May 3.

.severn bridge.

it was a long journey

well you do don’t you. you travel .

you do what you has to do with love

even if things are difficult.

I feel it was just before the bridge

later they changed the name of it

there was this tree in a garden and I guess still there

through april we saw it bud as we passed going down

bloomed as we returned

later petals fell

then the reason for the journey failed and

left

yet

when I see a magnolia tree I remember

I remember sultry days in the long grass dried over

by cuckoo woods over there

catching them, dry creatures singing

looking them over and gently placing them back

the woman on the corner watched, looking over

the back

one arm missing

I remember a lot of things

-sonja benskin mesher

*

To be as impressed with flowers, as other people, is to achieve
something worthwhile. Here, Pentti Linkola – deep ecology,
disappointment, hands, prying open a bird box. Dead mammals,
the small bones of a petal, inside, the entire remit of clichés
involving death. Yes, another listy death poem, another regression.
Another impressive notion of right and wrong. Cats underwater,
drowning, observing these flowers in my hands, the branches, etc.

*

To be as impressed with bugs, as other people, is to achieve
something worthwhile.

-Alex Mazey

Tears For Lichen

On the flat stone she
wept her thousand regrets.
Wax petals, a mother’s
confetti of pink tears.

This was a song a
descant to winter-tide.
Of lighter months,
not to the stone of
dark grey lands
carrying lichen kisses.

And as the lichen looks,
death’s breath rattles
and waxed tears wash
abandoned to stoney seas.

A flower’s shower
a softer form of rain.
As the tree reaches out,
tentative fingers touch
her children’s clothes.

Ancient fruits that grew
before first flight arced,
beetles climbed these trees:
ancient crawling bees.

Mitochondrial Eve,
as magnolia flowers breathed,
oxygen rich and rot
from the seas.

©️ Dai Fry 2nd May 2020.

Lullaby of the Cicadas

The Flood – Stuck in mourning darkness every
twilight sadness for loved ones lost, I weakly
attempt to bravely to bravely attempt my inner
flood walls but then despair breaks through,
Threatening my brittle fading halo, so I let it seep
a little- Just to taste the pain once more but as
always like before, I allow a faint chorus to
penetrate through the dark cavities of my soul as
I listen to a lullaby of cicadas calming me healing
me comforting me shielding me – Saving me.

Chorus of the Nymphs – We come from dormant
Slumber to share our essence with you. Allow us
to numb the melancholic hum in your soul. Let us
gather notes of eons ago echoing from ancient
forest trees to deliver a new symphony – Hoping
to set your mind free from recurring soul-eating
melodies.

Emergence – The mornings seem to radiate brighter
into these faded streets of my mind, where dagger
smiles are replaced with hopeful eyes, willing me to
turn back into a brightening awakening aura,
beckoning my new tomorrow, so I willingly follow
the faint strange welcoming sounds of a new song –
Joining the throng of lost souls eager to emerge
Renewed, healed. Fading sadness penetrated by a
lullaby of cicadas…

© Don Beukes

We Are the Wildflowers

Wildflowers and weeds
Bear a striking resemblance
To one another,
Differentiated mostly
By the kindness of time and
Human trials. What one calls
A weed, another calls a perennial.
And, garden walls meant to
Contain them are
Only masquerading as effective barriers.
Aren’t we all held back by
Human hands that pull and grab, or
Allowed to thrive,
By the grace of the benevolent?

-st

Tanka for the last of the magnolias

Long smooth clouds bloom high
sugar-pink tower turrets
domes open to wind
fall reborn – coracles sail
lichen archipelago

-Ankh Spice

southern descent

sweet magnolia
summer storm
wind-strewn petals on
lichen and stone

feather-soft gentility
belies a core of tempered steel

southern by grace—
survivor by design
survivor by

-Rich Follett

A Locust

In our oral tales others
see us as plague.
Let us starve to feed
their children.

I don’t swarm.

