London Grip New Poetry – Autumn 2020

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The Autumn 2020 issue of London Grip New Poetry features:

*Zoe Brooks *Colin Pink *Tony Beyer *Leona Gom *Daniel Bennett *James Roderick Burns
*Jack Houston *Tom Phillips *Moya Pacey *Mary Franklin *Curtis Brown *Peter Kenny
*Angela Kirby *Kathleen McPhilemy *Ruth Valentine *Marie Dullaghan *Molly Burnell *Tanner
*Jane McLaughlin *Jennifer Johnson *Mary Robinson *Marion McCready *Fizza Abbas
*Bethany Rivers *Nancy Mattson *Jane Kirwan *Julia Duke *Phil Connolly *Pascal Fallas
*Alison Campbell *Shikhandin *Robert Nisbet *Rosemary Norman *Robin Houghton
*Sarah James *Ian C Smith *Fraser Sutherland *Phil Kirby *Stuart Henson *Emma Neale

Copyright of all poems remains with the contributors. Biographical notes on contributors can be found here

London Grip New Poetry appears early in March, June, September & December

A printer-friendly version of this issue can be found at
LG New Poetry Autumn 2020

SUBMISSIONS: please send up to THREE poems plus a brief bio to poetry@londongrip.co.uk
Poems should be in a SINGLE Word attachment or else included in the message body
Our submission windows are: December-January, March-April, June-July & September-October

Editor’s notes

Welcome to the second – but probably not the last – posting of London Grip New Poetry produced entirely in the shadow of the Covid-19 pandemic.  The virus may not figure explicitly in many of the poems but its presence probably explains a note of foreboding that runs through this issue.  We begin with large-scale themes of totalitarian dictatorship but soon move to more personal and domestic territory.  Even here however the topics are darkish: reflections on memory & mortality; relationships under strain; cross-cultural tensions; struggles  of growing up.  And we end this issue with a handful of film noir vignettes.  What these varied poems have in common as that they are all engaging, well-crafted and perceptive.  It is gratifying that so many gifted poets are willing to entrust their work to us; and it has been a far from easy task to make the final selection that is now in your hands/on your screen

Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
London Grip poetry editor
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Zoe Brooks: Perhaps

That Easter 
there were angels everywhere,
electric in the air, 
a frisson of freedom,
a lamentation of song. 

Perhaps it was the poet president 
racing through marble halls
on a child's tricycle,
arriving at meetings 
with a squeak and a crash; 

perhaps it was that cold spring
wreathing the statues 
with garlands of mist,
a spring that had been so long coming,
arriving only with a jingle of keys;

perhaps it was the candles 
guttering in Wenceslas Square,
tears bejewelling the flowers with ice,
the women bowing before
the black and white photograph,

that made us believe 
that this time history would not 
repeat its cruelties,
that Prague's angels would not
prove to have leaden wings.

And there I was,
so obviously alien 
that I walked 
in the middle of the pavement,
without looking over my shoulder. 

In the warm light of Cafe Slavia, 
drunk on long black coffee,
I asked about the future.
And the answer was always the same –
“Perhaps.”

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***

Colin Pink: The Problems of Philosophy 
after Bertrand Russell

The table I write at appears solid, smooth and polished;
reflections of light glow white on its surface. If I turn
my head the colours change, the highlights skate across
the top; one edge looks longer but isn’t. Depending on

your point of view it all looks different. To the painter 
these things are important. Russell’s elegant prose claims
we always experience a veil of appearances, never reality;
and to make it sound scientific he calls it ‘sense data’.

That world seems to be reliable, dependably the same,
tomorrow as it was today. And yet, we’re like chickens
who everyday are fed by the farmer at the same time.

But one day instead of feeding the chickens he wrings
their necks. This is known as the problem of induction.
And not a lot of chickens know that. And neither did I.


Colin Pink: Never Accept Words from Strangers

Did you pack these words yourself? Has anyone 
given you words to carry for them? Have you left your 
vocabulary unattended at any point in your journey? 

As they snap on the rubber gloves to probe, 
persuade and intimidate you realise 
you’re costive with words that aren’t yours. 

Don’t accept words from strangers
however well-meaning they appear.
Remember: Cui bono? Cui bono?

Remove their hand from your crotch/purse/mouth;
rip out their fake smiles with your teeth. 
There’s violence folded within everyday phrases:

Take Back Control,
              Economic Migrants,
                              Make [INSERT NATION HERE] Great Again.

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Tony Beyer: Turn

the new leader’s dead eyes
don’t change expression 
while the question is asked
or as he intones his answer

the impression this gives
is that anything he says
must be obvious anyway
to anyone with any sense

he’s not interested in those
who aren’t listening to him
it’s the troubled and fearful
of change who are his target

unless it’s the change back
he’s already announced
to perks and entitlements
for those who favour him

his aim is to control a 
population more than half 
of whom won’t concern him
once the votes are in

he needs losers to help
his winners feel affirmed
withholding the charitable
glad hand for photo ops

snipping open the ribbon
on a track through the bush
or cannily distributing
cosy appointments

these are the purposes
for which his upright carriage
his impeccable menswear
were calculated

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Leona Gom: 62 Billionaires
62 billionaires own as much wealth as half the world’s population
  —Oxfam report, 2016, cited in Beyond Banksters, by Joyce Nelson

They could all fit into your house,
these owners of the world.  Imagine them 
there, not that comfortable and not exactly 
friendly but agreeing to give it a try.  But 
what could you talk about?  The weather?  
Of course they own that, too, so 
the subject is not as safe as it sounds.  
And what as a good hostess could you possibly 
offer them?  Even a glass of water already belongs
to them in a way you can barely understand.

