Three badgers

Badger
passes night time,
the track through sunflowers
ripe enough for pigeons,
badger prefers
corn cobs.

Nothing
in the dusk light
touches our garish world—
grey badger, brown fox slip
through the bars of
our cage.

I see
you, grey shadow,
along the hedge trotting,
your drunken sailor gait,
stub-tail swinging,
night lamb.

-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.

F 1.6. Enfield beast

F 2.6. Corpse Bride

F 3.6. Cailleach

The Seven Youths of Beira
[F3.6 Cailleach]

i.
An angry girl, I hammered out valleys
and lobbed great rocks at the space between.
ii.
Washday, always overdue, was a storm.
Ships tangled in my blankets and drawers.

iii.
I’d find a farmer to take me in for winter
and let him fashion me into a doll.

iv.
I had lovers and young
and none of them now.
v.
I worked as a deer-herd and felt
their velvet piping on my palm.
vi.
I was always ugly. The loch would still
to show me again my rusted teeth.
vii.
And is this the last run? I won’t be off
to the Well. Won’t bend and sip. No more.

-Kirsten Irving

Cailleach

& with all the hard physics
of her craft
& with all the muscle
we do not admit
for our goddesses:
she struck. The first spark
leapt from her hammer
& a gibber of apes
palmed it.
She hid her smile
in a stone & carved
& clawed a hard paradise
for them to warm;
a deep rough bowl
to cool their tempers,
sharp comb-cliffs
& the wind pinned fast
to the fleece. She sweats
her kilt & the dye
drips—
inkblue & heathers
& tough green wool
for the graze.
Whitening cloth
tucks tender
round a callous
of hills & a fire
pops sparks. How loud
the echo, how we huddle
with our soft hands
as if we’ll make more
of her gifts.

-Ankh Spice – 6/10/22

 

The wise women of the world (inspired by the Cailleach)

They come in twos, the women
who turn the seasons, or more often threes,
bringing birth, plenty, and easing into death.

Always the women, who rock the cradle,
who sweep the snow, banish the ice,
and spring snowdrops from the damp earth,

they bring down the milk, raise the grain,
sooth and smooth the worried frowns,
touch the sky, walk the earth.

The faces change,
wrinkled with the drying winds of winter
full and apple-bright with spring,

but all walk in beauty or stately majesty,
the year long, taking their cue from the moon,
the tides and the singing birds,

leaving the sun with his one smooth face,
to cast his beams, bask in hero worship
when summer sprawls sweet and mild,

but careless that in wintertime,
when fires splutter and cold famine
sits at table, his smile has no warmth.

-Jane Dougherty

Cailleach

They call you Hag or Old Woman
Veiled One, Of The Woollen Cloak
Cailleach. Woman of Winter.

Or Queen of Winter indeed
The one who has shaped the
Very hills and mountains
Where you live in Scotland

You rule the night and thus
At Yule the Longest Night
You take your throne
But then, so they say
You drink of the magical
Waters so cold
And become a maiden
Once more.

When Samhain approaches
Do you climb the mountains
Cloak a waving, hair silvered
To claim your throne again?

Woman of the night and cold
Lady of Winter, the Crone
The Hag who controls the storm
The mountains are your throne
And there you lie.

-Eryn McConnell

Winter Bringer

My breath the cold wind, my cloak the
snow and ice covering you, world, you
will lie down before me now, and know
the truth of freezing, and all the ways
ice reaches a heart. Oh sure, after a long
time–and you’ll think it too long–warmer
days will come, but you will have come
through the cold with me, and you will have
learned something, or if not, at least
you will have known of me, and you will
not forget.
-Kyla Houbolt (10/6/2022)

Corpse Bride

(based on a Palestinian story, retold in Lilith’s Cave by Howard Schwartz)

When I was 16 and lacking care
I walked among the blasted olive trees
and thought not of jobs & pay
or commuting 3 hours a day each way.

I carried my dead mother’s ring
as a token of the world to keep
and thought nothing of the ocean or the heart so deep.
I rested on a log, there was a twig

that jutted out, like lover’s finger
and to see it (to see how love might feel)
I put her ring on it, bright gold,
and spoke my wedding vows.

The finger shook, turned into a hand,
an arm, a screaming skeleton.
“I will love you forever, dear husband
come into the tree, be mine!”

I ran. I tried to forget it.
It took a long time.
Years. And (believe it!)
I found a love. Then I understood

what I had mocked. But
Emily, took this knot and on our wedding
night sat down the screaming skeleton to tea
And they found a way to share me.