I contemplate sat
on the viscous membrane
of this water.

Oppose my senses:

To avoid mirrors.
Fly around them
not into them
as death will be
your final image.

I only see
an image of myself.

-Paul Brookes

Bios and Links

-Alex Mazey

(b.1991) received his MA (distinction) from Keele University in 2017. He later won The Roy Fisher Prize for Poetry with his debut pamphlet, ‘Bread and Salt’ (Flarestack, TBA). He was also the recipient of a Creative Future Writers’ Award in 2019. His poetry has featured regularly in anthologies and literary press magazines, most notably in The London Magazine. His collection of essays, ‘Living in Disneyland’, will be available from Broken Sleep Books in October 2020. Alex spent 2018 as a resident of The People’s Republic of China, where he taught the English Language in a school run by the Ministry of Education. His writing has been described as ‘wry and knowing,’ with ‘an edge that tears rather than cuts or deals blows.’

Twitter: @AlexzanderMazey

Instagram: alexmazey

Here is my interview of Alex:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/12/18/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-alex-mazey/

-Rich Follett

is a High School English and Creative Writing teacher who has been writing poems and songs for more than forty years. His poems have been featured in numerous online and print journals, including BlazeVox, The Montucky Review, Paraphilia, Leaf Garden Press and the late Felino Soriano’s CounterExample Poetics, for which he was a featured artist. Three volumes of poetry, Responsorials (with Constance Stadler), Silence, Inhabited, and Human &c. are available through NeoPoiesis Press (www.neopoiesispress.com.)

As a singer-songwriter, Rich has released five albums of independent contemporary folk music. His latest. Somewhere in the Stars, is available at http://www.richfollett.com. He lives with his wife Mary Ruth Alred Follett in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where he also pursues his interests as a professional actor, playwright, and director.

-Ankh Spice

is a sea-obsessed poet from Aotearoa (NZ). His poetry has appeared in a wide range of international publications and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He truly believes that words have the power to change the place we’re in, and you’ll find him doing his best to prove it on

Twitter: @SeaGoatScreams
or on Facebook: @AnkhSpiceSeaGoatScreamsPoetry

-Carrie Ann Golden

is a deafblind writer from the mystical Adirondack Mountains now living on a farmstead in northeastern North Dakota. She writes dark fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in places like Piker Press, Edify Fiction, Doll Hospital Journal, The Hungry Chimera, GFT Press, Asylum Ink, and Visual Verse.

-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/

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2019/11/02/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-don-beukes/

May 2

..scratching..

quiet now

we can hear the birds no problem
one lorry on the road essential travel

then

we hear the scratching

when dark comes
comes the scuttlings

flutterings outside

bats fly round our houses

inside
others live and die

the fly

&

the moth comes lovely
soft and tasteful

nothing distasteful

we saves them
lifts them out the bath
a dry flannel as assistance

remember that fly in the room you wanted to swat
for
annoying. left alone it went quietly away

night came full of sounds

mice
scratching enough to leave

marks

enough to leave marks

the fly does

buzz when it flies
buzz as it dies

zzzzzt

-sonia benskin mesher

*

Inclined to mention the halo of a mountain, somewhere
I am fourteen years old. This is a mountain behind a house
where I still remain, in this thought-process, every child
chews spearmint gum. It is definitely spearmint gum, and
the mountain is only a halo, now, this time, elsewhere. Like,
I don’t know, like Mark Fisher says, this stasis has been
buried – ‘the inventor of the term, a frustrating thinker’.

*

In the summer’s
taped shut windows,
without seeing
flies in years.

Hit mosquitos
against the wall,
once observing
blood left behind.

-Alex Mazey

Geyser

Soul rumbles as grumble
dark bellows push
their boiling fist.
Hot drops, boiled rain.

Angry fats splatter
into faint signs, streaks of
early mournful light.