The ones that talk might be willing to answer
a question or two about their favourite possessions:
a favourite wife, an island, a sled, a government.
They might even express a certain bewilderment
at how they have become this rich.  It seemed
to take no effort at all, they admit.  At some point
it was so easy to buy the laws and the lawmakers
they could do it in their sleep, and they did.
Perhaps they even blame you, wondering why
you did not stop them.  Now, of course,
it’s too late.  They murmur about algorithms
and portfolios beyond their control.

When they leave they will be polite.
They will smile, collusively, across the room
at each other.  At you the smile is something
else, but not pity, not any more.  Pity is 
always an early divestiture, and it, too,
is no longer under their control.


Leona Gom: The Lenins
  —after reading Budapest, by Rick Steves

Back to back now or facing each other 
across the memorial Budapest park,
moved from their pedestals in city squares
and courtyards, from government buildings, 
to this graveyard of communist statues, stately 
or with arms raised, looking up, looking down,
holding a flag, a book, a gesture, brought here
while the nineties hammered their century shut.

Overnight gone from honour to disdain,
not pulled down in retribution but 
parked in a garden of broken ideas,
not turned to honest rubble but to warnings,
to kitsch for the tourists happy to pay
and take their comical selfies and get 
back on the bus to capitalism. 
 
What do the Lenins murmur to each other in 
the winter evenings when the park is closed?
What messages of regret and sadness?
Stalin, they whisper, you there in the east 
corner, all your fault, you insane bastard,
who knows where we might be now
without you.  The snow falls into
all his death, all that silence.

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Daniel Bennett: The Panda

The sounds of the house begin above him,
a family waking. He thinks of Stalin 
preferring a sofa to a presidential bed, 
of the ace of pentacles gleaming 
from the apocrypha of a bookshelf 
of the bottle of Cahors he drank last night,
a black wine, dark as a tarot reader's smile.
He winds the blanket tighter, but sleep  
has vanished for another day. 
Stalin lay dead for days because lackeys 
wouldn't wake him. Lucky Stalin. 
He considers how all things are rare 
and fleeting: power, ambition, sleep, 
the ephemera that crams inside a head, 
even the emptiness that ensues 
when loves disappears. Already,
this day is spoiled. 
                                  Through the glass door 
of the lounge, his daughter watches. 
For how long he can't tell. Her gaze moves 
from the space he occupies, back upstairs, 
towards his former habitat. A radio sounds, 
a song about hips meeting, kisses, 
the rest. He lifts himself with the blanket 
wrapped about him, smiles and waves, 
because captivity should be safe for all. 
The girl retreats. He sees his reflection
in the shine on glass: his pot belly, 
eyes dark from sleep. New footsteps 
press on the stairs, subtle and hesitant. 
He begins to dance across the cage, 
his claws scraping on squeaking boards, 
his tongue probing a shred of green bamboo.

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James Roderick Burns - haiku

Two dogs
boxing in the park –
dusting of blossoms
 
 
Muggy day –
beyond blackbird hedge,
a patient cat
 
 
At the insect’s
approach, a lilac-bush
begins to quiver
 
 
Hard wind –
pawnbroker’s eagle
itches to fly
 
 
Sun-warmed rat,
war-memorial plinth
all to himself

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***

Jack Houston: sparrows

there’s at least corn
flakes a dozen 
mixed nuts in the fish
fingers bushes near
the end bananas
of our avocados flats
flitting coffee goat’s 
cheese in and those 
little yoghurts out
of the kids like
the foliage splitting 
whatever they’re 
Marmite doing between
each washing up other
food probably liquid 
the finding of
the search for olive
sustenance oil there one 
mustard moment gone
the raisins next I 
haven’t time to stand 
and oat cakes 
watch them though

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Tom Phillips: Unfair assumptions about pigeons

The pigeons strut across what’s left of the lawn
like generals or politicians inspecting frontline mud
on the day after the last shot sounded in a war.
They’ll glean nothing from this compacted earth.

A smaller, prouder finch has its tail feathers up.
It knows when it’s under threat and does its best
to make a voice heard above mechanical coos
from the frog-marching, land-grabbing pigeons.

As if in an allegory, our downstairs neighbour appears.
He plugs a hosepipe onto the garden tap and turns
a sudden spurt of water over parts of the yard
he’s doing his best to cultivate despite the birds.

Later, when the sun slides down apartment facades,
bats will hurl their soft, dark bodies through free air. 

10 April 2019, Sofia

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Moya Pacey: Birders

Instead of smelting steel or driving 
forklifts at the port, men are buying bird 
books, spotting, making blogs, competing. 
Last week, Pete scored a willow warbler. 
Harry beat that with an orange-breasted
whinchat. Wildlife Centres springing 
up where smokestacks once belched 
hot air and muck. Dads and grandads 
walking lads out over marsh, 
telling tales of birds’ long journeys. 
Places where they fed, watered, 
rested in sanctuaries now disappeared.  

In the hide, men whisper names— 
shoveler, pochard, lapwing, 
redshank—once a glossy ibis.
The lads are their apprentices.
Men help them to adjust the lenses 
of binoculars, so that when 
they close one eye and squint, 
they see 
the world changed 
	 for birds and men.

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Mary Franklin: Lost and Found 

Clearing space in the attic
for another box of books
the skirling of swallows 
under gathering clouds
warns me of the onset 
of a summer storm. I lean 

an arm on the windowsill, 
watch a squirrel scurry up
three-sided, blue-green needles
of a tamarack, then vanish 
among its mysterious foliage.
My foot touches something odd. 

A child’s memory guides me
to a voice I loved that for years
I have heard only in dreams
and I stare down at an old  
vinyl record, the label torn,  
destroyed by damp and time.   

