally that they’re getting no more warnings

As I yawn behind my hand and try to recall what it was
I actually came into the room for
Or when I read the notes I made in the dead of night
To write down in day I’ve not the faintest clue
What it was I was driving at at all

Some days I’ve migraine so bad I want to lie in a dark room
Until I get better but I could be there days you see
Like many women I have so many symptoms and try to
Just get on with them however crappy it all feels
And then I’m asked how are you doing, today

I think of saying well it’s like this or
That I feel like a burst balloon tied with string
And I answer as I always do, we all do
Oh, I’m fine you know.

-©Ailsa Cawley 2022

A Guide to Surviving the Menopause

1. When over-heating during the night throw off the covers and howl at the moon.
2. Whenever possible wander around town for hours, or along the beach, searching for the young man/woman you mistakenly think you have fallen in love with.
3. Move out of your house temporarily and:
4. Live in a hut
5. Volunteer to teach small children high up in the Andes
6. Travel to the deserts of the world
7. Go and live at your friend’s place while she is away
8. Yell, throw plates, tell your husband/wife/lover/partner/ that he/she is the most boring person you have ever met
9. Try to sleep with your colleague/guide/tutor/friend – this is unlikely to be successful but no one can later accuse you of not making the effort
10. Refuse to cook/clean/iron/work – in fact refuse anything you don’t want to do – after all you have spent a life-time as a people-pleaser and surely it is time for a change
11. Get outrageously drunk/smoke/get off your head, dance madly, cause some kind of scene/any kind of scene
12. Get a tattoo/shave off your hair, wear your pants on your head
13. Turn up the music loud to annoy your neighbours
14. Climb a tree, canoe a river, give away your possessions

One day you will wake up and you will be through this stage of your life and even though you will not miss the flushes and sweats, the giddy spells, the foggy brain, the fits of rage, you will miss the madness of it all.

-Bronwen Griffiths

Bios and Links

-Kushal Poddar 

An author, journalist, and a father, Kushal Poddar, editor of ‘Words Surfacing’, authored eight books, the latest being ‘Postmarked Quarantine‘. His works have been translated into eleven languages. 

amazon.com/author/kushalpoddar_thepoet

Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe 

-Bronwen Griffiths

is the author of two novels and two collections of flash fiction. Her flash fiction has been widely published both online and in print anthologies. She is currently working on a novella

-Spriha Kant

is a poetess and a book reviewer. Her poetry was featured firstly digitally in the “Imaginary Land Stories“, the poetry featured was “The Seashell”. Her poetries have been published in anthologies including “Sing, Do the birds of Spring”, “A Whisper Of Your Love”, “Hard Rain Poetry: Forever Dylan” and “Bare Bones Writing Issue 1: Fevers of the Mind”. Paul Brookes has featured her poetry “A Monstrous Shadow” as the “Seventh Synergy” in “SYNERGY: CALLING ALL WRITERS WHO ARE PHOTOGRAPHERS” and many other poetries on his blog “The Wombwell Rainbow”. She has been featured in the “Quick-9 interview” on feversofthemind.com. She has reviewed three poetry books, including, “Silence From The Shadows” by Stuart Matthews “Spaces” by Clive Gresswell, and “Washed Away- a collection of fragments” by Shiksha Dheda. She has been a part of the celebration for Jeff Flesch’s launch of his debut poetry book “Nature Speaks of Love and Sorrow”.

-Ailsa Cawley

Ailsa was brought up in the North East of England, and now lives on the Isle of Skye. She’s always been fascinated with myths, legends, faery tales and folklore whether it’s horror or local legend. She’s currently in editing stages of her first novel which includes some ghostly characters (surprise, surprise!) and has a story in the Red Dog GONE anthology in November.

1.18. Bananach

F 2.18. muhler de branco

3.18. The Bell Witch

 

The Bell Witch (Inspired by F3.18, The Bell Witch)

Why is one family tormented,
another blessed—

the sins of the father
manifested in bumps and tremors,

an unsettled spirit, settling scores.

Hold a bible, burn the witch,
the haunting goes on

as generations pass,
you wonder more

which came first,
a miasma of evil,
or corruption of the soul?

-Merril D Smith

AN AIRBORNE PSYCHOPATH:

(Inspired by the image “F 1.18 Bananach”)

He lives in the air of battlefields
and glides and swirls with
his shrieks intensifying
the turbulence in combats
He exults with laughter
at each slaughter
for he enjoys each dripping blood like a
raindrop

-©Spriha Kant

The Haunting (F2.18 Muhler de Branco The Weeping Woman)

She slips between the cracks, slides beneath the door,
Her hair’s a witchery of straggles deviling the light.
She flails and wails and weeps tears of rime
Misshaping time, winnowing seconds, displacing days.
She’s come to haunt, not to worry or taunt, but to
Snatch and latch onto someone with breath and beating heart
With a mouth to kiss and hands to touch, with ears to hear
Her sweet sweet babe whom she misses so much.