Fire waters bubble and churn
chained by conventions,
damned by convection.
In breaking songs of earth’s heat,
brash displays of prorogued grief.

Water crouches, fluid evasive.
As pain it cannot be broken.
Desire free to flow,
hurt a haunt of generations.

So strictures die
and violence will be
a multiple of passing times.

-©️ Dai Fry 1st May 2020.

In memory of those left behind : 9 December 2019

Sun’s first sleep-breath
sweets the dropped shoulder
of te puia whakaari, her bones

in early mistlight, are all grace
and delicate pickings, gulled
clavicles of a hard dancer, stilled. Coiled tension, resting.

It is hard to recognise a haunting, in the rose-gilt of sunrise.
Do you know her name? When you recognised it, did you forget
to exhale? Release your living now to cloud

the pane we do not see – watch deep scratches creep
across this vision. The guardians are always here, and the light
oh the light may change any moment.

-Ankh Spice

The Yellow Forest

Awakening – Dry mouth burning eyes skin burn, breathe.
Pin point vision echoing mission failed fission, inhale.
Heavy feet slow reaction no connection – A siren a siren!
Wake up stand up react retract, breathe.

Forest Walk – Dislodge move seek react engage stop!
Burning embers leaves glowing eagles falling feathers
floating, breathe. Listen observe – A lark hark the warning
A flash a flash, breathe. Eyes open sight broken, breathe.

Chokehold – Black river dead fish foul odour slow down,
Breathe. Soil on fire charcoal roots sprouting rotten fruit –
Stop smell retreat, breathe. Dead of night presence sucking
remaining air laboured breathing heartbeat slowing – Find
the opening, breathe. Look beware – Run!

The Gamdroela

Far beyond the Hottentotshuisie Mountains,
a mythical creature awaits to reward the chosen
one – Elected by the Bokmakierie Korrelkop,
a strange elusive soothsayer, traditionally
enshrined to make a wise choice – A new ruler
for the remote Belhar nation to once again wear
the sacred crown of Sekueb Nodmai, she whose
voice still echo from deep within the Bolemakiesie
marshlands –
A treacherous journey awaits the young Tandpyn,
Prince of the Bloekomboom tree nation, whose
Lands have nearly been scorched bare by the
Fiery blizzards of Macassar – Now charged
with the ultimate sacrifice, crossing the
Moddergat fynbos wetlands to eventually
reach the steep trail leading up to Fluweeltjie –
Lair of the ancient Gamdroela , a kleurvolle
Colourful but powerful oracle who will
Decide on the worthiness of the young Tandpyn…

-Don Beukes

The Dream

I had a dream last night
Of walking thru a forest-like place
Filled with earthy illuminances

I could barely make out the sharp
Round edges of branches and limbs
Bathed in a heavenly glow

These trees, so strange yet so familiar
These giants, so murky yet so real
Their aromatic odors filled my essence

And for the briefest of moments
I believed to be back home among these ancient pines
Until my eyes opened to the sterile white walls

-Carrie Ann Golden

Fly Away, Dream

When television broadcasting
Ended after late night news
And comedy shows, yellow, blue, magenta hues

On test patterns
Would send humanity
To bed, to fly away wistfully,

As on insect wings,
To a place of dreams
And endless possibilities.

-st

flaiku

what to us is dross
is a rainbow to the fly
perspective is key

-Rich Follett

Her Splash Of Veins

flutters, is still, proboscis twitch.
Flutters, is still, twitch.

Splash of wheat in fields,
Flutters as flywings.

Strands of wheat flywalk skin
as she passes she swats the touch away.

Till as she treads down more stalks
into the unmade bread of the field
bunches of wheat stroke her thighs
and she smiles at the bright sun of it all.

Snatches a stalk, lets it hang from her mouth
a proboscis tremble in the gust of her dreams
of flight above the ready to be harvested grain
rises toward sun blaze newly risen

warm bread a splash of veins in full colour,
breathes in her baked youth like goodness.