I live in two places now
with a wall in between, my love
is skeletal for an hour a day
and I cross between two worlds:

Emily here in Ramallah,
and my woman of work and bones in Beit El.

-Dave Garbutt

Corpse Bride

The mob is a monster that requires blood
to extinguish its incandescent rage.
Her bridal finery only triggers a flood

of more bludgeoning fury.
After the blood-lust’s complete,
her body’s tossed, unmarked, they scurry,

they want no descendants left to mourn,
though if the beast killed them all,
new targets would soon be found to scorn.

Years later, a young man on his wedding eve,
places his ring on the gnarled root of a tree,
but he discovers it’s bone, and he quivers with disbelief,

shivers as the corpse rises,
with death-breath, declares she is his bride,
and too late he realizes

he cannot hide. Before a group of rabbis,
the corpse bride demands marital satisfaction,
they agree the ritual was performed, then emphasize

(for redaction) the living and dead cannot wed.
At this, she crumbles, bones in a heap,
cries for her lost life, a spool without a thread,

she’s truly dead. The living soon-to-be spouse sympathizes
with her and her life cut short by hate,
she promises to tell her own children the storied surprises–

of the corpse bride who rose after dying in her prime,
so, she’s remembered in each generation, as love and hate,
her memory a reminder and blessing passed down through time.

-Merril D. Smith

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

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.

RESURRECTION OF A SKYLARK
On hearing Vaughan Williams ‘The Lark Ascending’

What if the skylark were reborn,
fledged from within the breast
of a Stradivari violin, attuned to the
heartbeat of wild-flower meadows?

What if the violinist recaptured
that simple bliss in the patchwork of
vetch, clover, dock and ox-eye daisy,
breathing the petrichor of a post-rain evening?

What if the orchestra returned,
their musica dolce releasing fragile
wings in tentative flight, surfing the
rising currents, soaring skywards?

Trilling, trembling, trailing the
cloud-skein of a ripening summer,
honeyed vibrato trickling earthwards
in ritardando, a gentle enchantment.

If so, then he might live again, fly again,
my lover with wistful green eyes and
hair like spilt sunshine. His soul might
soar where the lark first sang affetuoso.

Two hearts might beat in unison again and the
ending become the beginning, grief to joy.
Could we not lie together in that same meadow,
Our love intact, untouchable? Da capo al fine.

-Margaret Royall

-Margaret Royall

Song of the Living Dead

The living
Bury ourselves in shame
Of pipeline trenches dug.

The living are ripped
Jaggedly, lengthwise; symmetry undone
By fracking.

The salt of the living
Bleeds, nuclear waste
Leaking into ocean waters.

The living mourn the loss
Of nature’s bountiful song,
Supplanted by the drone strikes of the dead.
~

“Song of the Living Dead” was published by The BeZine, and is included in Samantha’s chapbook Keeping Afloat (JC STUDIO Press, Oct. 2021). Samantha Terrell is an internationally published American poet whose writing has received five-star reviews. In 2021, she earned First Honorable Mention in the “Anita McAndrews Poets for Human Rights Awards” organized by Poets Without Borders. Terrell resides in upstate New York with her husband and their two children.

-Samantha Terrell

-Neal Zetter

TRAVEL IN THE LAPS OF NATURE:

Stop staring at the screens of
your mobile phones and laptops
for your eyes have strained enough
and shall fall out like a bulb from a socket
if their burning goes beyond the current temperature.
Stop confining yourselves to the rushes and noises of
the shopping malls, clubhouses, discotheques, headphones, and your daily city traffic with honking horns
for your eardrums have vibrated enough to the blows of the cacophonies
and shall rupture like a rock burst in a high-stress mine
if their exposure goes beyond the current noise level.
So, carry your phones in your handbag and your laptop in your laptop bag like emergency toolkits
and step into the lap of nature with your traveling bag
and return afresh with your relaxed eyes, ears, and mind
to switch back to your monotony
and keep on swinging like a pendulum
from your monotony to your travel in the lap of nature.

-©Spriha Kant

TRAVESTY

You trample on our lush green fields
and want to crack the crust of this earth
You taunt us with all your wealth
while sitting at the table of plenty
You smirch the clouds so white and pure
and children choke and gasp for air
You exploit this world
in a rush for oil
and for rich man’s dreams
you’d sacrifice this world

Children’s futures
are put in jeopardy
and nature is suffering
a torrid cruel blow
as trees are cut down
and animal’s habitats
are taken from them,
leaving no place for them to roam

Time is quickly passing by
as this earth shudders
devastation, far and wide
but people still have a voice
and silence is no option
we need to speak
before it’s too late
take to the streets
tell those responsible for this violation
life is precious
to stop this senseless annihilation

-Francis H Powell

Outside.