-Jacqueline Dempsey-Cohen @boscoedempsey

Ghost (based on all three images)

Ghost,
the negative of ourselves,
the obverse side, a swollen tide
of fear of the dark within.

We clutch at their ephemeral shrouds,
hoping for a proof of something beyond death,
even if it is only the hollow beating of skin drums,
the clammy touch of fungus, phosphorescent glow,
an eternal pacing of the paths, the lightless lanes
where blackberries never grow
and blackbirds never sing.

-Jane Dougherty

Bios and Links

-Jane Dougherty

lives and works in southwest France. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her poems and stories have been published in magazines and journals including Ogham Stone, the Ekphrastic Review, Black Bough Poetry, ink sweat and tears, Gleam, Nightingale & Sparrow, Green Ink and Brilliant Flash Fiction. She blogs at https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/ Her poetry chapbooks, thicker than water and birds and other feathers were published in October and November 2020.

-Eryn McConnell

is a poet originally from the UK who now lives in South Germany with their family. They have been writing poetry since their teens and is currently working on their second collection of poems.

-Spriha Kant

Spriha Kant is a poetess and a book reviewer. Her poetry was featured firstly digitally in the “Imaginary Land Stories”, the poetry featured was “The Seashell”. Her poetries have been published in anthologies including “Sing, Do the birds of Spring”, “A Whisper Of Your Love”, “Hard Rain Poetry: Forever Dylan” and “Bare Bones Writing Issue 1: Fevers of the Mind”. Paul Brookes has featured her poetry “A Monstrous Shadow” as the “Seventh Synergy” in “SYNERGY: CALLING ALL WRITERS WHO ARE PHOTOGRAPHERS” and many other poetries on his blog “Wombwell Rainbow”. She has been featured in the “Quick-9 interview” on feversofthemind.com. She has reviewed three poetry books, including, “Silence From The Shadows” by Stuart Matthews “Spaces” by Clive Gresswell, and “Washed Away- a collection of fragments” by Shiksha Dheda. She has been a part of the celebration for Jeff Flesch’s launch of his debut poetry book “Nature Speaks of Love and Sorrow”.

-Gaynor Kane

from Belfast in Northern Ireland, had no idea that when she started a degree with the OU at forty it would be life changing.  It magically turned her into a writer and now she has a few collections of poetry published, all by The Hedgehog Poetry Press Recently, she has been a judge for The North Carolina Poetry Society and guest sub-editor for the inaugural issue of The Storms: A journal of prose, poetry and visual art. Her new chapbook, Eight Types of Love, was released in July. Follow her on Twitter @gaynorkane or read more at www.gaynorkane.com

-Dave Garbutt

has been writing poems since he was 17 and has still not learned to give up. His poems have been published in The Brown Envelope Anthology, and magazines (Horizon, Writers & Readers) most recently on XRcreative and forthcoming in the Deronda review. His poem ‘ripped’ was long listed in the Rialto Nature & Place competition 2021. In August 2021 he took part in the Postcard Poetry Festival and the chap book that came from that is available at the postcard festival website. https://ppf.cascadiapoeticslab.org/2021/11/08/dave-garbutt-interview/.

He was born less than a mile from where Keats lived in N London and sometimes describes himself as ‘a failed biologist, like Keats’, in the 70’s he moved to Reading until till moving to Switzerland (in 1994), where he still lives. He has found the time since the pandemic very productive as many workshops and groups opened up to non-locals as they moved to Zoom. 

Dave retired from the science and IT world in 2016 and he is active on Twitter, FaceBook, Medium.com, Flickr (he had a solo exhibition of his photographs in March 2017). He leads monthly bird walks around the Birs river in NW Switzerland. His tag is @DavGar51.