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Curtis Brown: Between Lines

Should I read the lines of your life   I fear I may
neither find myself amongst them   nor indeed
between them    despite having written them
with you throughout our many years   so I sing
my own song to you as we embrace   my tears
falling down your back    onto the horizon
shimmering   a mirage of salt water   yet I count
this painful blessing more favourable than the fear 
of a stranger in your eyes as they gaze upon
my face   and search for it between the fading lines...

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Peter Kenny: The door in the wall

Orange bollards, the bus gridlocked. 
From its top deck I see a plane tree’s shadow; 
how distinct leaf shapes shoal over a wall 
of whitewashed brick, and a green door.
I fox this page with a memory: a summer 
when I, a boy from the flats, trespassed 
through bramble, stingers and Bramley trees, 
into private gardens. I climbed on damp, 
back-broken sheds, parachuting bindweed trumpets
into the spiders’ Germany of flowerpot towers 
and wood-loused tenements of rotten wood.
I tried every door, hoping to steal into a story, 
a walled garden perhaps, where a woman 
is waiting with the book of me open on her lap,
my choices forking through its pages. 

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Angela Kirby: Rain      

Sometimes in those long wet northern summers
a solitary child wanders out into the sodden garden
and makes her way through a dripping arch
of golden hops to the long wood which only a few
short weeks ago she’d seen awash with bluebells.

Now she finds that one well-hidden clearing
from which to see a thin grey swab of sky, and lying
on the damp earth she offers herself up to the rain
till all her lonely pain is washed  away and she feels
whole again, redeemed by this secret baptism.


Angela Kirby: 3 AM   

no moon, no stars, no sirens
no cat yowls, no dog howls
only a small clear voice persists
‘On whose walls will your pictures
hang, where will two thousand books
find home, who will then dust
the Staffordshire,  Chelsea, Spode
Crown Derby, Famille Rose
and those Meissen figurines?’
Lying here, one thing’s for sure -
when I go – which may be soon
I’ll no longer know nor care

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Kathleen McPhilemy: Months of Sundays
It was not (to start again) what one had expected.
What was to be the value of the long looked forward to
Long hoped for calm, the autumnal serenity 
And the wisdom of age?		 T S Eliot, East Coker

Desultory whistling from the garden next door
the rumble of a neighbour’s lawnmower:
Sunday again;
Confined to my category
I can hardly be bothered to name the days.

I don’t think I can get used to this.
For all its imperfections 
I miss
the world we had. 
When I considered age and death
I expected to grow old 
in the world I knew;
I thought when I died
I would leave a me-shaped space
and others would carry on
around an emptiness 
they recognised 
accepted 
and remembered me by.

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Ruth Valentine:  At Mortlake

For ten minutes I was not living my own life

though somebody stepped down
from the train to the platform    it was
a day in spring
not raining    not quite sunny

somebody crossed to the far side of the line
however you cross there   waited
a gap between lorries

threaded herself into the alleyway
and out onto the towpath
not flooded that afternoon
then at the gate

into the cemetery    somebody became
me    but I tell you I was not
living that life

in those minutes I was walking
back along the river towards the city
downriver to Kew
or sitting
in the sun on the green
watching a small girl run after a pigeon

or I was hitting someone or fucking someone
in the non-existent station underpass

or writing a poem or lying in bed with you
half asleep in your arms
I wish I had been lying
in your arms those lost minutes

the doctor says
sooner or later I will lose much more


Ruth Valentine: Cloths Used For Oiling May Spontaneously Combust*

along with elderly shopkeepers in Dickens,
hayricks, things focussed through a piece of glass,
people in lockdown.

Spontaneous combustion: a useful skill
we all should aspire to.  The fat cremation fees
you'd save your estate!  And think of the satisfaction
of selecting when and where: the local park,
that dress shop where they looked at you like dirt,
which you'll be once the flames die down.  Or Downing Street.

I'm rehearsing already: sitting out in the sun,
overheating the bedroom.  
I just need to know I can, when the time comes:
a fortnight of driving rain, say, or politicians
claiming Everything's under control, and smiling, smiling.

*warning on a bottle of Danish furniture oil

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Marie Dullaghan: Smoking

We waited long minutes under dark clouds. 

When the time came, my sister could not enter, 
stood instead among the screened rubbish bins.

My son went to her, placed a lit cigarette 
between her lips.

I broke protocol; entered the building first.
Those who had gathered, followed, awkward, hesitant. 

In the centre of the room, a flutter like bird wings
in my chest. Anxious.  

Oh God!  How alike these cousins!  
I never noticed – the beard, the nose, the hair, 

the younger outside with his aunt, 
cigarette smoke struggling up through damp air,

the other in here, godless voices  
in unfamiliar prayer surround his coffin.

Then the rain. 
Loud fat drops, beating the roof, the doors, the windows. 

Strangers in black suits fastened the lid.

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Molly Burnell: Fragility

You look up from your cigarette
as a black horse gallops by, burning

a flickering orange-yellow tail
into the dark, into your eyes.

A mane of flailing flames
upon its veined neck,

disjointed wisps of fire-tips 
dying into sooty air.

You stand and you watch,
before relinquishing the paper

pinched between your index
and middle, like it isn’t there,

letting it fall onto a paper path
and scatter its glowing ashes

on the wind, into paper trees,
paper grass and your paper self. 

Every edge curls into the dark
because everything is thin

and prone to catching fire,
falling to tiny pieces

at the slightest touch, the caressing
and consuming
of yellowing fingers
and blackening nails.

Molly Burnell: Secrets

Tear me to secrets 
like I’m paper
etched with words 
that won’t ink 
out of my mouth
onto the air.

