Eggplant Strategy is Clive’s collection of new poems and reworked former poems, some of which were first published in the Knives, Forks and Spoons Press. Eggplant Strategy is his strategy for the UK running counter to that put forward by Liz Truss and later Rishi Sunak. He realises though the PM’s still hard at work on the five pledges.

Statues (from New Note Poetry) https://www.newnotepoetry.com/autumn-2022 (from August last year)

Statutes

 fractured howls
delayed warnings
(brass coppers)
left on beaches
slight hint of trumpets distil the air
 
across deserts of seas
dislodging sandcastles
discontented rabid capitalists
collect forms from the autopsies
 
 
rewinding giant spheres
mere calligraphy
another monument grazed

Clive Gresswell is a 64-year-old innovative writer and poet who has appeared in many mags from BlazeVOX to Poetry Wars and Tears in the Fence. He is the author of five poetry books…

Blasphemous Sins (in Leeds)

She's dressed in black, but there is a reason she is called a Snow White The flirt, frills to the dark rooms, the candles, the spells a Reflection in a mirror of seeing her instead of yourself. She's got the sleaze standing over your head like a banshee. Questions in Leeds, a tragic love did it bloom? A passion fierce, was it a tale worth told. Is there silence to resting over the tea and the dead eyed stares. A love burned from the behaviors of flowers to dead soldiers. I feel like I'm a wire on a last spark, and you trivial yourself back from a woman to the seashore of a child's eyes. It ends in sorrow, don't you know. She was a wild one, with bright red hair. A bewitching glance, a dress, a feast. a friend a foe, a song for you…

Mineral Wells

As she sat on the porch of the old country cabin in Mineral Wells, Texas, she couldn't help but feel haunted by memories of her sister. The sound of Patsy Cline's voice playing on the radio in the background only added to the melancholy atmosphere. She wasn't sure why she had come back to this place, the place where she and her sister had spent so many summers together as children. But as she sat there listening to the gentle rustling of the pine needles in the breeze, she began to remember the good times. She remembered how her sister used to recite poetry to her from her leather-bound journal, and how they would spend hours exploring the woods behind the cabin, collecting rocks and wildflowers. It was bittersweet to think about those days now, but she was grateful for the memories. And as she sat there, she…

For Paul Brookes’ challenge.

Redstart log

I admit, I haven’t been following the redstarts closely enough to know which day the chicks left, or even if they did. It’s possible they died, or a marten got them, as I never heard the loud cheeping that comes from large, impatient redstart chicks, nor did I see their first chaotic flight.
Despite the hedges and scores of trees in his land, old André, made a nesting box and hung it on a beam in the porch. I imagine it was because he and Georgette enjoyed watching nesting and young birds taking to the air. This is the first year the nesting box has been used by birds. Lizards, but never birds.
There are always redstarts nesting around the house, under the eaves, and last year they were in the hayloft. Not a very good choice as the cats get up there. When…