-Merril D. Smith

lives in southern New Jersey near the Delaware River. Her poetry has been published in several poetry journals and anthologies, including Black Bough Poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic,  Fevers of the Mind, and Nightingale and Sparrow. Her first full-length poetry collection, River Ghosts, is forthcoming from Nightingale & Sparrow Press.  Twitter: @merril_mds  Instagram: mdsmithnj  Website/blog: merrildsmith.com

-Jacqueline Dempsey-Cohen,

a retired teacher and children’s library specialist, considers herself an adventurer. She has meandered the country in an old Chevy van and flown along on midnight runs in a smoky old Convair 440 to deliver the Wall Street Journal. She is a licensed pilot, coffee house lingerer, and finds her inspiration and solace in nature in all its glorious diversity. Loving wife and mother, she makes her home in the wilds of Portland OR. www.MudAndInkPoetry.art 

-Kyla Houbolt’s

first two chapbooks, Dawn’s Fool (Ice Floe Press) and Tuned (CCCP Chapbooks), were published in 2020. Tuned is also available as an ebook. Her work has appeared in Hobart, Had, Barren, Juke Joint, Moist, Trouvaille Review, and elsewhere. Find her work at her linktree: https://linktr.ee/luaz_poet. She is on Twitter @luaz_poet.

Korean #sijo

• 3 lines in length, averaging 14-16 syllables per line (for a poem total of 44-46 syllables).

• Ln 1 introduces situation/theme

• Ln 2 develops theme with more detail or “turn”

• Ln 3 is a “twist” and conc.

Useful Weblinks

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-write-sijo-poetry

https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/sijo-poetic-form

Drinking Song from the Bowery – A Dizain.

Of all the consequences since that time,
Divide them into copper pipes and spoons,
From door to doorway, we knocked back the wine,
Sat on a hill in a park to cast runes.
Spinning the questionable echoing tunes,
Watching that Autumn leaves tumble, broken,
We were dead to each other, rough-spoken
Ghost crowds, not in rooms. Ever remember,
The ethos pitch, the last punch, evoking
Memory’s bells, chimed cold, stark November.

 

How Did It Go?

I don’t know much about the Dizain form (15th-16th century French form and (confession) didn’t look for or find any examples – I followed its rule-bound logic (10 syllable form; one can also use 8 syllable lines), & its rhyme pattern – ababbccdcd. I worked and revised because my first attempt (at this Drinking Song) was ok, but I was unhappy with a too end-word rhyme-y thing going on. But I was certain it was a ‘drinking song’ and the imagery that entered evoked a time when I lived in a run-down 19th century loft-space on the Bowery (NYC) way before its current iteration of Mercedes-Benz show rooms and high price hotels. So, this is in a way a goodbye Dizain: to a time, a lifestyle, a moment in history, a set of past, ghostly relations. Was fun to do, though tricky to move into a – what I think – is more possibly craggier twisty way of exploring image-emotion & memory-phantoms. Now I am curious to find some good examples of the form in French or otherwise.

-© 2022-10-15 Robert Frede Kenter
Website: http://www.icefloepress.net

Shining Road

From clouded mountain, prison cells and wine
we shared the driving on the shining road.
Salt tang our taste as senses intertwine;
a taste of loss, of flux, as asphalt glowed
where time slipped by and memories grew cold.
The Great Whites drifted ever South, as we,
our compass pointed to the East, broke free
where mountain passes, plains and fields pretend
that they care nothing for the dying sea
and we both knew where this hard road might end.

How Did It Go?

I decided to take a draft non-rhyming poem that was the right length and already had some ten syllable lines and convert it. I’m not sure this was a good idea as I had to spend a long time making it have meaning and sensible rhymes.

-Tim Fellows

For the birds that keep winter at bay

October spins a web of sun and shade,
In clouds of golden leaf-fall, roses blown,
That drift against the walls where summer’s laid,
And all its songs and feather-brightness flown.
Of spring musicians, robin sings alone,
Until the restless sky turns glassy cold,
And north wind bites, and silver clouds the gold.
His fire, blazing, draws the thrush, to bring
Wild notes of honey sweetness, clear and bold,
To cheer the winter dark with songs of spring.

How Did It Go?

The writing of this kind of strictly metered rhyming verse is relatively easy. Whether the result is a good poem or not, I wouldn’t like to say.

-Jane Dougherty 

Prescribed Fires

Why does the old Stevens house keep burning?
City’s birth, visual representation.
The tides of historic structures are turning,
most would see all razed to their foundations…
Especially, reasonably, First Nations.
Museums dedicated to their preserve,
make expropriated feel quite perturbed.
Object to celebrating overt crimes:
rapacious appetites need to get curbed,
or be fated to repeat across time.

-Jerome Berglund

Bio And Links

-Jane Dougherty

lives and works in southwest France. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her poems and stories have been published in magazines and journals including Ogham Stone, the Ekphrastic Review, Black Bough Poetry, ink sweat and tears, Gleam, Nightingale & Sparrow, Green Ink and Brilliant Flash Fiction. She blogs at https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/

Her poetry chapbooks, thicker than water and birds and other feathers were published in October and November 2020.