-Paul Brookes
Bios and Links

-Alex Mazey

(b.1991) received his MA (distinction) from Keele University in 2017. He later won The Roy Fisher Prize for Poetry with his debut pamphlet, ‘Bread and Salt’ (Flarestack, TBA). He was also the recipient of a Creative Future Writers’ Award in 2019. His poetry has featured regularly in anthologies and literary press magazines, most notably in The London Magazine. His collection of essays, ‘Living in Disneyland’, will be available from Broken Sleep Books in October 2020. Alex spent 2018 as a resident of The People’s Republic of China, where he taught the English Language in a school run by the Ministry of Education. His writing has been described as ‘wry and knowing,’ with ‘an edge that tears rather than cuts or deals blows.’

Twitter: @AlexzanderMazey

Instagram: alexmazey

Here is my interview of Alex:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/12/18/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-alex-mazey/

-Rich Follett

is a High School English and Creative Writing teacher who has been writing poems and songs for more than forty years. His poems have been featured in numerous online and print journals, including BlazeVox, The Montucky Review, Paraphilia, Leaf Garden Press and the late Felino Soriano’s CounterExample Poetics, for which he was a featured artist. Three volumes of poetry, Responsorials (with Constance Stadler), Silence, Inhabited, and Human &c. are available through NeoPoiesis Press (www.neopoiesispress.com.)

As a singer-songwriter, Rich has released five albums of independent contemporary folk music. His latest. Somewhere in the Stars, is available at http://www.richfollett.com. He lives with his wife Mary Ruth Alred Follett in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where he also pursues his interests as a professional actor, playwright, and director.

-Ankh Spice

is a sea-obsessed poet from Aotearoa (NZ). His poetry has appeared in a wide range of international publications and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He truly believes that words have the power to change the place we’re in, and you’ll find him doing his best to prove it on

Twitter: @SeaGoatScreams
or on Facebook: @AnkhSpiceSeaGoatScreamsPoetry

-Carrie Ann Golden

is a deafblind writer from the mystical Adirondack Mountains now living on a farmstead in northeastern North Dakota. She writes dark fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in places like Piker Press, Edify Fiction, Doll Hospital Journal, The Hungry Chimera, GFT Press, Asylum Ink, and Visual Verse.

-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/

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2019/11/02/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-don-beukes/

https://www.iambapoet.com/poets-wave-two

May 1

..looks like you are drowning..

part one

looks like you are drowning &
hope i am wrong. i can see the
struggle
the turn about in water.

i have done that too
pat says that i have paid the price
but i wonder

i hope
you survive
come clean
bare
your feathers.

fly high

if not
i will lay a petal
and think of you

as i think of the others
that drowned before you
that had no feathers

part two,

it looks like you are drowning
again
shall I jump in to save you and maybe
sink myself
or shall I wait to see
to lay a flower at our feet

part three

maybe you are not drowning really
that I made it up and you are dancing
like the others

while people die and we lay flowers
in memoriam
corona

part four

you are floating maybe; I did that for hours
went spongy, now face reality and
I still think that you are drowning
like the others.

-sonja benskin mesher

concrete reasoning

gray day: i am
out for a walk when
a sidewalk camellia
begs myriad questions:

runaway bride?

garden club mishap?
rejected proposal?
hothouse runaway?
centerpiece rebel?

confronted by the unexplained,
the human drive to make order from chaos
is relentless.

whatever the story,
the end is the same:
beauty appears and
we can only wonder …

with a schedule to keep
and no answers at hand
i press onward,
feeling the inner bloom
of nascent gratitude.

-Rich Follett

MF 1

*

Every time I find clay in the garden, beneath a rosebush, say,
I find slate too. This is just something I have noticed over the
course of a year. It is not necessary to mention these things,
especially now, I suppose. I am not happy unless I’m pouring
something – tomato feed. I am Philip Levine’s Burial Rights,
I recall Bei Dao. These days, I feel the trick to a good carpark,
to feel anything, is my proximity to this flower arrangement.

