Like Mother by Nadia Drews

Peter Raynard's avatarProletarian Poetry

16659957706_01284e0b15_z Image by G Travels

We are coming to the end of the school year; a year full of turmoil instilled by a Government who feels it needs to do more than tinker with the education of our children, treating them more like guinea pigs in an ideological battle to send us back to Victorian times. Both education Secretaries (Gove and now Morgan), seem to want a war with teachers with the proposed imposition of academy status for all schools (thankfully withdrawn), new SATs for Year 6 students, and the madness of testing those under the grand old age of seven.

Governments still struggle with mass education; with classes of upwards of thirty children, herded together like cattle despite their different needs and abilities and family circumstance, all with the sole intention of getting them to pass a minimum of five GCSEs. I know from personal experience…

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NEW FEATURE: SYNERGY: CALLING ALL WRITERS WHO ARE PHOTOGRAPHERS I will feature your work photos and writing individually on the Wombwell Rainbow. A special feature for you alone. Please DM/message me if you’re interested. Photo essays are great, poems should accompany one of your images that inspired them. Poems within the photos are also great, such a haiku, and so forth. Any theme you choose, at the moment. May get more specific as time goes by. Experimental work most welcome. Our fifth Synergy is from Frogg Corpse.

frogg corpse photo

The photo taken by Frogg Corpse is of Asters (White Heath) taken September 17th, 2021 and shot in Louisville, Kentucky in William Taylor’s backyard.

Pandæmonium in White Heath

Lost was I, to the enchantment ov sprigs,
weaved from the pluckings of their nest.
roosting autumn — Persephone throned
aster-melting twilight: calm.

Thoughts of wind, which name drew
threshing petals encircle strife,
offering wheat: by nysian mule
stripped near summers dried.

Terra cotta touch
pomegranate pressed
unceremoniously bound;
love undying — tithed to omen
until new winter coughs-back-out.

Athenastras Coveting Ostara

Bittersweet · seeds consumed
elysian well spitting alba,
golden roads balmed by chariot
anointing silver-lakes in parting

Caressed by Artemis,
mourned by Nyx,
garnet leaves:
trickle into the temple of ever sleep.

Bricked hands wed with balefire
Magic conscripted near Hecataea
Three dog moon
Observance: sorrows torch.

-Frogg Corpse

Bio and links

-Frogg Corpse

is a poet, vocalist, and photographer from Louisville, KY who in 2011 published a memoir titled The Mourning Hour which was rereleased October 30th 2022 by Cajun Mutt Press. 

From 2014-2022 Frogg has performed Spoken Word at Gonzofest. Gonzofest is a Louisville event celebrating the work, life, and legacy of Hunter S. Thompson. In 2019, Frogg had written a guest blog for 48HrBooks on documenting your dreams to improve your writing, as well as performing in a 2020 SlamPoetry event hosted by Suli Breaks. Frogg Corpse also performed as Hop-Frog in Poe vs Lovecraft: tales from beyond the grave, a radio play, in partnership with the Jeffersonville Township Library, Company Outcast, and the SoIN tourism board of Indiana.

Featured poetry by: Cajun Mutt Press, Necro Magazine, Artifact Nouveau Magazine, LEO Weekly, Written Tales Magazine, Poetry Global Network, Ponder Savant, Red Penguin, and Poetry Super Highway.

You can follow Frogg: @froggcorpse on Instagram.

Fool’s Paradise by Zoe Brooks (Black Eyes Publishing)

tearsinthefence's avatarTears in the Fence

This unusual work has had a leisurely path to print. Written after a visit to Prague in 1990, two extracts were published (inAquarius, no less) in 1992. Twenty years later it appeared as a self-produced e-book. Now, after ten more years and on the heels of its author’s similarly slow-arriving but sporadically awesome short-poem collection (Owl Unbound), it’s finally made it out.

It’s ‘a mystical poem for voices’, or a verse radio play. Three unnamed travellers start their journey at a gibbet and so may be newly executed – or not. A riddling Fool with his dog ‘gather[s] their shadows’ and ‘take[s] them to be cleaned’. He uses a skull as a glove-puppet. ‘Your way is down,’ he says, so he may be a courier demon – or not. Traveller 2 says, ‘It was your country which sold mine/ for a few years’ peace’, which could…

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NEW FEATURE: SYNERGY: CALLING ALL WRITERS WHO ARE PHOTOGRAPHERS I will feature your work photos and writing individually on the Wombwell Rainbow. A special feature for you alone. Please DM/message me if you’re interested. Photo essays are great, poems should accompany one of your images that inspired them. Poems within the photos are also great, such a haiku, and so forth. Any theme you choose, at the moment. May get more specific as time goes by. Experimental work most welcome. Our fourth Synergy is from Ron Whitehead.

The Dead by Ron Whitehead Synergy

-Ron Whitehead, Lifetime Beat Poet Laureate

Poem and photo by Ron Whitehead. Graphics by Jinn Bug. Poet, writer, editor, publisher, professor, scholar, activist, U.S. National Beat Poet Laureate Ron Whitehead is the author of 24 books and 34 albums. 