You can chew
on an untasted cut
of me in your head,
over and over;
a slice of stale bread
broken into smaller,

easier-to-swallow chunks. 
But if you do swallow 
and the taste brings tears,
don’t feed me
to the ducks scattered
through the park like crumbs,

or the homeless man
swept into the doorway
of the boarded-up
Chinese takeaway,
on your walk back
to your parents.

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***

Tanner: you have to give her that 

she’d be crying
when she’d tell you

you’re too short
or you don’t make enough money
or you’ll never be a writer

she’d be crying
as she said these things 
and she’d be nodding 

and to everyone else in the bar 
it would look like 
she was agreeing with
something hurtful 
you were saying
to her 

and when a couple of white knights
who’d been watching
would come over  

she’d look away 
embarrassed
inadvertently showing them
the walnut bruise on her cheekbone 
she got from falling down drunk 

and then she wouldn’t say
anything. 

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Jane McLaughlin: Way In

please enter your Pin number
please enter your password
please enter your username
please enter the second, sixth and eighth letters of your memorable word
please enter your grandmother’s shoe size
please enter your last cholesterol reading
please enter the name of your window cleaner’s wife
please say five Hail Marys and one Our Father

sorry your details have not been recognised

please click on this link to reset your password

please select a memorable question

what is your mother’s maiden name?
what is the name of your first school?
who is the muse of lyric poetry?
in what constellation is the star Deneb?
who wrote the Almagest?
why are you bothering to answer these questions?
why do you want to spend your money on products 
produced by slave labour on the other side of the world?

please enter your email address

sorry that email address is not recognised

please register your details here to set up a new account

sorry that address is already in use

please enter your username

sorry that name does not exist

sorry your identity has been deleted from cyberspace

Abandon hope all ye who fail to enter here

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Jennifer Johnson: Passages

In this coastal town
white poverty protects itself
with flags and dogs.
Visitors climb to the fort 
that guarded against strangers
for millennia, look down
on ferries that feed this port.

Underneath the castle
lies chalk of the sort
teachers taught and
frightened me with,
rock worm-eaten
by defensive passages
carved out in countless wars.

These chalk tunnels
dig into my memory,
my childhood obscured
by Sudanese sandstorms.
A plane simply flew my family
into clearer weather,
first to Malta, then London.

Are those head-scarfed women
sitting on the bench
tourists or have they made
one of those epic journeys
you see on the news
crossing shifting sand dunes, 
Mediterranean waves?

It makes no difference
to the tattooed drunk pulled
by his metal-chained fighting dog.
He swears into the coastal gale
that takes away his voice.
The women put on dark coats, 
cover their bright clothes.

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Mary Robinson: Beirut
for Josie

The trees would have been greening up impossible places 
in empty houses and on roof tops

it would have been spring in the city but on the mountains snow

she would have come at the same moment you took out your phone 
outside the French café just down from the Armenian church
with its pock-marked yellow stone and rose window

she would have been standing behind me 
in an ankle-length robe patterned in gold and purple 
the hem soiled and frayed by the Beirut streets

strands of ash-grey hair escaped from her scarf

her knuckles poked through her tissue skin
and one eye was clouded over like marble

she would have been carrying a child.

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Marion McCReady: Her Hair is a Landscape of its Own
for Ruby

I am scaling the cliff face of her hair to reach her -
my summit-daughter, hair-raiser, my blood-stone girl.
She is a cut asterism adorning an armour of hair. 
When I loosen her pleats, a storm rises.
February gales batter our windows, Clyde squalls
tie ships to their harbours. The cinnamon falls
of her hair engulf me, follow me like notes
plucked from a guitar – each string vibrating
through the air songs from a girl's hair.

The girl is my ten-year-old daughter.
Daily I traverse her jungle; snakes
squirming between us. Growing for so long,
brushed, combed, the hair of my daughter
is her signature. The hair of my daughter
wraps her up in a hair parcel – all bows
and ribbons with the bite of a feral dog.
The hair of my daughter is her doppelganger -
her image caught in its many folds.

It knows the language of pony tails, braids,
bands and bobbles. Her hair has been dyed red,
dyed purple. Her hair hangs around her,
a thick veil coiling when it senses danger.
The hair of my daughter is as old
as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, 
mysterious as the riddle of the Sphinx
and the riddle is growing day by day.

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Fizza Abbas: The Unburnt Toast

A pale, brown woman with unkempt tresses
walks along the pavement. The asphalt and concrete cracked with age:
A barren thoroughfare of desires - A road to hell in-the-making

Her black eyes look around
the remnants of a half-eaten apple look tempting.

She hides it secretly inside her cleavage -
A feeble attempt at a brutal revenge
Those once altruistic soldiers become mannequins.  

My poor Pakistani mother in a slum
Too has feelings, too has rage.

They say have patience, you will get the aid you deserve.

Don't they know the toast has burnt and the jam is now wet?

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***

Bethany Rivers: Awaken
In a bombed-out street, wind moves the lips 
of a politician on a poster. Ilya Kaminsky

This is not a bombed-out country
but the hospitals are suddenly
full of dying black women who 
do not know a word of English.
They are older than Snowdonia, the 
Pennines, Ben Lomond, Ben Nevis.  Yet
they are as young as you or me.
The doctors can’t seem to diagnose
any sickness, yet their vitals are 
fading fast.  The papers are full 
of the news, thousands of black
women who know that truth 
is dying.  They have given birth
to generations of Africans, Australians,
Americans, they know where blood
comes from.  They don’t know what
a mobile phone is or any kind of computer,
yet they’re all connected, every one of them
loses another breath, another heartbeat,
at the exact same hour, across the land.
They breathe as one together.  They die 
as one together.  The doctors don’t know
what to do.  The papers are full of the news,
thousands of black women who know the truth
and don’t speak our native tongue, are dying.
Deep within, we know their ancient wisdom, 
but we’ve forgotten it.  Our only hope 
is to dream their dying breath into us,
breathe their truth into our dreams,
awake with their language on our lips.


