https://literati-magazine.com/quietly/

Monday: Spiders

Orb Weaver by Rachael Ikins

Spider by Debbie Strange

a spider web

strummed by soft breezes . . .

we can

almost hear the song

of morning dew

Ephemerae 1C, Nov/18

-Debbie Strange

-Dr. Amy Evans Bauer

-Conor Kelly

Karner Blue

‘…a place called Karner, where in some pine barrens, on lupines, a little blue butterfly I have described and named ought to be out.’

Vladimir Nabokov

Because it used to be more populous in Illinois.

Because its wingspan is an inch.

Because it requires blue lupine.

Because to become blue, it has to ingest the leaves of a blue plant.

Because its scientific name, Lycaeides melissa samuelis, is mellifluous.

Because the female is not only blue but blue and orange and silver and black.

Because its beauty galvanizes collectors.

Because Nabokov named it.

Because its collection is criminal.

Because it lives in black oak savannahs and pine barrens.

Because it once produced landlocked seas.

Because it has declined ninety per cent in fifteen years.

Because it is.

– Carrie Etter

Early morning sailing

This ship of bones slips its moorings,

unslept, mapping wet

green currents

from porch to fence. In the east wind

of a new day all at sea, an orb-weaver

has draped her gifts; kind spokes

for my navigating. A dewed abacus, hawsers

struck with light – this vessel will hold

for one more day.

So if I ever tell you

‘I am tired of spiders’

their shimmerstring snares set

to catch the earth’s exhales, as morning

kicks open every sense

with the stupid magic of sailing bodies,

if I ever tell you this, know

there is a poet’s husk to plant –

stake out his ribs

for the finest webs.

-Ankh Spice

Tarantula Down Your Toilet

I’m the tarantula down your toilet

Your prowler in the pan

I want to bite and frighten you

Whatever way I can

I’ll nibble on your bottom

I’ll stalk you on the seat

‘Cause yes you’ve guessed

That human flesh

Is what I love to eat.

I’m the tarantula down your toilet

I’ve chosen here as home

Don’t linger on the loo too long

While playing with your phone

For when I’m feeling hungry

My fangs will make their mark

You’d better switch the light on

If you enter after dark.

I’m the tarantula down your toilet

You’ll hear me splash about

Prod me, poke me, push me

But I’m never moving out

I could live in your cupboard

Your kitchen, loft or shed

Yet in this bowl is where I roll

And where I’ve made my bed.

I’m the tarantula down your toilet

Who’s causing you dismay

Don’t get ideas to calm your fears

By flushing me away

My kingdom is your bathroom

Where I can wander free

So pick a new location

When you have the need to pee

-Neal Zetter

Arachne

Weave words into each web

Those that ask forgiveness for mortal misgivings

Lintel scaffold with hanging thread

A grim reminder of shame and pride

Athena’s touch brought life

But what life is this trapped in tragic tangles

Where snagged raindrops mimic tears

Their wet globes a shining taunt to eight dry eyes

Feel vibrations shimmer silken lines

Heavy with cocooned memories

Mummified bundles of what came before

And will now never return

Tapestries woven on two legs

Whilst fast fingers wound warp weights

Sunlight spun into yarn as it warmed skin

Wisps of cloud layered in to lighten fabric

With colours added from rainbow wild flower palette

Its joyous creation celebrated with birdsong

As nature marvelled at how such beauty could appear from human hands

And what beauty it was, enough to turn a gods head

That too much was said from those ungrateful lips

Challenge came and judgment passed

Loom lost to goddess’ fury

So now all that’s left

Is that daily task of radial construction

Abdomen’s endless thread guided by leg

to form hypnotic spiral

Hung out as a handkerchief

A catch all for housemaids curses

-Lisa Johnston

Spider

I am watching a spider crawl

in circles, anticlockwise,

toward the centre of its web,

meting out its sticky silk,

deft legs weaving the thread,

pulling the weft taut, letting it go,

while wind buffets the doily

of elastic lace,

an almost invisible spiral

against the grey-bright clouds

woven so tightly it could trap

the tiniest wings.

Two centimetres from the centre

the spider stops and leaves a gap,

weaves itself a little seat,

a transparent lily pad. I wonder

if it grew tired, on the hottest

day of the year, or decided

to weave some emptiness

into its web

to let the breeze

blow through.

(A version of this poem was originally published in Amethyst Review, Ed. Dr Sarah Law, 19 December 2019)

-Lucy Whitehead

Spider in the Bath

We have all known the context of its struggle;

Up through the tunnelling darkness

Towards the smallest mote of light.

How long it climbs

It cannot say, nor know anything of destination,

But it is compelled to move upwards to brightness.

And when it stands in the abyssal white plain

And sees nothing but the curvature of space and time,

The dumb blankness of the world it has inherited,

That it has earned from its journey through blackness,

What can it do but wait, stupefied by the truth

Of an existence that tilts on the presence

Of a fate that comes to scoop

It up and drop it out of the window, back to a world

Coloured with distractions, wrapped in the shawls

Of infinity.

-Colin Bancroft

-ZZZ

-Z D Dicks

Brotherhood of All Colors

With the advantage of two, antennae less,

With a desire for a journey to Antarctica

I, Loureedia Phoenixi just arrived from Iran

named after the famous actor villain ‘Joker’

For the Lord made me in the same image

with the red and white face, but black legs

I am not a racist spider, never would be, I

love all company, except ‘black widow’ and

‘Brown recluse’ both harm humans, both

live in the states, a family of Anthropods

‘hearing by the hair’ we velvet spiders are

charming and rare, collectively caring and

Community builders, striking a brotherhood

all colors, white black red white and brown.