By the last cut of wild
92% of the picture is trespass.
A picture without life.
Glass squares slide aside
tessellated floor tiles.
Behind gloss white doors
Are square boxes of foods.
Mellow sunlight is rejected by
2ms squared of astroturf,
For recreation and yoga.

Natural regrets.

Milankovitch cycles pedal back
The times, the man’s returning
Precipitation, crimes,
Lamented oscillations
The times, the widening gyre
Until at last, unseen
The mechanism
Reflected spectrum’s green.

Returning winds.

Reed’s caress, like violin’s bows that play on my regrets.
Ice cold, the bitter missed kisses of summer’s last throws,
Rouge my cheeks, water my eyes.

-Kevin Sealby

-Jane Dougherty

Water Music

Majestic waterway
To trumpet fanfares and jubilant strings
King George rides the rising evening tide upstream
His royal barge tugging Handel’s orchestra in tow
To serenade his subjects flocking the bank of the river below
To bathe in the stately adagio,
And glimpse his Highness with his mistresses
To jig and hornpipe dancing

Beneath the surface London’s sewage streams
Silently choking the Thames aquatic life

On the surface I too showed the world serene supremacy
A fit and trim picture of health
While my bloodstream silently screamed
Cholesterol; a timely test revealing arteries furred up
With saturated fat threatening to
Clot and rot me from within

Listen to the rivers sweetly sing
Lullabies on the Wye, the Ouse and Lee
Where anglers wish for tranquillity
Escaping the chase for infinite growth
Ever higher industrial yields
Running off the fields
Agrochemicals poisoning their fish;
Our rivers like my blood vessels clogged
By untreated sewage overflows
As fatbergs block sewers, dulling their echoes;
On the ocean’s surface we are deaf to the cries
Below as her plastic-entangled sea-life
Dies

Statin island
No misplacement nor misspelling here
But what this ailing land needs become
If its waterways are not to perish
In unmusical deep-vein agony
Of ecocidal cholesterol poisoning.

-Peter Gaskell

Bios and Links

-Margaret  Royall

is the author of five books of poetry and a memoir in prose and verse. She has appeared widely in print, in webzines and  poetry anthologies and has won or been short-listed in several competitions. Her second collection ‘Where Flora Sings’, published by Hedgehog Press Nov 2020, was nominated for the Laurel Prize in 2021. Her latest collection, ‘Immersed in Blue’ was published in January 2022 by Impspired Press. She leads a women’s poetry group in Nottinghamshire and takes part in open mic sessions online and in person. Currently she is working on a third poetry collection.

Website: https://margaretroyall.com/ Twitter:@RoyallMargaret

-Francis H. Powell

Born in 1961, in Reading, England Francis H Powell attended Art Schools, receiving a degree in painting and an MA in printmaking. In 1995, Francis H Powell moved to Austria, teaching English as a foreign language while pursuing his varied artistic interests adding music and writing. He currently lives in Brittany, France writing both prose and poetry. Francis H Powell has published short stories in the magazine, “Rat Mort” and other works on the internet site “Multi-dimensions.” His two published books are Flight of Destiny and Adventures of Death, Reincarnation and Annihilation. He has also compiled a book of short stories, poems and illustrations, featuring other writers and poets. The book is called “Together Behind Four Walls” and is a book of lockdown stories and poems. The books has raised money for Marie Curie nurses. He has had poems published in anthologies, for both adults and children. He has done poetry reading for Paris Lit up as well as other events. 

-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 anthologies “Sing, Do the birds of Spring” and “A Whisper Of Your Love” in the fourth and fifth series of the 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 “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 “Wombwell 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 “Wombwell Rainbow”, an initiative taken by Paul Brookes.

-Kevin Sealby.
Musician and Poet, often writing around Environmental issues, and other liberal ideals.
Trying to merge music into poetry and vice versa.

-Peter Gaskell

writes fiction, reviews, poetry and plays.

He has had poems published in Roath Writers 2020 anthology, Places of Poetry where he was one of 200 poets selected from nearly 8000, and the Atlanta Review edition featuring poets from Wales, Atlanta-Review-Spring-2020-04.30.20.pdf (atlantareview.com, search ‘Gaskell’) as well as several haiku in Love The Words Anthology for Dylan Day 2021 (discoverdylanthomas.com)

F 1.5. Leprechaun_

“F 2.5. 220px-Francisco_de_Goya,_Que_viene_el_coco_(Here_Comes_the_Bogey-Man), published_1799

f-3.5-grey-lady

The Dark Hedges (Inspired by F3.5, Grey Lady, Dark Hedges)

This beech tree grove,
an arboreal monument,
a tribute to grace
at midday, delight in its dappled light

but even then,
there’s a sense of something not right
in the tunnel of magnificent arching branches,
shadows form

unsettled and unsettling. Watch now at dusk,
the grey mist in semblance of a female shape
and though you cannot see her face,
you feel her tension and her grief

to wander each night
in the gloaming
through the dark hedges
till at the last tree, she goes–

but on Halloween, she’s joined by others.