JK 1

*

A story of three fish might be
fish bones in a field for birds.
Koi feeding, koi feed in a
garden centre, at the next
junction. Fish bent back over
backwards, in blue paint.
Scattered to the water’s edge
a handful of dirt, to a handful
of colour, blue scales at the
centre of the field, a water
mark, a stone left unturned.

-Alex Mazey

The Life of Petals

We use flowers to mark occasions–
Weddings and funerals.
The petals linger only briefly,
But the sentiment still hangs
Heavy in the air, years after
Like pollen
That settled over and over again
On our patio table and chairs,
All those long Midwestern summers
When heat robbed our lungs of breath. And
Wildflowers, not cut-storebought ones, marked a different time,
Of an everyday type.
Now, cut flowers feel gluttonous to me.
And petals bless us with
The gentleness of how life ought to be.

-st

Utopia Burning

Warnings ignored from many a social
self appointed warlord
Echoes of dissident discord striking
a high-pitched off key note
As hungry flames lick and lash causing
an apocalyptic molten urban and
suburban foretold mess
Whispered by familiar oracles
their verbal miracles documenting their
fiery cautionary chronicles
Of systems slowly imploding temperaments
exploding fake veneers and smiles
exfoliating as ignorant masses squawk
for a helping hand from those
witnessing their demise and burning
squirming shedding acid tears for
Utopia burning…

© Don Beukes

Still Silent

No sound, water jelly flat,
so still it hurts my ears.
Even sun slides silently
into autumn’s metal light.

All jamboree, clang and din
now far away in time.
Even breath is offensive here,
in case of ripple and slapping rocks.

I cannot read or turn a page
lest a mumble or paper scrape,
escape and shatter the loch.
Like a breaking glass to
a rousing cheer,
as all that knowledge gets out.

So I stare at reflections
in late day waters
reliable quiet, but maybe
their heat is not that hot.

©️ Dai Fry 30th April 2020.

The sweet flower’s heart
Wilting on the cold, hard slab
My love’s final gift

-Carrie Ann Golden

Camellia

You lay beautiful and gasping
alone on Tithonian stone.
A sudden fall from grace,
petal broken angel:
forage for sweeper winds.

Transient as summer days.
Temperate these forevers soon
fade to winter grey.
Dog-day memories
cannot abide short-day cold.

What are you,
I wonder?
A love certified in
Bacchus’s dance
or a loved one
certified and boxed
in tears and brown ale.

©️ Dai Fry 30th March 2020.

The giant fish takes back the myth

The morning before she was to become a story
the sea was baited quiet, the kind that silks

all desire down to swish. To decide to leap
from one cool world to another just for breakfast

is to bare your colours to the scaling knife of the wind,
and she did – her fireback beacon launched

for the brief protein of flying legs. How often we fail
to see that dark hull waiting, we beasts so full up

with the rush of living for our risks.
And the shape of the poised hero held no meaning, to a fish

but oh the shimmerhook, like all the moons
her eye’s nightcoin had ever purchased

from deep beneath the water, and there is the lust, the swish-
-and want. The glowworm crescent to silver her belly.

We all want to shine in fullness.
Only heroes are given names in these stories.

For her need she was translated
into an island, and I am running the delicate gasp of her jaws

in the shape of this coast, forever straining for the hook
and still called only fish

even with all we have made of her. Every time I desire
to transcend my quiet water, I forget the heroes

and leap from her skin, and hope
that landing empty

but with one eye fixed on the moon
every night after this will be enough.

-Ankh Spice

Beheaded Camelia’s

delicate red petals last longer on the less travelled path.
Flash of disappearing red lace, paper thin survival.
Unbroken in bright sunlight, bright on grey stone.
Destruction stays at home to avoid destruction.

