Coming home (OVP19)- Club Plum journal

 

SFM19

AB19

BB19

In the Dark, God Can’t Tell Time (AB19, BB19, OVP19)

Clouds steal the moon and party
boats shiver, bleed color like a slow
constant wound. Darkness glazes
the seawall, tiled roofs, even oil slick

rainbows left on pavement. The cathedral
stones dress in rags of light
festooned with cherubs and bones,
clocks synced with heaven. Exactly one

year after my mother died, my father
and I made blintzes. Hundreds of blintzes.
We thought to feed our bodies and not
our grief. Despite the kitchen heat, his

face was whiter than the snowy egret
fishing his pond. Bleached with sorrow,
yes, but two holes in his stomach
leaked blood and a clot in his neck

blocked it. The small county hospital
sent him hours away, red lights flashing
along the highway while I prayed
we could steal time from heaven.

Lynne Jensen Lampe

 

‘twas on a Moonlit Night

IMAGE AB19

The moon a ghostly galleon
an all seeing eye
with strange nocturnal goings on
beneath this mackerel sky.

I happened upon a maiden
a damsel pure and sweet
awaiting at a grassy glen
my eyes lit up a treat.

She asks if I frequent this land
as maybe she is lost
I take her by her silken hand
and hope to have her trust.

We seek an inn not far away
a place to drink and eat
the clock chimes ten its time to pay
we leave and take retreat.

Returning to our moonlit road
we begin the long walk home
and soon we have not far to go
nor left at night alone.

Paul Dyson

Not quinqueremes but

from Nineveh perhaps, cloud-sailed, these barques come,
sumptuously cushioned, laden with luxuries,
gold, frankincense, myrrh-
water glitters,
gold,
silver.

Sumptuously cushioned, laden with luxuries,
they dream-sail,
bathed in
cool
moonlight,

gold, frankincense, myrrh
in cedar-
wood
chests.

Water glitters,
moon
fragments,

gold
and

silver.

Jane Dougherty

Poets Love The Moon (AB19)

No amount of cloud
can disguise the moon tonight
shine, my lovely muse!

Moon (BB19)

There is no moon tonight
but they have illuminated the church
in visions of heaven and hell.
Angels and death, screaming
from the holy stones.
There is no space here
for equivocation. No purgatory
or limbo. No moon to shine
a light on your thoughts.

Tim Fellows

Every Day Blue

AB19, BB19, OVP19

The scattering of light,
the constant in our space,
is blue of sky and water,
the dancing variations sing through clouds
so loud that skeletons wake and skitter round
the graveyard walls, the soft-shoe steps
of bones, the tappity-tap of time, regret
perhaps. The corona-ed moon incites the tides
and makes them rise, the boats upon them sink
or sigh. Earth tilts. We spin but stay,
midnight becomes dawn, another day.

Merril D Smith

Bios and Links

Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad

is an Indian-Australian painter, poet, and improv pianist. She is a self-taught artist who has been painting and exhibiting for over 20 years. Her work has been featured in several journals including Amsterdam Quarterly yearbook, Pithead Chapel, Two Thirds North, Kissing Dynamite Poetry,  and Stonecoast Review. She has been nominated multiple times for the Best of the Net. She lives and works in Sydney on the traditional lands of The Eora Nation.  Find her @oormilaprahlad and www.instagram.com/oormila_paintings

Sara Fatima Mir

Born on the 26th of July, 2007, in Islamabad , Sara Fatima is a Pakistani of Kashmiri origin. Gifted by nature with an inborn aesthetic sense, she is passionate about art. It is not just a hobby for her, rather it is a well settled heart and soul, way of life which inspires her to visualize the fine beauty and form in the world around. She has won numerous art competitions at school level. She is a natural artist and has completed the following two Courses : a) Graphic Designing -2020 b) Resin Art Skills -2022 from the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) Finishing School, Islamabad Capital Territory Pakistan. This learning has further enhanced her artistic skills . International Participation in Art and Poetry Project: Rucksack A Global Poetry Patchwork 2022 A Poetry Project by Ms Antje Stehn of Italy and Mamta Sagar of India. Sara made a Teapot with the help of dried teabags. A requirement .Its image is on display at the Poetry Museum Italy. Sara Fatima Mir believes Art connects people by portraying their lives. Different people, different drawings, different stories. Using all sorts of mediums, she flaunts her amateur talent and aspires to learn more to become the best version of herself. Please Follow her on Instagram @sketchfilez