-Merril Smith

We hear ghosts but not what lives here

How easy a breathfall eerie
wraiths from the cave of a mouth.
To move that word a human tongue
pushes a road through a tunnel
of veined architecture. It is far
from an arterial route: the trunks
of huge and close red trees root up
from the source, but if they bled
into this culvert—terror. Imagine pulsing
out your life fixed in one accidental place,
reaching your hands out
to all you love, frozen around you.
Only fleeting, unpinned beasts dare
to story this, rush through
treading a cruelty of barricade
they laid. Any wonder what lives here
leans hard in to twig support
across the void. Fearful
ambulants, nothing haunts you here
but this—a yearning to connect,
to shadow into softest grey
the hard, decisive lines you draw
between like bodies: one side, another.

-Ankh Spice – 5/10/22

The dwindling of greatness (inspired by F1:5 the Leprechaun)

They had faces like the sun,
hair black as midnight
or bright as spun gold.

They had magic in their blood
and every bone, bird-bone, hare-bone
and the long bones of the deer.

They were feather and star-light,
proud as the antlered hart,
wise as the oldest salmon,
and flowers sprang in the prints of their feet.

They were music and poetry,
sweet as honey, dark as the ocean,
and their words shaped the world,

but they shrank in the cold
sin-washing of the priests,
twisted by the conqueror’s mockery.

They took their magic to another place,
bright, green and blue as river water,
and in their place, they left a gnome.

-Jane Dougherty

 

White Lady at the Dark Hedges

Some say I’m mist
and others —fog
just not substantial
(as I should be)

some say I’m mourning
some say chasing
a child, my faithless man,
my cruel father

(ask yourself first
why would those people
see that in me?
Exactly.
I’m a projection.)

Choose your poet
as carefully as your coming out dress
I saw this one on a windy Friday
and as he looked through his lens
I whispered
“It was my favourite walk
especially in fog
don’t you want to do that sometimes?
I mean—disappear.”

-Dave Garbutt}{04 October 2022}

\end{document}

Gray Lady (inspired by 3.5)

The silver birches lean together
Over the road, a shadowed tangle
Of branches to block out the light

You come at twilight, they say
Slipping in and out of the trees
Faster than a will o’ the wisp

Do you dance with the trees
In your quiet dreams, lady
Or is your soul entwined in them?

Why do you not rest quiet
In your graveyard sleep
But instead flit at night
Among the silver birch trees?

-Eryn McConnell

The Choice (F.1.5)

A voice whispers:
Do not stand at the crossroads
for too long, waiting for a sign.
All the signposts are gone, and
the wind is neither yours nor mine.
I say, oh never mind, these
paths go two ways only.
I’ll take a third, thanks ever so,
my own two feet know a way
untrod. My roots go down
pretty far. And here come the
leprechauns, unshod cobblers
every one, skipping, limping,
following along. Pots, gold,
rainbows — all lost and gone
but now? Now, never mind.
Daybreak glimmers through
and a new sun singing
begins to shine.

-Kyla Houbolt

F 3.5 The Ballad of the Gray Lady

I walked alone that ghastly night
My pulse a pounding drum
The twisted branches sighed and moaned
And the wind began to hum

The leaves hung pale like ghostly hands
Their fingers dangling near
I quaked beneath their eerie dance
My wits grew dim with fear

The moon sailed out, the sky blanched white
My skin froze bloodless gray
When suddenly I knew such fright
It chased my breath away

As silent as death she rose
An absence of the light
Her face obscured, her eyes aglow
She galvanized my sight

Like leaves before a bitter gale
She floated swift away
Her limbs befogged in gauzy veil
drear amorphous gray

She shivered the air, stilled my breath
Silenced the hunting owls
A stillness born and bred of death
As fey as a wolf’s low howl.

How long she stayed I do not know,
my thoughts are still unhinged.
For still I feel her touch like snow
Deep within my skin.

~Jacqueline Dempsey-Cohen @dempseycohen

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

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.