Bethany Rivers: Once upon a voice

It was a dark ink spot, dried many years ago, at the back in the far 
corner of an old fashioned school desk.  It looked black at first, but
upon closer inspection, it was navy blue, spreading like a
Rorschach blot to lighter shades.  The desk was hidden in the wings of 
the school stage, the school itself closed down decades ago.  

snapped rulers 
long corridors
to whistle down

I liked the smell of the desk, the squeak of its hinge as I opened it.
I liked the quiet rebellion of the ink, not finding the page to articulate
words, but to be quietly raucous, spoiling any books or papers that 
may have been there.  The ink learning to find its own shape.

kiss the grain of wood 
sink in 
deeper

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***

Nancy Mattson: Student Mobilization Order, Fire Prevention Unit
Hiroshima, 6 August 1945  [After photographs by Hiromi Tsuchida]

That we cannot find our children
	And we trained them to prevent

That blackness fell in flakes
	And the ashes were

That the world went silent
	And our tongues 

                         *

That I found Akio’s jacket hanging
	And nothing else on the tree 

That the badges I sewed on the arms
	And the threads held

That I can hold his jacket, its torn shoulder
	But not his body, my first-born son 

                         *

That I found Yokisho’s water bottle, twisted
But not her body, my only daughter

                         *

That I found Reiko’s lunch box, intact
Her peas and rice uneaten, carbonized

                         *

That we are breathing into our lungs 
Our children’s bodies, vaporized

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***

Jane Kirwan: Mystery

His homework is to make a time-line of the crucifixion 
– what is a time-line? 
Grandparents must have taken him to church in Enugu,
have knelt with him before the altar.
Surely he noticed the silence once the heavy door shut 
leaving the heat, red dust, crowds outside?
He can’t remember a priest or any incense 
– maybe there was singing –
no memory of pictures: journey of a man to his death.
How to explain the Stations of the Cross? 
He knows train stations in South London,
which ones to avoid 
but how to keep him safe, this gentle boy?
How to explain the point
– the viciousness behind the group over there
or those there, throwing dice – 
of religions: crown of thorns, nails driven in,
a crowd jeering, cheering the murderers on.
How to learn about suffering: shuffling from image
to image, slowing the breath, constricting the chest. 
He’s eleven, lives with Roblox and Minecraft 
and police tape, and gangs. 
How to explain the rage, the blindness, 
slide of a blade as it slices into the dying man’s side.

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***

Julia Duke: The Wrestlers
inspired by 'Wrestlers' (linocut), Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, c. 1914

Intimacy hovers, poised at the point of a knife:
the artist's decision, skilful incision, will shape 
the outcome of this skirmish. When a scuffle 
breaks out among boys who knows
where it will end.

No easy brush strokes; each cut made with purpose.
Each thrust of the knife a new thrust 
in their struggle. Each twist of the torso 
a deep violation, a mute exhortation, 
a tentative knowing.

Interwoven, interlocking, grasping and gasping,
panting and rasping, poised on the cusp 
of success, almost basking, 
then a plunging, sudden lunging,
interlinking, almost sinking.

Blood runs deep. It's thicker than water.
They grapple and tussle, inextricable tangle,   
convolution of limbs, a contortion, a wrangle.
Caught up with each other in
the search for a brother.

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***

Phil Connolly: Granite Zachary

Rock ‘ard Zach to his mates.
He’s cock o’ the class by a chasm
and needs to be to put his fists up
and defend the honour
of his perfectly normal nose
against the lies of friends, so called,
whose baiting would persuade him,
from the wariness of distance:
Zach the hooter, Zach the conk,
yer sneck’s as long as an elephant’s trunk.

But chants are trance-inducing. Plus clear 
numerical advantage makes them bold.
Lifting a shoulder towards their cheeks,
raising and dropping that arm, charging
towards him they’re doing the elephant –
charging towards him retreating
and charging they trumpet and scram, 
trumpet and trumpet and scram.

Zachary collars each in turn, blackens
and cracks, fattens and thickens and smacks 
an eye, a tooth, a lip a lug a gob until, 
for want of breath, the action stalls.
Zach’s unmarked but smarts: betrayed.
The bloodied, battered and bruised
affect a grin. They might declare 
the score a draw, if this were just a game.

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***

Pascal Fallas: The Letting Go

I know you lie in the dark still moving 
around the wild topography of school 
and humiliation. Wind-blasted and sore 
on some borderless moor of adolescence

with no fixed end, no moment where 
you say: yes, now this is an adult’s
life. You know I also swallowed 
those gruff years whole like adder eating vole. 

Hurt from a quarter century back 
sometimes cries like curlew here in the night 
and echoes between our mirrored backs. 
And you tell me without hesitation that curlews 

don’t cry in the dark, but did I say that 
out loud and is it really true? 
Besides what I mean is not that 
but instead: why are we still thigh-deep 

in the cotton grass of forming personalities? 
Why are we still perched on those high
youthful outcrops reliving errors 
that freeze me now? Do you feel this too? 

Are you also stopped by the danger and shameful 
behaviour that lies and revives in the mind? 
Do you know I have such thoughts that pull 
with the density of a fell and land as ice-sharpened 

rain which sheers across the landscape 
to meet my face? You too have this owl-dish 
opened to signals from the past: flattened 
cheeks, broad bones, ears 

expansive and locked onto distant noise 
beaming, booming. You retain everything
and the children are out there now, roaming
through their own moorland of heather 

and flooded streams, lonely abandoned 
farms and sodden ground, collecting 
and storing it all, wind-blind and ignorant. 
Should they forget nothing too? 