Tiny but powerful, amazing in design and so

unique in action for three weeks on ground

You can see the movie Joker, but to see me

you will need a powerful magnifier machine

A spider with a strong velvet dress, a job to

contain the insects from devastating harvests

Discovering Loureedia spiders is challenging

for most of the year we rest in subterranean nests.

Anjum Wasim Dar

Copyright CER 2020

Eight Long Legs Adorned with Hairs

In corners of rooms and hidden under stairs
Under your bed , inside your shoe !!
Hairy ? , scary ? Monster ?
No it’s not true !
See me as your friend, a quiet housemate .
Won’t see me in the daytime , only when it’s late

=Jim Start

Pale Skin Over Bone

No muscle.

His arms a blackbirds legs.

With each visit his skull

more defined in hollows.

He says I have spiders

in my eyes even when I wear glasses

He asks for his specs cleaner.

and the blue plastic bowl

that blows.

-Paul Brookes

Bios And Links

-Lisa Johnston

is based in the West Midlands and started writing poetry two years ago. She enjoys taking part in local Spoken Word events and recently appeared at PoArtry for Wolverhampton Literary Festival 2020, There is No Planet B, World Poetry Day, Positive Poetry, MHAW and World Oceans Day. Her work has been included in anthologies and most recently as part of the Haiflu project, a national project recording poetic responses to lockdown. She currently works to promote arts and culture in her local area through community projects.

-Carrie Etter

has published four collections of poetry, most recently The Weather in Normal (UK: Seren; US: Station Hill, 2018), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her poems have appeared in Boston Review, The New Republic, The New Statesman, The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem, Poetry Review, TLS, and many other journals and anthologies internationally. Her next publication is a pamphlet, The Shooting Gallery (Verve, October 2020), of two series of prose poems exploring the conjunction of youth and violence.

=Jim Start

is 39 from Cornwall. He is a lorry driver who writes poetry and is also working on an adult book about child abuse and a children’s book

-Amy Evans Bauer’s

recent and umbels (Jonathan Williams prize, Shirt Pocket, 2020) follows PASS PORT (Shearsman, 2018) as part of her at-sea SOUND((ING))S. Her poetry includes Stalking Gerard Manley Hopkins (Woodland Pattern, 2016), and features in Poetics for the More than Human World (2020), Chicago Review, Molly Bloom and elsewhere. https://goldsmiths.academia.edu/AmyEvansBauer

“Skipper on Aster” by Rachael Ikins

“Sipping Nectar” by Rachael Ikins

Lady Birds by Debbie Strange

-Cheryl Moskowitz

Intruder

No time for the unbelievable;
eyes follow in alarm,
around and conclude out;
a sound more often than a sight.

Think how human mechanics might
enable size for that same sound,
interlude for sleep, for dreams,
for needed solitude.

=Colin Dardis

Jo Weston “The Fawn And The Flea”. Please scroll down to the bottom of the link to see her video:

https://joweston1.wixsite.com/joweston/poetry-videos

beer can graveyard
the house fly
does another lap

surprise party
gnats congregate around
the toilet light

afternoon heat
a couple of flies rest
on the guard dog’s nose

a fly floats
around my pint glass —
lock in

-Johnny Haiku McManus

As it appears in Ink, Sweat And Tears

-Laura McKee

Winged Arrivals

Suddenly jewelled green is bitter.
Under the hottest sun this year
thin legs land on skinned brown.

I watch wondering.

How can that beautiful peacocked metallic hue
associate with this dull stench?

Hand gloved in plastic bag
I encompass the gathering point,
remove the flies feast.

I long to reclaim that brightest of greens
take it back for Barcelona days,
but the tainting odour lingers.

-Sue Finch

Cockroaches

The Stalls crowd eating salmon at the bar
suspected nothing of the teeming mass,
a cast of thousands underneath the fridge
that held their ices for the interval,
their chocolate, strawberry and vanilla tubs.
One night, some careless usher dropped his change;
we had to move the thing to get it up.
Out came the cockroaches, big, little, large,
by ones and twos at first, dazed by the lights,
they straggled on. Then came a seething crowd,
returning veterans from Waterloo.
We left the room, lacking the killer drive.
The crackling-creaking-rustling quickly stopped.
They’d all returned to their ancestral home.

In time, some trendy so-and-so decreed
(ignoring the past visits of the Thames),
the basement decor needed livening up.
He had it done in smart brown hessian
to show off theatre prints, costume designs
from plays, grey aluminium-framed, for sale.
The Thirties’ paintwork was all covered up,
and things got warmer. He’d not bargained for
the insects having his same sense of taste,
brown sacking, just what any roach would love.
They did too. What a Spring they had, up, down
and round about. They even did things by
the cloakroom hatch, rode on velvet jackets,
drowned in gin.

-FIona Pitt-Kethley

Insect

Walking by the council houses in the falling snow, I thought I saw someone waving to me from a downstairs window. Yet when I got close enough to press my face against the frosty glass, I realised I had been mistaken; there was only a family watching television. Looking more closely still however, I saw myself walking on the screen. The youngest daughter was crying because the way I dragged my crushed leg behind me reminded her of an insect.

(From Shifting Registers, Shearsman, 2011)

Flies

in their armies
crawl across the stinging desert,
eyes begging the horizon to
meet them.

The sun is a metal mirror
reflecting, shooting the sting into
black backs till they
wilt yellow;
die;

crumble into,
become a part of, that
sand they once crept on –
the white dust
of their ancestors.