The red wing is allowed space to revolve reflect in water.
“Temporary” like the word “soon”, a duration undecided.

-Paul Brookes

Bios and Links

-Alex Mazey

(b.1991) received his MA (distinction) from Keele University in 2017. He later won The Roy Fisher Prize for Poetry with his debut pamphlet, ‘Bread and Salt’ (Flarestack, TBA). He was also the recipient of a Creative Future Writers’ Award in 2019. His poetry has featured regularly in anthologies and literary press magazines, most notably in The London Magazine. His collection of essays, ‘Living in Disneyland’, will be available from Broken Sleep Books in October 2020. Alex spent 2018 as a resident of The People’s Republic of China, where he taught the English Language in a school run by the Ministry of Education. His writing has been described as ‘wry and knowing,’ with ‘an edge that tears rather than cuts or deals blows.’

Twitter: @AlexzanderMazey

Instagram: alexmazey

Here is my interview of Alex:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/12/18/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-alex-mazey/

-Rich Follett

is a High School English and Creative Writing teacher who has been writing poems and songs for more than forty years. His poems have been featured in numerous online and print journals, including BlazeVox, The Montucky Review, Paraphilia, Leaf Garden Press and the late Felino Soriano’s CounterExample Poetics, for which he was a featured artist. Three volumes of poetry, Responsorials (with Constance Stadler), Silence, Inhabited, and Human &c. are available through NeoPoiesis Press (www.neopoiesispress.com.)

As a singer-songwriter, Rich has released five albums of independent contemporary folk music. His latest. Somewhere in the Stars, is available at http://www.richfollett.com. He lives with his wife Mary Ruth Alred Follett in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where he also pursues his interests as a professional actor, playwright, and director.

-Ankh Spice

is a sea-obsessed poet from Aotearoa (NZ). His poetry has appeared in a wide range of international publications and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He truly believes that words have the power to change the place we’re in, and you’ll find him doing his best to prove it on

Twitter: @SeaGoatScreams
or on Facebook: @AnkhSpiceSeaGoatScreamsPoetry

-Carrie Ann Golden

is a deafblind writer from the mystical Adirondack Mountains now living on a farmstead in northeastern North Dakota. She writes dark fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in places like Piker Press, Edify Fiction, Doll Hospital Journal, The Hungry Chimera, GFT Press, Asylum Ink, and Visual Verse.

-Anjum Wasir Dar

Born in Srinagar (Indian occupied Kashmir) in 1949. My family opted for and migrated to Pakistan after the (1947)Partition of India. Educated in St Anne’s Presentation Convent Rawalpindi.Graduated with Distinction in English Lang. & Literature in 1968 from the Punjab University. Won the All Round Best Student Cup.1968.
Obtained a Masters Degree in English Literature/American Studies Punjab University P.G. Diploma in TEFL from Allama Iqbal Open University Islamabad and a CPE from Cambridge University UK (LSE British Council)1991 Developing Educators in Pakistan Training Course sponsored by IFC & Bradford University 1999.Bronze Medal Poet of Merit Award by International Society of Poets & http://Poetry.com USA 2000 7 Times Winner NANOWRIMO, (National Novel Writing Month)
Adventure Novel ‘ The Adventures of the Multi Colored Lead People’ in the printing process.
Educator Writer since 1990 Editor College Magazine
Creative Writer English at Channel 7 Pvt Ltd Islamabad.National Education Award Winner 1998 for Research & Publications.

-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/

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2019/11/02/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-don-beukes/

Liaisons

In summer time, head to the cemetery,
out around nine o’clock, where birches drip the days
and you’re freshly plucked and razored
into what you think is your best self.

You’re meeting friends, supposed to be going
out with a boy, some years older than you
and you don’t know his last name, but covet
his leather gloves and biker jacket, para boots

with stories to tell. Your friends have sticky palms
and cider on their breath, the ground is flecked
with rollies; it’s August and you are still young,
until September comes and moves everyone on.