-Tim Fellows

is a writer from Chesterfield in Derbyshire whose ideas are heavily influenced by his background in the local coalfields, where industry and nature lived side by side. His first pamphlet “Heritage” was published in 2019. His poetic influences range from Blake to Owen, Causley to Cooper-Clarke and more recently the idea of imagistic poetry and the work of Spanish poet Miguel Hernandez.

F 1.17. Cu-sidhe

F 2.17. Skinwalkers

F 3.17. La Mala Hora

La Mala Hora

In front of me she did roam
Slowly but I was not surprised
Her dress a bridal one
Almost taking her balance

Chestnut hair flowing in the night
Windless though it was
Something not quite right
Her face too veiled for evening

Sweet words carried on the wind
A bell clanged dull and dank
Terror now my belly did find
And of a sudden I realised

There were no feet striking ground
A floating woman was what I now saw
My eyes drawn to feet turned round
Toes point to me and blood went cold

My evening jaunt did wait that night
For she was sucking in the light
Drinking souls if she could catch
My door was barred lock and latch.

-©Ailsa Cawley 2022

Banana.ch / Bananach

Banana.ch
Spreadsheet,
the cells, vlink
plus is a shield, minus
a spear, * is a sword: our cash
falls down
the great
hole of nothing —bitbucket of
battlefield, the trench, stake-wall
after the banshee, you
spread shroud
Bananach

-Dave Garbutt.

Howl, in the eye of the beholder.

A ramped wedge, masculinity
The howl
Distains the gauntlet’s civility
Cloud, billows
A voluminous second fiddle

Redded tooth borne
The howl
Four planted paws
Force grown through stone
Feral, a peasant

In defence of the born
The howl
Guttural, roared
Out paternal
Defiance
A beast, so called
Loving.

-Kevin Sealby.

Howling / Skinwalkers / Dancing death

Howling my home—its
here, my family, tails, rock dens.
We are here, don’t come.

We walk in other
skins and what we do —you can
not know— non-Navaho.

I dance and the clack
isn’t steel heels, castanets
but bones smiling—wink

-Dave Garbutt

Entre chien et loup (inspired by F1: 17.)

Crepuscule, between the lights,
sun and moon, the crossbeams of gold and silver,
l’heure bleue, when the sky is a blue so intense
it touches the depths of the universe.

In the half-lights of waxing and waning,
who can tell friend from foe, dog from wolf?

And the uncertain light has a voice,
the long, slow, ripening ululation
that prickles the skin and pricks the ears,

when dog blood remembers wolf,
and we, creatures of the light,
listen in awe or fear, to the questions
whose answers we will never know.

-Jane Dougherty

The Howl:

(Inspired by the image F 2.17 Skinwalkers)

Wood embossed with
coyote’s footsteps,
Traces of
flown
large orange circular and blue spherical lights
in the sky, and
Stenches of
incinerated dogs and cored out dismembered cows
drifting
from ranches—
all notifying that the
howl at last night
was of
that shape-lifting witch.

©Spriha Kant

Monsters (Inspired by all three images)

Evil walks in many forms
shifting shapes, forecasting doom,

the warning clear—stay in the light,
avoid rural roads and city streets
don’t walk or drive alone at night.

Here harbingers of death
hover, hop, float, fly, and slither.
Watch for backward toes, a tail,
a wolf with eyes you recognize,
your girlfriend who is not—

evil hides behind false smiles,
beneath the skin–
fear the monsters, they are here
within.

-Merril D Smith

 

Wolf’s Milk (F1.17 Wolf)
Cailleach arrives on a wolf’s back
spilling winter from her womb.
She swaddless the sky in
snowdrifts of clouds
her icy fingers misting the firth.

Beneath her blizzard of sky
a wolf howls a coronach to her.
A yearling’s wail mourning
her mother’s breast.
Throat song
prickling necks, chafing skin.

High above, the moon wakes,
spilling lilting notes of light
tipping the clouds milky white

Cailleach, goddess,,
protector of wild things.
Wolf mother’s lullaby

-Jacqueline Dempsey-Cohen @boscoedempsey

Bios and Links

-Kevin Sealby.

Poet and musician. Writing around a few pet subjects, the environment, society, class, masculinity.Often trying to merge music and poetry…mixed results!

Kevsealby@medium.com

-Jane Dougherty

lives and works in southwest France. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her poems and stories have been published in magazines and journals including Ogham Stone, the Ekphrastic Review, Black Bough Poetry, ink sweat and tears, Gleam, Nightingale & Sparrow, Green Ink and Brilliant Flash Fiction. She blogs at https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/ Her poetry chapbooks, thicker than water and birds and other feathers were published in October and November 2020.

