His poetry and the plays are so fraught with the things that aggravated and influenced him and ultimately made his life successful. He took this form and infused it with an urban, Latin lifeblood that had never been used in poetry before. He was remarkable as a writer in terms of never really self-editing himself or censoring himself.
I happen to feel that [Piñero] was a romantic character and there was something about his love for land that was very wonderful, the way he held Puerto Rico, that elusive homeland in the foreground of his thoughts and writing. For all of us who are uprooted and thrown into this city, to keep a semblance of that is always so dignified. That…
& across is the Hamburger Bahnhof
symmetrical with two flanking towers white & regal horizon
former terminus, culmination of rail networks
we move up its promenade, enter, open the whole of its cavernous centre
long echo & bellowing trains still ringing, still vibrant
the gallery quiet, & when I linger slightly I see you in that empty space
you, tiny against white, under large metal arches, joining dozens of feet above
this building with remnants of utility, now converted aesthetics, pristine & giant
& I catch up to you, thinking how we must look, two figures nearly swallowed
by the expanse of this building, & moving towards an exit along the side
receding, gone we cross through a simulated subway station, pale green tiles
replicated graffiti & then into an impossibly long hallway
globe lights hanging regularly an optical illusion
the stretch of it, as if created by mirrors, projects
For some of us, this means carrying on as near to normal as possible. I work from home anyway and I am self employed, the pandemic has caused a big chunk of lost earnings in the form of festival bookings and workshop bookings, but thankfully most of my ‘bread and butter work’ is done from my home, online. I am still running my online workshops which, touch wood, even in a market in which everyone is now teaching online out of necessity, still appear to be popular. I am still mentoring writers. Not much, then, has changed in my working life, except my husband who is also working from home now, is putting me to shame with his strict routine and enthusiasm. I have seen a version of him, the work version, that I haven’t really seen before. Work-Husband is a very slick, confident person…
Sometimes it takes a blast from above to wake
us up.
a crack of energy smacking the air, electricity,
ripe and dangerous.
Sometimes it takes a storm to clear the decks,
the pitch and glitter,
to roll us dangerously from tide to time,
nearly capsizing, but righting just in time.
Sometimes it takes a long night of the blackest depths,
to take us far underground,
where there are no promises
of return words fade away.
Sometimes it takes a near apocalypse
to make you seen the lone tree,
reaching for tomorrow,
always striving on, as clouds break to full sun.
-Ali Jones
My Flame
flickers cold shadows over your skin,
dances into your curves as a cloud
passes over a valley its shadow dips
towards a swerve of water,
the dark copse darkened by the sip
the sup of clear water that beckons
my tongue taste its brightnesses
that is the perfume in your curves.
-Paul Brookes
Feathers
(for Sarah)
After my mother died,
feathers seemed to tumble
from the sky,
small patches of light piercing
through the grip of a tempest,
appearing in the most unlikely places.
The first one I found on the white shag rug
that covered my bedroom floor,
dark as ink with red
running through it like veins,
as I danced alone to Earth Wind and Fire,
my mother’s favorite band.
Another, bushy and plentiful,
spotted like the tail of a calico cat,
I found nestled on the seat next to me
in an empty movie theater.
Marking a page in my most treasured book,
one my mother had given me as a gift,
I discovered a feather so delicate,
it could only have come from a dove.
For years I kept every feather I found,
on car seats and park benches,
in coat pockets and buried in coin purses.
I believed each feather was a message,
my mother reaching out
from wherever people go when they die.
I didn’t know Sarah then.
We met decades later,
when grief colored
every inch of her landscape,
strength and sorrow inseparable.
The morning her mother died,
a feather appeared,
breathless like a petal,
in the middle of my kitchen floor.
-Susan Richardson
Empathy
Horizon is grey except
a patch of white—
Dark skies have
disowned this chunk.
This odd man travels
tirelessly with clouds
to align itself over
a stripped barren tree.
All other trees in
the vicinity are green.
-Jay Gandhi
withering
Faced with the eye of the storm,
I find my roots are too deep to run.
I wither as I wait.
“This too shall pass.”
-st
Bios and links
-Jane Cornwell
likes drawing and painting children, animals, landscapes and food. She specialises in watercolour, mixed media, coloured pencil, lino cut and print, textile design. Jane can help you out with adobe indesign for your layout needs, photoshop and adobe illustrator. She graduated with a ba(hons) design from Glasgow School of art, age 20.