You kiss the boy on the cheek, maybe take it a little further,
fingers in zippers and the soft sounds of birds,
a gnat swarm suddenly veils you, a graveyard bride,
or a gothic pop-song caricature of yourself.

Later, you lie on the earth and play dead.
Imagine what it would be like to spill into the soil,
while others tell themselves that everything will be ok.
Night rises, fix up your lipstick, kiss the boy

on the cheek again, say thank you,
because that’s what your mother taught you;
that manners are as important,
as the way that you live.

-Ali Jones

The Cobweb’s Breath

Cobweb’s breath dew sticky,
comes over the shoulder
from the back. Hairs
rise from their quiver.
Were I to touch your stone,
would we be holding hands… again?

There is a transparency here
where your roots spike
through the sorrow of long grass.
Under church eyes and iron fencing,
Where we take our visiting hour.

I sometimes wish you
had been burnt in
the gas hot fires.
Then I could have
held you up to the winds.

You may have embraced
cliff-skies and turbulent spirals.
Tree hung dappled brooks
and fresh water meadows.
Casting off your glooms
as you once tossed your hair,
in a shower of grey dust.

But I like this garden
with a parlour’s quiet,
wild flowers abandoned
to this overgrown place.

Where we nearly hold hands
sipping our tea from a flask.

-©️ Dai Fry 29th April 2020.

Tiger Lily

He was playful at the end,
surprising me with treats
when I appeared at his door,
sneaking pieces of chocolate
from his wife’s private stash,
sharing the spoils.
He ate whipped cream without a spoon,
slept in his favorite suede shoes,
told me he wished he could fly away.

He will never be entombed.

He will be given back to the earth,
mingle with the roots of trees,
become the soil that cultivates life.
He will be branches that touch the sky,
leaves rustled by a gentle wind.
He will be a field of sunflowers
that greet the day,
rolling hills that stretch
to the edge of night.
He will be a tiger lily that blooms bright
for just one day,
reminding me to breathe,
to treasure what is beautiful,
what is fleeting.

-Susan Richardson

Moksha

Today the spirits are partying
while the corpses are dancing
in their graves.

They have done it!
They’ve broken the loop
of birth & death.

All these souls are free of regrets
for they can’t repair anything now.

The loads of setting things right
in the next life have drowned.

The manipulative manual
is in tatters.

Having broken all the shackles,
having won the ultimate battle,

there is one thing that’s
irking them now:

Why didn’t we live like this
in the very first place?

-Jay Gandhi

Writing My Epitaph

My ghosts already haunt me.
Ghosts of poor choices and
Things I shouldn’t have said;
Ghosts which sneak up around my grave, and
Show me those deeply-buried,
Long-loathed parts of me
That haven’t fully decayed.
The rotting, fleshy bits hanging in
Their grotesque way,
Reminding me they wait for me
To address their presence, pick them apart and
Bury them again so they may properly deteriorate
Into fertile earth for healthy new growth.

When they come haunting,
My ghosts make a compelling case.
They are translucent, persistent things,
Not unlike the memories they dredge up to share with me.
Sometimes, they nearly convince me I’m already dead.
But why is my headstone blank?
My ghosts don’t understand, but as
They walk me through graveyards,
Instead, I see orchards of opportunity
Ripe to harvest in good deeds for
My future epitaph.

-st

Our Blue Mary (A List Poem)

A caged bride
A dog called what
A salamander’s wool
Age is only a number
Aniseed
Blue Hawk
Escaped
Fingerprint
Found
I decide
In a grain of sand
Kill it my sister
Let me pass through
Midwinter is
My flame
My stone
On the road
Our spired unicorn
Our Unicorn spire
Path of seeds
Silence
Soundtrack
The cost is prohibitive
The one hand
The ruin
The Rung down
The Stag
This egg asks
Trees hold hands
You Meet

=Paul Brookes

Bios and links

-Jane Cornwell