-Eryn McConnell

is a poet originally from the UK who now lives in South Germany with their family. They have been writing poetry since their teens and is currently working on their second collection of poems.

-Spriha Kant

developed an interest in reading and writing poetries at a very tender age. Her poetry “The Seashell” was first published online in the “Imaginary Land Stories” on August 8, 2020, by Sunmeet Singh. She has been a part of Stuart Matthew’s anthology “Sing, Do the birds of Spring” in the fourth series of books from #InstantEternal poetry prompts. She has been featured in the Bob Dylan-inspired anthology “Hard Rain Poetry: Forever Dylan” by the founder and editor of the website “Fevers of the Mind Poetry and Art” David L O’ Nan. Her poetries have been published in the anthology “Bare Bones Writing Issue 1: Fevers of the Mind”. Paul Brookes has featured her poetry, “A Monstrous Shadow”, based on a photograph clicked by herself, as the “Seventh Synergy” in “SYNERGY: CALLING ALL WRITERS WHO ARE PHOTOGRAPHERS” on his blog “The Wombwell Rainbow”. She has been featured in the “Quick-9 interview” on feversofthemind.com by David L’O Nan. She has reviewed the poetry book “Silence From The Shadows” by Stuart Matthews. Her acrostic poetry “A Rainstorm” has been published in the Poetic Form Challenge on the blog “TheWombwell Rainbow” owned by Paul Brookes. She also joined the movement “World Suicide Prevention Day” by contributing her poetry “Giving Up The Smooch” on the blog “The Wombwell Rainbow”, an initiative taken by Paul Brookes.

-Gaynor Kane

from Belfast in Northern Ireland, had no idea that when she started a degree with the OU at forty it would be life changing.  It magically turned her into a writer and now she has a few collections of poetry published, all by The Hedgehog Poetry Press Recently, she has been a judge for The North Carolina Poetry Society and guest sub-editor for the inaugural issue of The Storms: A journal of prose, poetry and visual art. Her new chapbook, Eight Types of Love, was released in July. Follow her on Twitter @gaynorkane or read more at www.gaynorkane.com

-Dave Garbutt

has been writing poems since he was 17 and has still not learned to give up. His poems have been published in The Brown Envelope Anthology, and magazines (Horizon, Writers & Readers) most recently on XRcreative and forthcoming in the Deronda review. His poem ‘ripped’ was long listed in the Rialto Nature & Place competition 2021. In August 2021 he took part in the Postcard Poetry Festival and the chap book that came from that is available at the postcard festival website. https://ppf.cascadiapoeticslab.org/2021/11/08/dave-garbutt-interview/.

He was born less than a mile from where Keats lived in N London and sometimes describes himself as ‘a failed biologist, like Keats’, in the 70’s he moved to Reading until till moving to Switzerland (in 1994), where he still lives. He has found the time since the pandemic very productive as many workshops and groups opened up to non-locals as they moved to Zoom. 

Dave retired from the science and IT world in 2016 and he is active on Twitter, FaceBook, Medium.com, Flickr (he had a solo exhibition of his photographs in March 2017). He leads monthly bird walks around the Birs river in NW Switzerland. His tag is @DavGar51.

-Merril D. Smith

lives in southern New Jersey near the Delaware River. Her poetry has been published in several poetry journals and anthologies, including Black Bough Poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic,  Fevers of the Mind, and Nightingale and Sparrow. Her first full-length poetry collection, River Ghosts, is forthcoming from Nightingale & Sparrow Press.  Twitter: @merril_mds  Instagram: mdsmithnj  Website/blog: merrildsmith.com

-Jacqueline Dempsey-Cohen,

a retired teacher and children’s library specialist, considers herself an adventurer. She has meandered the country in an old Chevy van and flown along on midnight runs in a smoky old Convair 440 to deliver the Wall Street Journal. She is a licensed pilot, coffee house lingerer, and finds her inspiration and solace in nature in all its glorious diversity. Loving wife and mother, she makes her home in the wilds of Portland OR. www.MudAndInkPoetry.art 

-Kyla Houbolt’s

first two chapbooks, Dawn’s Fool (Ice Floe Press) and Tuned (CCCP Chapbooks), were published in 2020. Tuned is also available as an ebook. Her work has appeared in Hobart, Had, Barren, Juke Joint, Moist, Trouvaille Review, and elsewhere. Find her work at her linktree: https://linktr.ee/luaz_poet. She is on Twitter @luaz_poet.