She has exhibited with the rsw at the national gallery of scotland, SSA, Knock Castle Gallery, Glasgow Group, Paisley Art Institute, MacMillan Exhibition at Bonhams, Edinburgh, The House For An Art Lover, Pittenweem Arts Festival, Compass Gallery, The Revive Show, East Linton Art Exhibition and Strathkelvin Annual Art Exhibition.
is an award winning, internationally published poet. She is the author of “Things My Mother Left Behind”, coming from Potter’s Grove Press in 2020, and also writes the blog, “Stories from the Edge of Blindness”. You can find her on Twitter @floweringink, listen to her on YouTube, and read more of her work on her website.
is a teacher, and writer with work published in a variety of places, from Poetry Ireland Review, Proletarian Poetry and The Interpreter’s House, to The Green Parent Magazine and The Guardian. She has a particular interest in the role of nature in literature, and is a champion of contemporary poetry in the secondary school classroom.
is a Software Engineer by qualification, an accountant by profession, a budding Guitarist & a Yoga Sadhak at heart and a poet by his soul. Poetry intrigues him because it’s an art in which a simple yet profound skill of placing words next to each other can create something so touching and literally sweep him of the floor. He is 32-year-old Indian and stays in Mumbai. His works have appeared in the following places:
An ebook named “Pav-bhaji @ Achija” available in the Kindle format at Amazon.in The poem “Salsa; a self discovery” published in an anthology motivated by Late Sir APJ Abdul Kalam. The poem “High Caloried love” selected for an upcoming book “Once upon a meal” The poem “Strawberry Lip Balm” selected in the anthology “Talking to the poets” Four poems published in a bilingual anthology “Persian Sugar in English Tea” Vol.1 Two poems published in the anthology “Poets on the Run” compiled by RC James.
His poems have made it to the PoeTree blog and front pages of PoetryCircle.com & OpenArtsForum.com. In free time, he likes to walk for long distances.
is an American poet whose work emphasizes emotional integrity and social justice. She is the author of several eBooks including, Learning from Pompeii, Coffee for Neanderthals, Disgracing Lady Justice and others, available on smashwords.com and its affiliates.Chapbook:Ebola (West Chester University Poetry Center, 2014)
is a shop asst. Lives in a cat house full of teddy bears. His chapbooks include The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley, (Dearne Community Arts, 1993). The Headpoke and Firewedding (Alien Buddha Press, 2017), A World Where and She Needs That Edge (Nixes Mate Press, 2017, 2018) The Spermbot Blues (OpPRESS, 2017), Port Of Souls (Alien Buddha Press, 2018), Please Take Change (Cyberwit.net, 2018), Stubborn Sod, with Marcel Herms (artist) (Alien Buddha Press, 2019), As Folk Over Yonder ( Afterworld Books, 2019). Forthcoming Khoshhali with Hiva Moazed (artist), Our Ghost’s Holiday (Final book of threesome “A Pagan’s Year”) . He is a contributing writer of Literati Magazine and Editor of Wombwell Rainbow Interviews.
A kalimba is an African instrument consisting of a wooden box and fingerlike metal tines which are plucked by thumbs, and an acoustic hole, which can also be used to make a sound, by hovering one’s thumbs over the hole. Watching it being played, I was struck by the handiness of the instrument, held in two hands like a mobile phone, the tines plucked as though the player is sending a text message. It is easy to see the appeal of this instrument to a poet, particularly a poet deeply interested in music, like Petero Kalulé. The collection’s dedication reads ‘for all my friends: that these notations may vibrate close in y/our hands’. The physical book is shaped like a kalimba, and the cover is designed as one. The conceit is that, as we read Kalulé’s poetry, aloud or in our heads, we are playing an instrument. Whether Kalulé wants…
Can you remember when you held god,
close to your chest, and inhaled?
the animal warmth, butterfly heart,
the quiet still body, faking death,
fluttering a gentle warning in the chalice
of your palm.
Bring the bread up to your lips – here is the
body here is the blood.
We all do the same if we are left alone when
we can’t survive without another.
Sound alarm, if nobody comes, assume
a predator prowls – so mimic our end.
We knew we should never have touched the
hare, leveret beached in a quiet field,
mother flown far into the long grass, where
she waited with eyes like flaming torches,
helpless to intervene, as we passed the small
body, breathing in the enchantment.
When the church clock rang, the spell was
broken, wonderland now the back field again.
You placed the leveret back to earth, to root
into dash and scamper, box clever.
You took the breath of god with you,
clinging to your jacket like a hint of the hereafter.
-Ali Jones
Midwinter Is
all back to core and root,
scrapes off summer’s fat and muscle,
whitens the bones without leaves,
gust polishes dry skulls into mirrors,
bones into icy water,
a hollowed cavity
scratched out.
MidSummer is warm fur, throb
of our little hearts together
tickle of twitching hairs
as I hold close
my pet who snuggles then struggles
to leap out of my arms,
a wilderness in its rabbit eyes.