-Ian Seed

Cicada nymphs spend years deep underground
then (should) emerge in the cool night to shed their skins.

That summer afternoon
you became a mother
for three days, and a tree
for three minutes. She’d emerged too early,
the small brown spaceship of her body
launched to the surface
by the tumult of a fallen oak. The sound
a woman looses when her bare leg
is persistently climbed by tiny hooked crampons
is shrill and bounces the eardrums. Cicada
choirs echo the same – perhaps
that’s how you bonded so deeply
with an insect. So tender
as she slowed, her skin hardening
in the sun, so carefully her stiff feet
pinned into cradle-cracks of branch. Once in a lifetime
or never, may all of us witness something born
again. And this creature, transparent as a body
of water, fighting from a split rock. Becoming deep
impossible with setting vein, aurora blood-
inked by sky and leaf and petal. Her wings twisted
awry too fast, betrayed by time
of day. The female of this species
stays silent. She watched us
quietly, complaining never
of our strange delight
our stranger grief
until she left this brief, hard light.

-Ankh Spice

File:Osias Beert – Flowers in a German tigerware vase, with a bluebottle fly and a Red Admiral butterfly, on a ledge.jpeg

Bluebottle by Rachel Deering

Bluebottle

Funeral directors of blow flies arrive,
always punctual to manage the dead,
compound eyes range a corpse
with an efficient fervour,
appropriate the decay required
to feed and lay their gentles,
and despite their necessity,
their indisputable place
in the order of things –
we are disgusted –
death is not a nursery for the young.
Unashamedly, they wear their colours
with pride, electric blue and green,
polished to a mirrored sheen,
bristled, claw-toed, filigree-winged:
beautiful, in fact, and yet,
the buzz – the noise of corruption,
the bold pronouncement of the presence
of the proximity of death;
mortality hovers, frightens,
darts to take flight from my swat.

Rachel Deering.

The Lonely Fly

Looking for love?????
Must like fresh vomit,
taste with your feet.
Enjoy walking upside down
and be fond of defecting
whenever you land.

In it for the buzz.
Young and single male fly
with a zany sense of humour
and a love of travel.
Life’s short, so live a little.
No spiders need apply

PS Must lay your own eggs.

-Dai Fry

Upside Down with a Hundred Eyes

Grapes are sour in Antarctica
But we have abundant decaying
matter, all over the world a scatter
to lay our fine family eggs,

From the Order of Diptera, almost
all terrestrial habitats are ours, a
hundred eyes to see, nothing is hid
from land or sea,

The only weapon we dread is the ‘swat’
ever present by the dining table spread.
We live on a liquid diet, Ah God did not
bless us with teeth, but designed us to

Taste food with our legs and feet,we can
walk up side down, anywhere green or
brown, fear us-
Fear Us more, than Covid-19, the
dangerous part lies with the eyes in between.

We can survive all pesticides insecticides,
be a nuisance with our buzzing noises
carry diseases all around in the air, on ground
cover the fruit or food, we will find the way around.
We the flies are magnificent in minuteness.

-anjum wasim dar
Copyright CER 2020

Musca domestica

I drive you mad
I’m the least of things
cruising just out of reach
on cellophane wings

in through the keyhole
looking for meat
I walk on the ceiling
on six sticky feet

I spit on your food
I sample your beer
I shit on your lampshade
I buzz in your ear

I sit on your breakfast
and wash my face
I land on your neck
and leave a kiss

I land in your hair
you shake me out
I land on your cheek
bloody cheek you shout

I land on the baby
I land on the cot
I take off backwards
to evade the swat

I see in slow-motion
I see in the dark
I sleep on the pelmet
I’m up with the lark

I breed at great speed
to replace the dead
I’m the least of things
and I drive you mad

-Ama Bolton

.flies.

day of flies, warm weather.
say what you will.it is
not
my fault .
the day begins.

sbm.

. flying things.

surround this area,
live inside. loving
lamps ,damp october air.
shadow, films
with out words, stuttering.
moths, yes i usually write
of moths, now long legs
come into play. outside
planes fly over, estuary
birds call. autumn.

sbm.

My Millipede

I’ve never met the millipede
That lives within these walls.
From baby-steps pattering ear-filled
To stomping wheelie bin thunder above
But I’ve seen the forlorn piles of shoes
Clogging up the hall
Holding the imprint of his resolve
Believing he is owed all the odd socks
Liberated laundry rebel
When he leaves
I shall miss the perennial warm-toed thief
We’ll shake many hands
A long farewell of regal waving
Scurrying to standstill
Steve.

-Kate Mattacks@mypaperskin

Incubation

So this is what I’ve arrived at—this mouthful existence,
this pale-green that even breath might break. There is no sky.

Only the flatness of blood and feelers. Taut for release
is the world, a flood that will engulf even the sky.

Frog, snake and hawk—all sound the same under water. I float
a bird in the lagoon as if it were the sky.

Soon, the hungers will take me in their arms and pollen
will light everything in yellow drifts. Soon, nothing but sky.

And yet there’s nothing colder than the rooms of waiting,
told nothing, knowing nothing. It’s easier to forsake sky,

to accept this incarceration as permanent,
a cell no key may breach. I grow still as the sky.

Hour by hour even the slightest breeze can kill. Stealth
lodges in my veins, a song. There is a lowering of sky.

Time slides like sheets of rain. Inside me, something opens,
anemone of many petals. It must be the sky.