Perhaps after everything we are all 
the same, here in the dark, fuller 
than we know and moved to a halt.
We are stuck here lying, lying still.

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***

Alison Campbell: Off sick from work
 
In bed, my daughter sleeps
away her illness.  I sit reading
In the swivel chair by her table.
The noon sun falters; snow
is imminent. I turn the chair to catch
more light, turn a page over.
 
It’s like this time over –
we sit with children sleeping,
watching, waiting for them to catch
themselves.  But unlike reading.
this quiet seems fragmentary, like snow –
soft, deep, never immutable.
 
My arms and head rest on the table.
We breathe in tandem.  She curls over,
sighs.  I pull the blind against the snow
dazzle and drift into a sleep
of sorts. (Tiredness has made reading
pall.) There’s a pull to try and catch
 
the essence of her being. I catch
my breath as she flails an arm. The table
creaks as I stir. The book she’s read
falls to the floor. The cat starts, jumps over
her foot. She doesn’t wake from the sleep
she needs; recuperative. It’s now

dimmer. Slight wind drifts the flakes of snow
against the pane. Does it bring dreams, or catch
you unawares – pull you into a deeper sleep?
The cat springs up, comfortable
on the bed again, kneading the quilt over
and over, till he nests down. I read
 
into this an acceptance, a readiness
to claim sleep as his right, too. Snow
falls faster, covers gardens. Day’s over.
The sun dips, just catching
the standing mirror, tilted, on the table;
a shiny dream-catcher reflecting sleep.

The snow soothes – it’s inevitable.
We catch the day, then it’s over.
Sleep comes – we’re more than ready.

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***

Shikhandin: Snow From Your Cell Phone

You hold up the irregular pentagon 
you scooped up from the sidewalk. You promise not to eat it. 
The road swings as you walk. The path you take 
to college, to your rooms. The store where you buy 
sifted rye flour, and I
googled to find out if chapattis could be made 
from it. Broccoli is cheap here, you say, 
a satisfied smile lighting up your snow-kissed face. 
Thank goodness they speak English here. But you’ve learnt 
to say ‘tack’ and a few other words already. Neither 
of us had seen snow before. So, you show 
it to me again. Its edges melting into your mitten-warm
hand and off the screen. You wave and I see
the snow falling like possibilities 
from the trees. You aim at the ground. 
Your footprints on the talc-like surface, 
so deliciously clean. And then up, towards cloud-bright 
sky with a tatting of blue. European crows 
gather – a murder of crows, right? – near 
a snow dusted bench. A red truck slides forward. Your canvas. 
A lock of your hair swings out of vision. My canvas. 
Our brown irises eat picture-postcard beauty. Indian plum

is a February fruit. We offer it first to our Goddess 
of learning, who rides a snow-white 
swan. You have shown me snow, but I’ll never
show you my hidden snowstorm. The rink 
of frozen tears where I skate 
my anxieties away. My knees shake 
like leaves. The fruit’s sharp sweetness nips 
my tongue. I show you its white flesh 
beneath smooth green skin. You pretend 
to lick your ice-clod. You throw a balled-up challenge 
at me before you go in 
to your laboratory. Your world shuts its door. But 
your voice lingers long after my cell phone 
has turned darkly mute. I shut your room. It feels 
so distant now, and cold. I hold the ball of yarn I’d meant 
to crotchet into a scarf. A piece of lint wafts. A sunray 
catches it. Softly. Like a footfall in the snow.

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***

Robert Nisbet: Blue Stockings
She goes to London University in 1935 

Phrases like depravity and lusts of the flesh
and abomination were mercifully absent
from the minister’s remarks, that summer evening
when the chapel marked her departure
and wished her well. He simply spoke
of a plethora of new experiences.

The envious called her Bluestocking. She read
for her BA in history, she talked of Marx 
and Fox and Pankhurst, the still-suspect Darwin.
She bought blue stockings too, a lovely pair,
on one of her dawdles down Petticoat Lane.

One evening Michael laid embracing hands 
on stocking and leg. Their breathing
was wet with wine, and the hint, the whiff,
of a hitherto unknown communion. 

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***

Rosemary Norman: Symphony Jane

There was a blackbird on the lawn
singled them out

the instant she was put into his arms
as any child might be,

and that’s a well-known omen
though of what, he saw

no consensus online. He named her
Symphony, for a life

long, complex and with various discords
eloquently placed. She

had mumps, measles and glue ear
and was Simmie at school.

She came downstairs with such sureness
he knew this was a tryst

not a date. She hugged him and was gone
to that young man

he must suppose has sable plumage
and eyes rimmed with gold.  

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***

Robin Houghton: Hazel is fascinated by space

When you kick that football to the edge of the lawn and ask
where should I put the tennis ball we talk about relative size 
and distance and relative scale. There's no room for the sun 
in this garden or even this town so we stick with planet Earth
and Moon. Out comes the tape measure just about here I say.
We contemplate the balls. The moon is bigger than I thought
but I'm loath to tell you this for fear of breaking your reverie
or letting on that the more you know the more ignorant you feel.
Instead I tell you about the mini-moon the size of a family car 
just passing by when Earth pulled it in. No-one knows where
it's driving from or to, or quite how long it's been hitchhiking—
a dot of a thing, with pretentions—smooth arriviste spooling away 
while the real Moon, blue moon, lovely moon of all our dreams 
and nights hums its own song, looks to its shadow, assesses
the cesspit of its universe with all the satellites, abandoned bits 
of craft, landing gear, sundry items dropped by astronauts, 
the whole orbiting junkyard necklacing our planet just out of reach.
I want to tell you it wasn't always like this, it wasn't about us.
Meanwhile mini-moon, baby-moon, emergent with hope and pathos
on its egg-shaped path, is soon to be flung away, yet again.