Midwinter is a teenage lad, on
his haunches – dead rabbit head hill,
in one hand, penknife cold in other,
catches the blade on the bone
and scrapes away the fur,
gouges out orbital cavities,
back to the bowls,
excavates the hollows,
oozes cherry red blood.
Midwinter is midsummer.
Midsummer is midwinter.
Every year these memories
overlay one another
as reminders.
-Paul Brookes
Comfort Haiku
as I comfort you,
your soft strength is evident.
you comfort me too.
-st
While you Can
Love fiercely while you can.
Hold him to your heart
and breathe in the scent of rain
lingering on the soft petals of his fur.
Speak gently while you can.
Wrap him in the silence of your eyes,
whispering into his fragile ears
that he is safe in your embrace.
Be patient while you can.
Understand that we all feel afraid,
staring out into a world that can crumble89i89
at the touch of things we cannot see.
Be kind while you can.
Make sure he knows you love him,
and when he is ready,
set him free.
-Susan Richardson
Sissy
Folks at school
tease me incessantly.
My colour is dull,
weight is double
and height is half —
enough fodder
for many days.
Every day when I
return home
my mother kisses
my forehead
and I feel
that I should live
for one more day.
-Jay Gandhi
Bios and links
-Jane Cornwell
likes drawing and painting children, animals, landscapes and food. She specialises in watercolour, mixed media, coloured pencil, lino cut and print, textile design. Jane can help you out with adobe indesign for your layout needs, photoshop and adobe illustrator. She graduated with a ba(hons) design from Glasgow School of art, age 20.
She has exhibited with the rsw at the national gallery of scotland, SSA, Knock Castle Gallery, Glasgow Group, Paisley Art Institute, MacMillan Exhibition at Bonhams, Edinburgh, The House For An Art Lover, Pittenweem Arts Festival, Compass Gallery, The Revive Show, East Linton Art Exhibition and Strathkelvin Annual Art Exhibition.
is an award winning, internationally published poet. She is the author of “Things My Mother Left Behind”, coming from Potter’s Grove Press in 2020, and also writes the blog, “Stories from the Edge of Blindness”. You can find her on Twitter @floweringink, listen to her on YouTube, and read more of her work on her website.
is a teacher, and writer with work published in a variety of places, from Poetry Ireland Review, Proletarian Poetry and The Interpreter’s House, to The Green Parent Magazine and The Guardian. She has a particular interest in the role of nature in literature, and is a champion of contemporary poetry in the secondary school classroom.
is a Software Engineer by qualification, an accountant by profession, a budding Guitarist & a Yoga Sadhak at heart and a poet by his soul. Poetry intrigues him because it’s an art in which a simple yet profound skill of placing words next to each other can create something so touching and literally sweep him of the floor. He is 32-year-old Indian and stays in Mumbai. His works have appeared in the following places:
An ebook named “Pav-bhaji @ Achija” available in the Kindle format at Amazon.in The poem “Salsa; a self discovery” published in an anthology motivated by Late Sir APJ Abdul Kalam. The poem “High Caloried love” selected for an upcoming book “Once upon a meal” The poem “Strawberry Lip Balm” selected in the anthology “Talking to the poets” Four poems published in a bilingual anthology “Persian Sugar in English Tea” Vol.1 Two poems published in the anthology “Poets on the Run” compiled by RC James.
His poems have made it to the PoeTree blog and front pages of PoetryCircle.com & OpenArtsForum.com. In free time, he likes to walk for long distances.
is an American poet whose work emphasizes emotional integrity and social justice. She is the author of several eBooks including, Learning from Pompeii, Coffee for Neanderthals, Disgracing Lady Justice and others, available on smashwords.com and its affiliates.Chapbook:Ebola (West Chester University Poetry Center, 2014)
is a shop asst. Lives in a cat house full of teddy bears. His chapbooks include The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley, (Dearne Community Arts, 1993). The Headpoke and Firewedding (Alien Buddha Press, 2017), A World Where and She Needs That Edge (Nixes Mate Press, 2017, 2018) The Spermbot Blues (OpPRESS, 2017), Port Of Souls (Alien Buddha Press, 2018), Please Take Change (Cyberwit.net, 2018), Stubborn Sod, with Marcel Herms (artist) (Alien Buddha Press, 2019), As Folk Over Yonder ( Afterworld Books, 2019). Forthcoming Khoshhali with Hiva Moazed (artist), Our Ghost’s Holiday (Final book of threesome “A Pagan’s Year”) . He is a contributing writer of Literati Magazine and Editor of Wombwell Rainbow Interviews.
Photograph courtesy of 
The Wombwell Rainbow 