-Anindita Sengupta

-Andres Rojas

The centipede that liked to read

The centipede
Loved to read
From her head to her very last toe
There’s mystery afoot
One in each book
And fifty books on the go

The ladybirds
Like the words
The leeches like the pictures
The caterpillars
Like creepy thrillers
The spiders ones with witches

When the sun gets low
The glow worms glow
To light up every last word
Then she marks all the pages
(that takes her ages)
And they dream of the stories they’ve heard

-Phil Sheppard

Fly

I would melt a frozen orchid
in my mouth until it blossoms,
cradle the mosaic of a shattered
snail in my hands, fuse it whole,
breathe orbs of sunlight through
the ether to the chrysalis
of your body, turn your sickness
into strength.

But instead,
this summer afternoon, I scoop
a meniscus-flattened fly
from the bathtub, dab
the pool of wetness from around
its waterlogged remains,
blow like a miniature zephyr
until I sense
an almost imperceptible stirring,
gentle twitch of consciousness.

A single glistening
thread unpeels from human skin.
Six black legs spring
against hot pink finger,
separation of bodies,
shake of slick wings,
a moment of orientation,
suddenly flight.

This I can do
again and again,
give someone else
another chance at life.

(Anti-Heroin Chic, December 2019, Peace – Kindness – Sensitivity issue, Ed. James Diaz)

-Lucy Whitehead

Humming Tree

This Olearia:
every floret holds a hum.
Hoverfly heaven.

Midge

A midge is a fly
with a look in its eye:
here’s my itchy surprise.

-Yvonne Marjot

-Amy Evans Bauer

Fly Me To The Moon
(One Day in the Life of a Fly)

Born at dawn in this nightclub lounge,
I’ve got a talent that may astound.
I might be only a bug without a stinger,
But, no razzing, I’m quite a singer.
Give me Blues or Dixieland,
A little swing, I’ll swing it, Man!

And as for requests, this one’s the bomb,
Old Bart wrote well when he wrote this song.
A snappy tune worthy of sharin’
Sung also by Frankie and Bobby Darin.

(It was the first song played on the moon
by Buzz Aldrin. Hey—Buzz! Dig it, Pally!!)

So, you’ve got me, the zippy crooner
Belting out a tune that once went lunar,
Bringing out the smooch in honeymooners,
Making me feel like a floating ballooner.

So, I ain’t a poet,
Don’t I know it!

La-la-la-it’s cold up here in the air.

Wait!! Is that a lounge lizard
that just sat down in front
and is sticking out his ton..?!!!!!!

-Linda Imbler

Ode To A Katydid

Katydid, your appearance beguiles —
Resembling that which does not dwell
Among the creeping.

Silent and separate from the choir,
You slowly slink beneath the sunlight as a specter,
So rare to behold.

Exquisite beauty so easily overshadowed
By the bittersweet song of your ensemble,
And so elusive to the human eye!

Katydid, bask in Summer’s glow while the sun still allows,
And when the day is done, sing your measures of
The season’s sorrowful song.

Your symphony awaits and
Your audience knows that your notes
Will yield to snowflakes and shivers before too long.

-Rachel B. Baxter (previously published in Medium)

dead houseflies
litter my windowsill
blindsided
not even compound eyes
see the way out of here

Undertow Tanka Review 7, Sept/15

-Debbie Strange

wild carrots in the meadows
a horsefly settles on Queen Anne’s lace

The Asahi Shimbun

away from the crowd
estuary fireflies
and I

Creatrix 45 Haiku June 2019 Issue.

isolation
on a sultry night
mosquitos

Pangolin Review, Covid-19 May 2020

orphan
a fly shares
her begging-bowl

FemkuMag 2, July 2018 and
Wind Flowers – the Red Moon Anthology 2019 and
https://www.redmoonpress.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=32&products_id=324

long month
the cicada’s cry
yet to arrive

Re-side Issue 3, Winter 2019

very s l o w l y
a sudden swat
misses the fly

Shot Glass Journal Issue #31 May 2020

a yellow jacket miner emerges
the secrets

A haiga in the inaugural issue of Bleached Butterfly Magazine

-Christina Chin

Bios and Links</strong

-Christina Chin

is from Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia. Recently she won two of City Soka Saitama’s 2020 prizes. She is the 1st place winner of the 34th Annual Cherry Blossom Sakura
Festival 2020 Haiku Contest hosted by University of Alabama’s
Capstone International Center. Her photo-haiku won a Grand Prix Award in the 8th Setouchi Matsuyama International Contest in 2019. She is published in the multilingual Haiku Anthology (Volumes 3-5) and the International Spring Saijiki. Christina is published in Haikukai (俳句界) one of Japan’s biggest monthly haiku magazines. Her poems appear in many journals including AHS Frogpond Journal, the Red Moon Anthology, Akitsu Quarterly Journal, The Asahi Shimbun, ESUJ-Haiku, Presence, Chrysanthemum, The Cicada’s Cry, The Zen Space, Wales Haiku Journal, Prune Juice, Failed Haiku and Cattails (UHTS).
You can find Christina Chin online at WordPress: https://christinachin99blog.wordpress.com/. She also maintains an ongoing scheduled blog of featured and published haiku: https://haikuzyg.blogspot.com/.
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/Christina_haiku?s=09
Instagram:
https://instagram.com/zygby22

-Anindita Sengupta

is the author of City of Water (2010) and Walk Like Monsters (2016). Her work is in several anthologies and in Plume, Asian Cha, One, Bombay Literary Journal, High Desert Journal and others. She has been a Charles Wallace Fellow, and has received awards from TFA India and Muse India. She is from Mumbai and currently lives in Los Angeles. www.aninditasengupta.com

-John McManus

is an award winning Haiku poet from Carlisle, Cumbria, England. He’s the author of Inside His Time Machine (Iron Press, 2016) and After The Rain (Bones, 2019)

-Rachel Deering

is a teacher who lives in Bath with a cat. She loves history, folklore, nature, science, art and literature. She has been published in a few journals and anthologies here and there. In January, 2020 Cerasus Poetry published her debut collection, ‘Crown of Eggshell’. Rachel contributes regularly to ABCTales writing under the name of onemorething.