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***

Sarah James: Marcasite

The watch Nan gave me never worked
longer than a few months. The trick,
she reminded me, was to keep it wound,

but not over-wind it. Whatever colour
her wig, Nan’s curls were always sleek
and tight. She’d clutch my wrist, tell me

I was her favourite – her first, prized
eldest grandchild, though perhaps
she said likewise to my sister and cousins.

She smiled, toothy as a polished watch-cog,
even as she grew thinner and shorter,
even as she out-survived one daughter.

Her intricate silver-linked watch 
hangs loosely on my wrist, unticking.
I finger the strap; each tiny marcasite

still shines as bright as her eyes did.

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***

 Ian C Smith: Inside a Room

Hopper glimpses through one of the many windows in this city, a man hunched 
forward who reads.  A woman sits, turned away from him, one finger on a piano’s 
keys.  His newspaper casts shadow on a round table separating them.  Framed 
pictures within this frame in the background blur like some memories.  Between 
viewer and foreground, unseen, lies Greenwich Village’s resting pulse, all that has 
happened, shall happen.  We see what might be a closed door, but no handle, 
perhaps the bedroom.  The night washes them in angled light.  What scents pervade 
this room?  Does she pick out a favourite composer?  Satie?  Something elegiac, or
 the strain, Santa Lucia, from the recent movie, A Farewell to Arms?  A Mills Brothers 
song?  Has hearing her solitary notes become his habit?

.          Now, here, her name kissed
          gone dancing with ghosts of lust
          body heat lingers.  

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***

Fraser Sutherland: The Scandinavian Detective
 
He wakes early, finding darkness in the dawn.
He hasn’t slept long or well. He makes himself a cup of tea,
a restful time before a restless day. For some years
his wife’s been absent, she couldn’t take the irregular hours
of a dedicated detective, the uniformity of his dourness.
He looks out a window on the street. It’s snowing, though
it will soon change to rain, hail, fog, or sleet. He hopes
his old car will start, but doesn’t expect it to. He’d get another
if he could afford it. His key doesn’t make it go. He’ll have to
walk to the squat grey building with one light burning,
his office waiting for him, desk strewn with uncompleted paperwork.
He pours the first of the many cups of the toxic coffee
in which the squad room specializes. They won’t get better.
As the hours pass he checks the office of a colleague
to see if he’s in. He isn’t. He never is.
Nor is his boss, the police chief, she’s on another floor,
making a statement to the press. Back at his desk
he reads again a daily thickening file about the bones,
the friendless bones he broods about awake or in fitful sleep.
Nobody knows where they came from, or how long
they’ve lain, caked with earth, in the unearthed hole.
He should go out to lunch but orders instead a sandwich.
Then he’ll have to tell his team to meet and hear of nothing new
but they’ll keep on doing what they have to do.
He’ll get answers eventually but won’t like them when he does.
He reads the file again, then puts it aside.
As he often does, he ponders getting a quiet place in the country,
the acquisition of a dog.

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***

Phil Kirby: A Model Wife

How she becomes his masterpiece
with every stroke, each subtle daub
of blue or green on her bare arms,
beneath one eye, that shadowed flesh
almost concealed by rose-blush tints
applied to each cheek. Instructed
by him in every pose, she sits –
in a plain dress of his choosing,
hair styled and tied to his desire –
as he creates her public face:
the shallow smile and haunted look
that some critics will interpret
wrongly, calling it dispassion,
while remarking on the artist’s
skill in capturing her likeness,
her spirit, in two dimensions.

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***

Stuart Henson: Every Breath You Take

A hit based on a misconception.
Well, people hear what they want to hear.
So now when fear stalks like a predator 
greedy for TV’s lurid disconnects,
hot to emerge and shake our hands
like one of Juke Box Jury’s waiting bands 
and words get twisted to the sinister
each time the experts turn their thumbs
it’s harder still to fill your lungs, to hum 
along, like when some jumped-up minister
coughs out statistics from an autocue…
Yet all the while you know I’m watching you,
helpless, ear-wormed, undone by that song— 
and its insistence that we read it wrong.

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***

Emma Neale: Arrhythmia

The young physician
jogs the tree-canopied avenue

white earphones hutched
in his ears, old blue iPod clutched

in a fist that he holds a little aloft
as he presses the small metal song-box
 
against the air’s clammy ribs
his expression abstracted yet intent 

as if he’s never not on shift:
with the smallest of stethoscopes

auscultates our era’s
serious irregularities.

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***

Fizza Abbas is a Freelance Content Writer based in Karachi, Pakistan. She is fond of poetry and music. Her works have been published on quite a few platforms including Poetry Village and Poetry Pacific.

Daniel Bennett was born in Shropshire and lives and works in London. His poems have been published in numerous places, including Wild Court, The Frogmore Papers and Poetry Birmingham. His first collection West South North, North South East was published in 2019.

 Tony Beyer writes in Taranaki, New Zealand. He is the author of Anchor Stone (2017) and Friday Prayers (2019), both from Cold Hub Press. Recent work has appeared in Hamilton Stone Review, Landfall, Mudlark, NZ Poetry Shelf and Otoliths.

Zoe Brooks lives in Gloucestershire. She’s had poems recently published in Birmingham Poetry Journal, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Prole, and Fenland Reed. Her collection Owl Unbound will be published by Indigo Dreams in Autumn 2020. She is currently working on a collection about her time in the Czech Republic

Curtis Brown is a British, London-based creative who believes in the promiscuity of poetry. He uses various art forms to tell tales, and is excited by the fact that poetry inevitably permeates them all.