NEW FEATURE: SYNERGY: CALLING ALL WRITERS WHO ARE PHOTOGRAPHERS I will feature your work photos and writing individually on the Wombwell Rainbow. A special feature for you alone. Please DM/message me if you’re interested. Photo essays are great, poems should accompany one of your images that inspired them. Poems within the photos are also great, such a haiku, and so forth. Any theme you choose, at the moment. May get more specific as time goes by. Experimental work most welcome. Our third Synergy is from Jinn Bug.

Homeless in the Mist (photo by Jinn Bug) synergy

Homeless in the Mist (photo by Jinn Bug)

NEIGHBORS

The junkies in my neighborhood
have names, these young men
who gently haunt our streets,
our woods, who sit on my stoop
and talk about their favorite books,
who hobo-style scratch softly
at the door asking for a bite to eat.

It’s true I know the names of a few
of these lost boys in this shabby town
poised at the edge of gentrification
and true I keep a handy bit of cash
and I suspect you would not like to hear
me say, “Get some food first and then
get what you need with my blessing.”

It’s also true that there
but for grace go I,
you know.

The junkies in your neighborhood
have names too. Perhaps you say
you choose to live where there are
no junkies and I reply perhaps they
are all around you, behind doors
in your safe suburb, having not yet
spectacularly lost everything

and become both visible and invisible,
shamed and nameless
all at once.

***

Bio
-Jinn Bug

is a poet, photographer, gardener, activist, visual artist and life-long dreamer. Her photography, vignettes, and poems have appeared in Appalachian Heritage, New Southerner, LEO Weekly, Fiolet & Wing—An Anthology of Domestic Fabulism, Aquillrelle, For Sale, Pure Uncut Candy, The Rooted Reader, Gyroscope Review, Necro Magazine and other print and online publications. Her most recent book of poetry is “Nights at the Museum”. Visit her at http://www.JinnBug.com.

The Butterfly Cemetery: Selected Prose by Franca Mancinelli Translated by John Taylor (Bitter Oleander)

tearsinthefence's avatarTears in the Fence

The Bitter Oleander Press have already published two books by Franca Mancinelli, a book of prose poetry and another of poetry, both translated into English by John Taylor, and this paperback of prose, poetic prose and poetics will only add to the evidence of Mancinelli as a major contemporary Italian writer.

The short prose which makes up the first section of the book is a surprising mix of the romantic, personal and gently shocking. Childhood memories and fairy stories turn into stories with corpses, frozen tears which form stalactites in the eyes, blood and portentous signs. Yet these are deftly written, engaging and lucid tales, written with an accomplishment and flair that does not linger on the darkness but works to produce worlds of magic and light, and of promise, even when things seem grim. Here’s the end of ‘Walls, Rubble’, a story of claustrophobia, paranoia and ‘not feeling at…

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The High Window’s Resident Artist:Autumn 2022

The High Window Review's avatarThe High Window

Rowena photo cropped

*****

Rowena Sommerville introduces herself:

I was a lucky baby-boomer, able to go to art school to study Graphics and Illustration despite my parents’ (perfectly justified) anxieties, and despite knowing nothing, either on arrival or on graduation, of how one actually earned a living from these skills. I then worked in a variety of youth justice, psychiatric and social care settings while picking up bits of illustration work (including for Spare Rib!), and gradually learned how to put together a creative life. When I had children I also began to write ‘for them’ and eventually had my first children’s book published, which I had written and illustrated.

*****

Like almost all practising artists nowadays, I have had to earn a living through a ‘portfolio career’, parlaying varied skills into varied income streams. My craft skills have generally been those considered as traditionally female – particularly knitting and sewing – and…

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Sam Milne on the Poetry of Jack Clemo

The High Window Review's avatarThe High Window

jack clemo

*****

Reginald John Clemo (11 March 1916 – 25 July 1994) was a Cornish poet and writer who was strongly associated both with his native Cornwall and his strong Christian belief. His work was considered to be visionary and inspired by the rugged Cornish landscape.[1] He was the son of a clay-kiln worker and his mother, Eveline Clemo (née Polmounter, died 1977), was a dogmatic nonconformist.

Clemo was born in the parish of St Stephen-in-Brannel near St Austell. His father was killed at sea towards the end of the First World War and he was raised by his mother, who exerted a dominant influence on him. He was educated at the village school but after age of 13 his formal schooling ceased with the onset of his blindness. He became deaf around age twenty and blind in 1955. The china clay mines and works around which he grew up were…

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American Poet: Autumn: Karen Petersen

The High Window Review's avatarThe High Window

karen p[etersen

*****

Karen Petersen has travelled the world extensively, publishing poetry, short stories, and flash both nationally and internationally in a variety of literary publications. Her poems have been translated into Persian and Spanish, and she has been nominated for numerous prizes, most recently long-listed for the UK’s international Bridport Prize. She is the first person in the history of the Pushcart Prizes to receive nominations in all three categories of poetry, short story, and flash. This year, her chapbook, Trembling, won the Wil Mills Award, judged by Annie Finch, and her first volume of poetry, Twelve Cities, and Other Places, is forthcoming with the Able Muse Press. More information can be found here: https://karenpetersenwriter.com

*****

Karen introduces herself:

I’ve been writing for almost five decades, wearing a variety of hats: poet, editor, journalist, short story writer. As a poet, I made a decision a long time ago to…

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