-Rachael Ikins

Associate Editor Clare Songbirds Publishing House, Auburn NY

https://www.claresongbirdspub.com/shop/featured-authors/rachael-ikins/

2020 NLAPW Biennial Letters Competition 3rd prize Childrens category

2019 Faulkner Finalist, 2019-20 Vinnie Ream semi-finalist, 2018 Independent Book Award winner (poetry), 2013, 2018 CNY Book Award nominee, 2016, 2018 Pushcart nominee

Www.writerraebeth.wordpress.com

https://m.facebook.com/RachaelIkinsPoetryandBooks/

@poetreeinmoshun on Instagram

@writerraebeth on Tumblr

@nestl493 on Twitter

-Ama Bolton

is a writer, editor and book-artist and convenes a Stanza group in Somerset.

-Kate Mattacks@mypaperskin–

I’m a researcher at the University of Reading with the Stories of Ageing Project. I support therapeutic writing workshops in hospitals and prisons. Trying to write more poetry, feed 3 dogs and be more human…

-CHERYL MOSKOWITZ

writes poetry for adults and children. Her most recent publication is THE CORONA COLLECTION – A CONVERSATION. http://www.coronacollectionpoetry.com Cheryl’s website is http://www.cherylmoskowitz.com

=Andres Rojas

is the author of the chapbook Looking for What Isn’t There (Paper Nautilus Press Debut Series Winner, 2019) and the audio-only chapbook The Season of the Dead (EAT Poems, 2016). His poetry has been featured in the Best New Poets series and has appeared in, among others, AGNI, Barrow Street, Colorado Review, Massachusetts Review, New England Review, and Poetry Northwest.

-Yvonne Marjot

-FIona Pitt-Kethley

is the author of more than 20 books published by Chatto, Abacus, Salt, Peter Owen and others. SHe lives in Spain.

is a lost kiwi, now living on a Scottish island. She has been making up stories and poems for as long as she can remember. Her first volume of poetry, The Knitted Curiosity Cabinet, won the Brit Writers Award for poetry in 2012. She loves her job, running a small public library, and has published four novels and a book of short stories. Twitter handle: @alayanabeth

-sonja benskin mesher

born , Bournemouth.

now

lives and works in North Wales
as an independent artist

‘i am a multidisciplinary artist, crafting paint, charcoal, words and whatever comes to hand, to explain ideas and issues

words have not come easily. I draw on experience, remember and write. speak of a small life’.

Elected as a member of the Royal Cambrian Academy and the United Artists Society
The work has been in solo exhibitions through Wales and England, and in selected and solo worldwide.
Much of the work is now in both private, and public collections, and has been featured in several television documentaries, radio
programmes and magazines.

Here is my interview of sonja benskin mesher:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/10/16/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-sonja-benskin-mesher/

-Ian Seed’s

latest collection of poetry is Operations of Water (Knives, Forks and Spoons Press, 2020). His collection of prose poems, The Underground Cabaret, will be published by Shearsman in autumn 2020.

-Phil Sheppard

is a writer and illustrator from Doncaster. A former primary school teacher, he is currently working as Doncaster’s Senior Project Officer for the National Literacy Trust. His website is http://www.philshepp.com

Night after night, the tiniest moths snip
Bits off stars, causing them to fall.
You may have seen these moths, and ignored them.
They are very plain, and very small.
Yet the giant lunas of dreams and nightmares
Are not able to reach those stars.
-Elizabeth Moura

-sbm

#vss365 #BardBits #WrittenRiver 1613 #DimpleVerse #FeelLines #acrostic

“SLOW”
Shadowy
Lepidoptera
Opens
Wings

”Hedonist of souls and seasons”
-Fi

-Dinting Fields by Jay Caldwell, originally published in Places Of Poetry. Published by kind permission

Nuns Galore

I remember a time when the desert wasn’t metaphor,
when I was inserted there, for dry-throated reasons,
for years. A tree outside my cell leaved itself after rain
with lime parakeets and open-handed moths cloaking
the trunk with heavy wings of serge.
A decent desert, worth its salt. A sister-lined system.
The desert isn’t the desert unless it is too big for you.
This spiritual wilding lacks waymarkers and bounds.
And we were desert mothers and accomplices,
engendering puddle-babies and preening date palms;
aspersing them with quarter-buckets of day-old
well water, when it could be spared:
until they poked out flaring devils’ tongues—
which seemed to give a focus.

Days Round like the Moon

Mapped to the urban (but the soul can live on a little green,
can thrive on a tree; witness Coleridge’s patch of sky),
they nonetheless call themselves women of the blue flowers,
who flow back to the source, small and pink-breasted, multifoliate,
stamens alight. They will never be obsolete, women of the blue faces,
women of the blue fleeces, their tongues plumped up, giving rue,
dealing it like it was a winning hand at rummy, a many-wristed mother
wiping little mouths with a muslin napkin, while slow white moths
gather at the door. During Compline on the radio, a husband makes a pass
at the agency cook, who takes it all in her athletic stride. At day’s end,
the rhythm of the hours pauses on its cusp and the women reclothe
themselves in midnight blue, clutching the stars, women of the blue faeces,
dusting the moon and sinking down naked to dawn and Lauds.

-Geraldine Clarkson

-David Pollard

moths on the screen door
light is a wicked thing
blinding the hopeful
drawing in fragile creatures
looking for something real

-Elizabeth Moura

a hammock
of tent caterpillars
sags with dew . . .
our differing opinions
on the nature of beauty

tanka published in Atlas Poetica Special Feature, January 2018

bind my body
with spanworm silk
lay me down
in a shaded garden
until I turn to earth

tanka published in Atlas Poetica Special Feature, August 2019

-Debbie Strange

cicada
lichen

lizard
moth

-Charley Ulyatt (Published in Hummingbird)

MOTH-KU

lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp
lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp
lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp

=Susanna Lee

Faceless extinctions

A moth arrives like a small hand passing over my face
and when I open my eyes a heartbeat thuds against my
bedside shade. Leave your window ajar and your lamp lit –
why, that’s an invitation, says he. White ermine, little prince.

It was all my fault. No sooner had he nested than I requested
him gone. My insides spun him a silk cocoon, simple to sweep.
He had no face. A moth is a butterfly as a weed is a flower
alighting in the wrong place. Garden tiger, he grew.

A moth arrives like tinnitus, but listen and he stills his wings.
He only begins again on his own terms. Tell me my name?
he asks and won’t stop, like I am a light-trap and he is stunning
himself. Blood-vein, a lost boy looking for his shadow.

It was a hospital bed in strip-light. How uselessly we witness
the faceless. Our windscreens are clean of winged-reminders
of what is lost. In each of my hands, a small hand of the living.
Notice these night-thoughts and let them go. V-moths, thinning.

-Anna Kisby (originally published in Ink, Sweat and Tears)

The Butterfly will be admired,
While moths are often less desired.

-David Rudd-Mitchell

-bronwen griffiths

-Chris Jones

-Colin Bancroft

The large moth that flew in

It poked me in the cheek, trying to fly into my mouth, seeking refuge as if it were a word I uttered long time ago and now awakened from the dead.

Moth, from Old English moththe, Middle Dutch motte, Old Norse motti—were you a sound from sleep, a muffled cry? Were you spoken in error in the wrong ear, unintelligible, soft? Were you lost, looking for meaning down my throat?

Were you the comet moth, the black witch, the luna or the Gypsy, the emperor’s gum, good god, the dark dagger, dusky brocade, the death’s hand, the flame, the ghost, the shark, the snout, or the true lover’s knot? Were you November, or winter?

I’ll never know. I picked you up and threw you out into the night.

-Claudia Serea

Moth

This crypt still place
of twisted sheets,
a midnight room
black wings in flight.

I wake and struggle
to free my tangle
understand where
and how I lie.

The room lightens
monochromatic,
a landscape of shape
and shadow.

A large patterned
moth a terror to me.

A single flame,
a wooden box.
At last I sleep.

In this morning light
I opened the box,
it was empty.

-© Dai Fry 26th June 2020

-Dr. M.W. Bewick

The moth and the moon

The moth in my hand stopped
chained by the dust on my fingers.
Its fluttering receding with the moon
that it will never chase again.
The dust is mine
but the prized moth
that I thought was within my grasp
is now the moth and moon of a tragedy.
Forgive me.

-Jim (the poet) Young

.. mothth..

the mothth as collage.
a quiet ththing.

#jaw

(photo challenge)

-sbm

fire fetish

she reaches
for the flame,
and her fingertips
burst into moths…

=Karlo Sevilla

This piece was previously published here in Quatrain.fish: https://quatrain.fish/post/148500316772/karlo-sevilla on August 9, 2016.

 Queen Carola’s Parotia on the Pergola

There was a gypsy moth massacre
Searching under decaying wood to get to the heart of contentment
Queen Carola’s Parotia on the Pergola
Reminiscent of a young European Paola
I heard news reports that it would be too windy for the vessels to dock
Ignoring the coarse-haired drummer
Into the virtual portal, longing to feel the sun again
Getting carried by Sunday schemes in your Chevrolet Blue Blazer
In the middle of doubting myself before speaking out
Overjoyed when I saw you outside the drugstore
I’m glad you’re grounded because I don’t want you to leave
Just know I’m wide for you

-Samantha Merz
Vancouver, British Columbia

Queen Carola’s Parotia on the Pergola poem published online at Grey Thoughts on May 25, 2019.

Island Sonnets 1

Rarities

The Slender Scotch Burnet Moth clings on
To this yellow bloom, this basalt cliff:
The fragile edge of a fragmentary life
Confined to islands. Under the melting sun
Summer’s haze shimmers over the sea.
There’s a threat of cloud in the west. The wind spills
A scent of gorse flowers over the folded hills.
This warm day’s a welcome rarity.

There’s so much peace in my heart it’s almost pain.
I’m bracing myself to withstand the next surprise,
Which isn’t coming. Ever. Only summer lies
In the days ahead. I’m facing the curious, strange,
Singular thought that it may all be over and done.
I cling to that fragile edge and bask in the sun.

-Yvonne Marjot

-Debbie Strange

dying moth” – haiga, Failed Haiku Journal of Senryu Vol.3, Issue 33, Sept/19

moth dust
my muse speaks
of distant stars

Stardust Haiku, issue 35, November 2019

exotic moth display
a dream fragment
surfaces

Acorn #44, spring 2020

a silver moth
among the strawberry roots
autumn chill

Otata 47, November 2019

a white moth
lingers at the window
new moon

Asahi Haikuist Network, 29 June 2018

new moon
silently a chrysalis
splits open

Asahi Haikuist Network, 29 June 2018

Suicidal Moths

Ignorant moths dancing around the flames,
Unaware they’re participating in suicidal games.
Blissful in their quest, heading for the light,
Oblivious of the consequence of their self-destructive plight.
Expecting their fluttering to result in a gain,
Not the inevitable feel of life consuming pain.
Unknowing that their bodies are set to bubble and froth,
They joyously dance around the light,
each in turn becoming . . .
another suicidal moth.