Beth Brooke

is a Dorset-based poet and her writing is grounded in the Wessex landscape and history. Her debut pamphlet, A Landscape With Birds was published by Hedgehog Poetry in July 2022. Her second pamphlet, Transformations, will be published by Hedgehog next year. The poems are all inspired by the work of Dame Elisabeth Frink, the sculptor and artist.

Aaron Bowker

based in the United States is a super self-critical Virgo, walking a path between worlds while dabbling in art, photography, and poetry. Poems have been featured in Failed Haiku, Cold Moon Journal, The Wombwell Rainbow, and Heterodox Haiku Journal, with art featured in The Hooghly Review, The Wombwell Rainbow, and Black & White Haifa/Haisha. Special thank you to Jerome Berglund for being my mentor and pushing me to limits otherwise unexplored.

Robert Frede Kenter

is a writer, pushcart nominee & visual artist with work in many venues, on line and in print, incl: Storms Journal, Anthropocene, Fevers Of, Acropolis Journal, CutbowQuarterly, Anti-heroin chic and many others, as well as books including EDEN (2021) a visual poetry collection, and Audacity of Form (ice floe press, 2019). Work in anthologies: Book of Penteract (Penteract Press, 2022), and Seeing in Tongues, an anthology forthcoming from Steel Incisors (2023). Robert is publisher & EIC of Ice Floe Press, www.icefloepress.net.

Jamie Woods

Swansea-based Jamie Woods is poet-in-residence at the charity Leukaemia Care. His work has been published in Poetry Wales, Lucent Dreaming, Ink Sweat & Tears and more. Jamie’s debut pamphlet Rebel Blood Cells is out in June, and can be pre-ordered from https://www.punkdust.com/shop
https://www.jamiewoods77.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.

Paul Dyson

is from Swinton, Rotherham, in the West Riding of Yorkshire.
He says –

“We all have an urge to be creative
whether it’s art, poetry, music . . .
or just putting together flat pack furniture,
being creative keeps us alive and feeling human”

Paul gave up his day job 5 years ago to dabble in art, poetry and music, and hopes the passion in his Art reaches and touches the hearts of fellow humans too.

Merril D. Smith

lives in southern New Jersey near the Delaware River. Her poetry has been published in journals including Black Bough Poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic, Acropolis, and Humana Obscura, and anthologies, such as the recent Our Own Coordinates: Poems about Dementia (Sidhe Press). Her full-length poetry collection, River Ghosts, was published by Nightingale & Sparrow Press, and was a Black Bough Poetry Book of the Month.

Twitter: @merril_mds  Instagram: mdsmithnj  Blog: merrildsmith.org

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.

Lynne Jensen Lampe’s

debut collection, Talk Smack to a Hurricane (Ice Floe Press, 2022) concerns mother-daughter relationships, mental illness, and antisemitism. Her poems appear in many journals, including THRUSH, Figure 1, and Yemassee. A finalist for the 2020 Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize, she edits academic research in mid-Missouri, where she lives with her husband and two dogs. Visit her at https://lynnejensenlampe.com; on Twitter/Spoutible @LJensenLampe; or Instagram @lynnejensenlampe.

Frank Colley

lives in South Yorkshire and has been writing poetry all his life. He is an active member of the Read to Write Group and has performed his poems at a wide variety of venues including CAST in Doncaster. His poems have appeared in several anthologies.
He is an admirer of Edward Thomas. His collection “The Story of Soldier A” was published by Glass Head Press in 2022. His self published pamphlet “The Nantcol Sonnets” both are available on eBay.

Kushal Poddar

The author of ‘Postmarked Quarantine’ has eight books to his credit. He is a journalist, father, and the editor of ‘Words Surfacing’. His works have been translated into twelve languages.

Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe