Sunset at Macritchie (OVP26)- published only on social media
SFM26
AB26
BB26
Clouds (OVP26, BB26)
Clouds scattered, white, high;
water droplets, floating free.
Defy gravity
Hill (BB26)
Climbing the hill, I think
of the times we had together.
Each step is harder than the last.
Hill – a rondel (BB26)
I climb the craggy hill with ancient bones
regretting things that happened in our past
I find each step is harder than the last
My feet ache from the sharpness of the stones
my breath is short; the grief is unsurpassed.
I climb the stony hill with ancient bones
regretting things that happened in our past
There’s so much that I wish I hadn’t known;
Where joy should be I only feel downcast,
life’s play in which I feel I’ve been miscast.
I climb the stony hill with ancient bones
regretting things that happened in our past
I find each step is harder than the last.
Tim Fellows
Trees
(AB,BB)
Born when the stars hung low to warm the earth,
diamond drops glittering among giant ferns,
rooted now in columned stone, irrigated
with water-memory, silent as midnight,
a trailing blackbird song, the scent of honeysuckle,
~trees still spring from source~
anchored ships in earthstorms, never sinking,
arms spread to conjure rain and roosting birds,
crows’ nests bowing among the flapping sheets of cormorant wings,
flying with the clouds, tossing their heads in tempest winds,
singing with blackbird voices to the immutable stars.
Jane Dougherty
Keys to the Place by a Lake
Found a ring
In an underground cave
Followed the top of the hill
To the culvert
Vision of investment property skies
In glossy pamphlets
Leafed through
Someone’s abandoned advertising
The trees grow roots down into glacial time
We see both the surfaces and what is underneath
The cartographic mapping of volume
I was lonely in Ipswich, in upside down
I traced the expansive wall of blue sky and
Scattered clouds
Too dry, we need rain, clumps of the forgotten grasses, slope
Of neglected earth
Spotlight the sun as a klieg light
The walls of igneous rock clapping ancient demon faces
Who painted that, I asked the artist representative –
The one with water reflecting sunrise the peaceful
Boat, the crumbling wooden dock, the bridge
Leading down – I wish to purchase it – to
Affix it to the wall of my property
The one inside the photographs you sent me –
I wear my magic rings. We found them in
The hills above the caves. I take them off
At night – they cast shadows on my
Evolving manuscript. Where I am influences
What I write, asemic notes typed up in courier.
Robert Frede Kenter
A Futile Attempt to Get Closer to Heaven (BB26)
Climb the hill to get as high as possible.
Take an axe to get a clearer view of everything.
Stand on the stump, surrounded by splinters.
Look up, across, spin for dizziness.
But the blues are duller now without the dark branches.
and the clouds are dabbed in patterns
that Rorschach would label as meaningless.
Jamie Woods
Above, Below, and In-between
Inspired by AB26 and OVP 26
Beneath cold, cerulean sea
we dart and dash, circling
and chasing light-dapples
and sun-streams
of yellow, orange, pink, and red
that dance like tightrope acrobats
on the line between–
as we breech
and breathe. Submerge again.
Merril D Smith
At the hill of Tara Skryne
A windswept Fir ring around the top of the hill.
Survive the test of time and stand there still.
To some, they are haunted to others sacred.
Bewitched or mystic, ideally located.
Steeped in history, fact and fiction,
folk law, mysticism and superstition.
Witches Coven, Druid Chapple.
Hubble bubble toil and trouble.
Nowadays families celebrate the summer solstice.
With fun-filled picnics without flaming crosses.
Ramblers ramble and sightseers survey the land.
The view from the coppice is something grand.
We will stand in the east the grand master said.
We will sing and dance until the last of us is dead.
Frank Colley
Cuts and Clouds (AB26, BB26)
The sky downward
dogs into grassy fields,
piercing the earth to mingle
with an underwater
lake wearing a halo.
Stalactites finger
the aquamarine surface—
tourist attraction,
mythology, world aglow.
Lynne Jensen Lampe
Safe Harbour
Image OVP26
I loved that space
our piece of Eden.
I’d row out and catch lunch
in something no bigger than a raft
it never failed.
Usually a brace of trout or salmon occasionally,
hand delivered from natures pantry.
You’d be reading the latest bestseller when I left
sunbathing, asleep on my return.
We fried the fish on your portable stove,
eating al fresco – the only way to eat you said.
Then, making love under the afternoon sun for dessert,
sometimes a second helping if we’re lucky,
we were always lucky.
My love, how I miss you and those hot days of summer
the sundial now always in shadow
and my seasons have all become winters.
I wander to the jetty to see your ghost
nothing remains,
it is broken, irrepairable, unloved
just like me.
Paul Dyson
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.
<a href=”https://thewombwellrainbow.files.wordpress.com/2023/04/ovp26.png”>
Sunset at Macritchie (OVP26)- published only on social media
SFM26
AB26
BB26
Clouds (OVP26, BB26)
Clouds scattered, white, high;
water droplets, floating free.
Defy gravity
Hill (BB26)
Climbing the hill, I think
of the times we had together.
Each step is harder than the last.
Hill – a rondel (BB26)
I climb the craggy hill with ancient bones
regretting things that happened in our past
I find each step is harder than the last
My feet ache from the sharpness of the stones
my breath is short; the grief is unsurpassed.
I climb the stony hill with ancient bones
regretting things that happened in our past
There’s so much that I wish I hadn’t known;
Where joy should be I only feel downcast,
life’s play in which I feel I’ve been miscast.
I climb the stony hill with ancient bones
regretting things that happened in our past
I find each step is harder than the last.
Tim Fellows
Trees
(AB,BB)
Born when the stars hung low to warm the earth,
diamond drops glittering among giant ferns,
rooted now in columned stone, irrigated
with water-memory, silent as midnight,
a trailing blackbird song, the scent of honeysuckle,
~trees still spring from source~
anchored ships in earthstorms, never sinking,
arms spread to conjure rain and roosting birds,
crows’ nests bowing among the flapping sheets of cormorant wings,
flying with the clouds, tossing their heads in tempest winds,
singing with blackbird voices to the immutable stars.
Jane Dougherty
Keys to the Place by a Lake
Found a ring
In an underground cave
Followed the top of the hill
To the culvert
Vision of investment property skies
In glossy pamphlets
Leafed through
Someone’s abandoned advertising
The trees grow roots down into glacial time
We see both the surfaces and what is underneath
The cartographic mapping of volume
I was lonely in Ipswich, in upside down
I traced the expansive wall of blue sky and
Scattered clouds
Too dry, we need rain, clumps of the forgotten grasses, slope
Of neglected earth
Spotlight the sun as a klieg light
The walls of igneous rock clapping ancient demon faces
Who painted that, I asked the artist representative –
The one with water reflecting sunrise the peaceful
Boat, the crumbling wooden dock, the bridge
Leading down – I wish to purchase it – to
Affix it to the wall of my property
The one inside the photographs you sent me –
I wear my magic rings. We found them in
The hills above the caves. I take them off
At night – they cast shadows on my
Evolving manuscript. Where I am influences
What I write, asemic notes typed up in courier.
Robert Frede Kenter
A Futile Attempt to Get Closer to Heaven (BB26)
Climb the hill to get as high as possible.
Take an axe to get a clearer view of everything.
Stand on the stump, surrounded by splinters.
Look up, across, spin for dizziness.
But the blues are duller now without the dark branches.
and the clouds are dabbed in patterns
that Rorschach would label as meaningless.
Jamie Woods
Above, Below, and In-between
Inspired by AB26 and OVP 26
Beneath cold, cerulean sea
we dart and dash, circling
and chasing light-dapples
and sun-streams
of yellow, orange, pink, and red
that dance like tightrope acrobats
on the line between–
as we breech
and breathe. Submerge again.
Jane Dougherty
At the hill of Tara Skryne
A windswept Fir ring around the top of the hill.
Survive the test of time and stand there still.
To some, they are haunted to others sacred.
Bewitched or mystic, ideally located.
Steeped in history, fact and fiction,
folk law, mysticism and superstition.
Witches Coven, Druid Chapple.
Hubble bubble toil and trouble.
Nowadays families celebrate the summer solstice.
With fun-filled picnics without flaming crosses.
Ramblers ramble and sightseers survey the land.
The view from the coppice is something grand.
We will stand in the east the grand master said.
We will sing and dance until the last of us is dead.
Frank Colley
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
The Wombwell Rainbow 