Michelle Stevens

The moth child

All night
nestled in
her shell of light
she sings
of her sadness.
Fluttering wings
surround her,
flashing silver
in the moonlight.
And when she is
afraid,
her body
dissolves
into a thousand
white moths
which disappear
into darkness.

pale autumn moon
who is knocking
at your door?

-Whitehead L, 2018, “The moth child’, in Scryptic: Magazine of Alternative Art and Literature 2.4, Eds S C Gagnon, L A Minor, p70

Missing the Transformation

Moth, we owe you
Our deepest apology.

Not for letting little hands
Capture you in caterpillar
Youth, tiny feet tickling
Wrists and forearm skin;

Not for placing you
In a plastic box,
Snapping shut the lid,
Watching you build a rough cocoon;

Nor for placing you atop
A catch-all table in the kitchen
To which we gravitated,
Observing you at perigee.

Instead, we apologize for
Forgetting you at Christmas.
You emerged and spread wings
In a vacant world,

Devoid of blooms, without a mate.
You are significant for the miracle
We failed to see. Rest now in our garden,
Transform once more for our benefit.

Forgive us for ignoring
Your advent in our home.

-Devon Marsh

she is suspended
between here and gone
a cobweb
catching the light
of this moth-winged life

A Hundred Gourds 4.1, Dec/14

-Debbie Strange

Power of The Moth

Yet un described
member of the Order of Lepidoptera
of the Paraphyletic group, one
of the 160,000 alive on this planet.
Think not of me as a butterfly
though I am a painted lady, breeding
in Royal State, beware I am deadly
my habitat disturbed, not comforting,

I hide and rest by day, not for fear of the
butterfly, I believe in peaceful coexistence,
having long witches’ nose, but not casting spells,
keratin I love, in silk cashmere wool angora fur,

Yes I often hit the wall, I am confused by light
but when I fly by it, I frighten the flame, I love
to play the game, I bite , chew from side to side
hiding in basements cool fabric folds , inside.

Nature created me to warn mankind of the
temporal world, whatever lies unused, I eat
and destroy, so world ends and I too die
or else so delicate , how long can I fly?

“Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth”,
where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves
break through and steal, but lay up for yourselves
treasures in heaven , away from moths and all decay.

-anjum wasim dar
Copyright CER 2020

Moth

She stares into the droplet of water
and pretends to be a bear.

Her body is covered in brown fur
and she has a bump, right where

her shoulders should be, like a
great grizzly that wanders through

forests of geysers at Yellowstone
or the snowfalls of Canada.

She’ll be dead before she sees the
world beyond the garden of

42 Arnold Avenue, where she was
born two months ago underneath

the lilac tree and filled her belly
on honeysuckle syrup. She sizes

herself up in the droplet – one of
the many mirrors of the rain.

When winter comes, she’ll dry up
with the leaves, never having

pawed her way through Alaska
and without feeling the warmth

of a cub’s scruff against her lips.
She drinks the droplet, watching

her reflection vanish for the sake
of a thirst still unsatisfied.

-Briony Collins

Bios and links

-Fiona H

lives in Ireland and is rather shy so would prefer to let the writing do the talking. She is a former Humanities student, now she studies humanity through creative writing.

-Anna Kisby

is a Devon-based poet, archivist and author of the pamphlet All the Naked Daughters (Against the Grain Press, 2017). She won the Binsted Arts prize 2019, BBC Proms Poetry competition 2016, and was commended in Faber’s New Poets Scheme. In 2019 she collaborated on the project Creative Histories of Witchcraft and is subsequently working on a collection exploring historical magical practitioners.
Note: White ermines, Garden tigers, Blood-veins and V-moths are British moths on the verge of extinction.

–Karlo Sevilla,

from Quezon City, Philippines, is the author of the full-length poetry collection, “Metro Manila Mammal” (Some Publishing, 2018), and the chapbook, “You” (Origami Poems Project, 2017). Recognized among The Best of Kitaab 2018 and twice nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology, his poems appear in the journals Philippines Graphic, Small Orange, Black Bough Poetry, Shot Glass Journal, detritus, Radius, Matter, The Daily Drunk, the anthology, “NOSTALGIYA, Antolohiya Ng Mga Tula” of Samahang Lazaro Francisco, and others.    

-Jim Young

– a poet from the Mumbles – who does most of his writing in his beach hut at Rotherslade Bay https://baitthelines.blogspot.com https://haikueye.blogspot.com

-Samantha Merz

Samantha’s Pinwheels poem was published in Reality Break Press’ Volume I Poetry Issue. Other poems by Samantha have been published by Polar Expressions Publishing, Grey Thoughts, Fevers of the Mind Poetry Digest, Nymphs, Malarkey Books and Poetry Festival. In 2019, Samantha self-published a collection of poetry called Kazoo.

-Bethany Mitchell

has an interest in poetry which can be read ecologically. She often researches place and landscape through site-specific writing. She recently reviewed Maria Sledmere’s nature sounds without nature sounds for amberflora, co-edited the zine VOICES in association with Nottingham Poetry Exchange, and her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Crêpe & Penn, Kissing Dynamite, lower ground 18 and (w)hole. She tweets @bethjmitch

-Yvonne Marjot
is a lost kiwi, now living on a Scottish island. She has been making up stories and poems for as long as she can remember. Her first volume of poetry, The Knitted Curiosity Cabinet, won the Brit Writers Award for poetry in 2012. She loves her job, running a small public library, and has published four novels and a book of short stories. Twitter handle: @alayanabeth

-Lucy Whitehead

writes haiku and poetry. Her haiku have been published widely in international journals and anthologies such as Acorn, Autumn Moon Haiku, bones, Frogpond, hedgerow, Modern Haiku, Otata, Presence, Prune Juice, The Heron’s Nest, and The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2018 and 2019. Her longer poetry has been published this year or is forthcoming in Broken Spine Artist Collective, Burning House Press, Clover and White, Kissing Dynamite Poetry, Parenthesis Journal, Pink Plastic House, Pussy Magic, 3 Moon Magazine, Re-side, and Twist in Time Magazine. You can find her on Twitter @blueirispoetry.

-M T Simon

reads and writes poetry of all forms but is especially fond of haiku/senryu, tanka and haibun. Her poetry has been published in several magazines both online and in hard copy. Most notably, she won first prize in the Dreamers Creative Writing Haiku Contest and was published in the Jul-Oct 2019 issue if that magazine. She is also an essay finalist and enjoys writing flash fiction, short stories and novels. Her first novel, Heart of Malice, came out in 2015 and another, Six Strings is soon to be released both are under the pen name: C Billie Brunson.

-Devon Marsh

served as a Navy pilot before a career in banking. His poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in The Lake, Poydras Review, The Timberline Review, Remembered Arts Journal, Black Bough Poetry, and periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics. Devon lives in the North Carolina piedmont.

-Debbie Strange

is an internationally published short-form poet, haiga artist, and photographer whose creative passions connect her more closely to the world and to herself. She enjoys exploring the wilds with her husband in their lime green 1978 VW campervan. Debbie maintains a publications and awards archive at debbiemstrange.blogspot.com.

-Briony Collins

is a writer, artist, and actor based in North Wales, represented by DHH Literary Agency. Her career began when she won the 2016 Exeter Novel Prize. Since then she has gone on to publish poems with Agenda Magazine, Black Bough Poetry, Vociferous Press, and Creative Bangor. Last year, her short story ‘Citroen Sid’ was published by Retreat West to raise money for Indigo Volunteers, and her first play, For the Sake of the Jury was performed to packed audiences at the Victorian Christmas Festival in Beaumaris. She is currently the co-editor of Cape Magazine and co-host of the Altered Egos podcast. In addition to her writing, Briony enjoys directing and performing in plays. Most recently, she starred in Birdsong as Lieutenant Stephen Wraysford in a production for Bangor.

-Mark Grainger

was born in Sussex, but now translates financial reports for a living in Frankfurt, Germany, where he lives with his fiancée and their dog. Inspired by his grandfather, also a poet, he began writing poems to share with his family in 2018. When his output ballooned under the coronavirus lockdown, he began sharing ‘lockdown poetry’ on Twitter (@marktgrainger).

-‘Bronwen Griffiths

is the author of published two novels and two collections of flash fiction. She also writes poetry and attends the Rye Harbour poetry workshop (or used to before Covid). She lives on the East Sussex/Kent border.

-Chris Jones

lives in Sheffield and teaches at Hallam University. His last published poetry collection was Skin (Longbarrow Press, 2015).

=Geraldine Clarkson

lives in the UK Midlands and her first full poetry collection from which these two poems are taken is called Monica’s Overcoat of Flesh and is published by @NineArchesPress

-Charlie Ulyatt

A poet of two halves – Charlie Ulyatt started writing poetry in his early twenties with earlier short poems printed in publications including Haiku Quarterly, Purple Patch, Peace and Freedom, Iota and Sepia amongst others. He also self published a small booklet of predominantly small vignettes called ‘Scorched Wings’, before ‘semi retiring’ from poetry for a while to focus on improvised music.

The second half ‘kicked off’ a little over a year ago with a more minimalistic approach to poetry, allowing space for imagination and reflection. He has recently self published a small pamphlet entitled ‘Absent Stirring’ and a small 8 poem ‘beak book’, ‘Slow Day Ahead’ and has also had poems published in HQ Poetry Magazine and Hummingbird (US) along with poems included in a garden poetry project.

-David Pollard

has been furniture salesman, accountant, TEFL teacher and university lecturer. He got his three degrees from the University of Sussex and has since taught at the universities of Sussex, Essex and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where he was a Lady Davis Scholar. His doctoral thesis was published as: The Poetry of Keats: Language and Experience (Harvester and Barnes & Noble). He has also published A KWIC Concordance to the Harvard Edition of Keats’ Letters, a novel, Nietzsche’s Footfalls (Self-published) and five volumes of poetry, patricides, Risk of Skin and Self-Portraits and Broken Voices (all from Waterloo Press), bedbound (from Perdika Press), Finis-terre (from Agenda) and Three Artists (from Lapwing Publications). He has translated from Gallego, French and German. He has also been published in other volumes and in learned journals and many reputable poetry magazines. He divides his time between Brighton on the South coast of England and a village on the Rias of Galicia.

There is a substantial article on his work which appeared in Research in Phenomenology and which can be read at:
http://www.davidpollard.net/david-pollard-and-philosoHi Paul,

phy-by-jason-m-wirth/

Further information can be found at
davidpollard.net
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Pollard_(author)