F 1.4. Merrow Clonfert_Cathedral_Mermaid

2.4. Heksenmoeder the-witches-rout”

F 3.4 Goody Cole 440px-Eunice_Cole_Court_Record_1673

The Carcass

The bear they’d winterfallen—left the hollow landscape
of her to level. Hillocks, once waving with rough black grass,

now skinned, now snowcapped. Come spring and her insects, stop-
motion lake to ichor. A dragonfly hops the island chain of bone.

Carrion-fly, demon, hunter, witch: so many pointed things driven
by the stick. Whatever breaches a skin, it assuades one hunger

or another; a procession of beasts dizzy with desire and believing nothing
can fell them faster than they take. I want to tell you the skeleton

of the bear articulated all this better than I can. I want to tell you it’s written
in the bone. All she reveals is how everything uses up some part

of us. Gall, spleen, guts or magic. Maybe there’s one last bellowing
rush through the dark trees, wind bleating goats through your ribs,

and all that weighed you down is busy feeding other slow shapes travelling.
The wheel of your spine is a blur to them, a roar of wild seasons passing.

-Ankh Spice – 4/10/22

The Merrows (inspired by F 1.4.)

Merrow, the green-haired maid of myth
Or muruch, murduchann or murduchu
If I ask you nicely would you show me
Your cohuleen druith, your magical cap
Or would you perhaps sing your song
And show me what it feels like to be
So very entranced by a sea-nymph?

I wonder where you call your home
O benevolent mermaid of the seas
And would you show it to me?
Is it laden with shells and sea plants
With pillars of towering stone

Will you extend the hand of friendship
Me, a mere human with two legs
Someone who cannot breathe in water
Would you show me your world
Let me see what you see?

I shall strain my eyes looking out for you
When I go back to the North Sea
In the hope that you hear my plea
Perhaps one day when I am walking there
You will arrive, waiting for me.

-Jacqueline Dempsey-Cohen

Brendan’s Mermaid
(at Clonfert)

I watch the pews
wooden waves bringing
people, washed up, hollow,
onto rock, onto sand,
like him,
the tonsured sailor of the skua’s road
half-drowned he found my skin
as I visited the oak casks
for my share of water-life.
What did he want to be granted?
A cathedral, a home, a scriptorium.
He had it, and kept a farthing
of my skin —just that—
inside the altarstone,
it lets me watch the people-waves
singing praise
some of it mine.

-Dave Garbutt

The Witch (All three images)

Women
if beautiful, they drive men to danger
and sin,
if cantankerous or quarrelsome
they’ve let the devil in,

healers sought to make a charm for love,
to ease life’s pain, and guide a baby to its birth,
but vilified when the baby cries or livestock dies—
or ships crash on the rocks–

you’re afraid of her monthly flow
her connection to the moon,
her life-giving womb

somehow, she’s both powerful and weak,
controlling weather, fields, and men,
whether temptress or hag,

there’s no logic
only your greed, lust, and fear
she’s siren or witch
and she makes you twitch
when you examine her body for devil’s marks.

But she has the last laugh,
because death doesn’t end your fear,
you drive a stake through her heart,
and still, she haunts you in the dark.

-Merril Smith

 

Merfolk (Merrow F1:4)

Sea calls in wave-dance
and swaying gardens of kelp
where anemones flower.

We wear foam in our hair,
and our hands entwine hard
and fast as anchor ropes.

Bodies like bullets fit our space
we cleave to our own.

Our hands weave stories in deep water,
words spoken in fish-whispers,
legs fused to forge paths
faster than your thoughts.

Those born of the sea
will die seafolk,
and nothing,
not even your darkest desires
can change a single
silver-glittering scale.

-Jane Dougherty

Lament (F1.4 Merrow Clonfert)

The distant sea sings sadly over land
A tuneful tintinnabulation
that swells and breaks, flinging salt and sand
to scour and score this shameful transformation
of sea nymph to stone, sore desecration.
Her waltz of seafoam tresses plastered stiff,
Her coral smile coldly dead on granite lips.
This shiver of salt-kissed skin enshrined bone deep
cries out for release from the stone’s harsh grip.
She longs for her merman, her seabed, warm sleep
Trapped in black rock, the stone sea maiden weeps.

-Jacqueline Dempsey-Cohen

Definition and Cargo (F1.4)

Not so much a quay
but a seawall, to lean over
and yearn for the mer-beings,
though there are in fact
berths for the small, nay
invisible, ships who hover
always at edges of
inexplicable human feelings.
So, a quay after all. Feel
the tiny sails brush
your blushed cheek
but don’t ask
what they’re after.

-Kyla Houbolt

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

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.

-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.