 Molly Burnell  is based in the Northamptonshire countryside, she’s intrigued by the beauty found in the ugly and vice versa, with special interest in anything and everything ecological. She’s appeared in several issues of The Dawntreader, the university anthology, Heritage, and soon to be featured in Sarasvati, as well as Slice of the Moon Books’ anthology, Earth, We Are Listening.

 James Roderick Burns’ fourth short-form collection, Height of Arrows, is due from Duck Lake Books in 2020.  His work has appeared in The Guardian, The North and The Scotsman.  He lives in Edinburgh and serves as Deputy Registrar General for Scotland.

Alison Campbell, from Aberdeen, now lives in London. She is a teacher/counsellor with poems in publications, including Obsessed with Pipework, The Curlew, The Poetry Village, Dunlin ‘Port’ anthology and Reach. She was shortlisted for Segora Poetry Prize, 2018 and commended in the Barnet Poetry competition 2017, 2018. She has work forthcoming in Dawntreader and Sarasvati.

 Phil Connolly is married and lives near York. He taught for many years in North Africa and the Middle East. He was shortlisted in the Wordsworth Trust Competition and has been published in several anthologies and magazines including The High Window, London Grip, The North and Dream Catcher.

 Julia Duke is a nature writer and poet who has found her inspiration living in England, Wales and the Netherlands. She has written a regular literary column for the HagueOnLine and published poems in various magazines and anthologies, including Fifth Elephant (Newtown poets anthology) and the Suffolk Poetry Society magazine Twelve Rivers

 Marie Dullaghan was born in Dublin. She is a retired education worker, fine arts photographer, musician, actor, writer and poet. A long-term member of both the Poeticians and Punch collectives in Dubai, she has performed regularly at events including the Emirates Airlines Festival of Literature. Has work has been published in The Shop, The High Window and elsewhere.

 Pascal Fallas is a writer and (occasional) photographer currently living in Norfolk, UK. His poems have recently appeared in The Fenland Poetry Journal, Brittlestar and The Alchemy Spoon. For more information, or to make contact, please visit www.pascalfallas.com.

Mary Franklin’s poems have appeared in numerous print and online magazines and anthologies including Bonnie’s Crew, Ink Sweat and Tears, Iota, London Grip, Nine Muses Poetry, The Stare’s Nest and Three Drops from a Cauldron.  She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Leona Gom was born on a remote farm in northern Alberta, Canada.  She has published six books of poetry and eight novels, and her work has won several awards and appeared in many anthologies and translations.  Her novel The Y Chromosome has recently been reprinted by Cormorant Books

Stuart Henson’s most recent collection is The Way You Know It, New & Selected Poems  (Shoestring 2018).  A book of sonnets sent on postcards, in collaboration with John Greening, is due from Red Squirrel this November.

 Robin Houghton’s most recent pamphlet Why? was a joint winner of the Live Canon Pamphlet Competition in 2019.  Her poetry appears in many magazines including Agenda, Magma, Mslexia, Poetry News, The Frogmore Papers and The Rialto, and in numerous anthologies. Awards and competition successes include the Hamish Canham Prize and the Poetry Society Stanza Competition.

Jack Houston is Hackney Library’s poet in residence. His work has previously appeared in a few anthologies and Blackbox Manifold, The Butcher’s Dog, London Grip, Magma, Poetry London and Stand.

 Sarah James/Leavesley is a prize-winning poet, fiction writer, journalist and photographer. Her most recent project is > Room, an Arts Council England funded multimedia hypertext poetry narrative. Collections include How to Grow Matches (Against The Grain Poetry Press, 2018) and plenty-fish (Nine Arches Press, 2015), both shortlisted in the International Rubery Book Award. Her website is at http://sarah-james.co.uk

Jennifer Johnson was born in the Sudan and has worked as a VSO agriculturalist in Zambia and later as an editorial assistant. She has a pamphlet Footprints on Africa and Beyond (Hearing Eye, 2006) and a book Hints and Shadows (Nettle Press, 2017).

Peter Kenny writes poems, plays, short stories and, as Skelton Yawngrave, adventures for children. His poetry includes The Nightwork (Telltale Press 2014) and A Guernsey Double (2010, Guernsey Arts Commission) a new pamphlet Sin Cycle, is due this year. Find him at peterkenny.co.uk

Lancashirep-born Angela Kirby now lives in London but has also lived in France and spent much time in Spain and the US. Her poems are widely published, have been read on Radio Four and TV, and have appeared On the Busses. She gives frequent readings in the UK, Europe and the US. Her 5th collection, Look Left, Look Right … came out in April 2019.

 Phil Kirby’s collections are Watermarks and The Third History. Poems since in Poetry Ireland and others. A teen novella, Hidden Depths, is available on the Kindle platform. He has been organising ‘Writers at The Goods Shed’ in Tetbury

.Jane Kirwan’s latest poetry collection was published in 2019 by Blue Door Press. The poems move between a village in Central Bohemia and one of a similar size in the West of Ireland, between a Goose Woman and a grandmother

 Marion McCready lives in Dunoon, Argyll. She is the author of two poetry collections – Tree Language (Eyewear Publishing, 2014) and Madame Ecosse (2017).

 Jane McLaughlin’s poetry has appeared in many magazines and anthologies (including London Grip).  and The New European. She has received awards and commendations in national competitions including the National Poetry Competition long list, Hippocrates Open, Torriano, and Torbay competitions. Her collection is published by Cinnamon Press. She also writes and publishes short stories.

 Kathleen McPhilemy grew up in Belfast but now lives in Oxford. She has published three collections of poetry, the most recent being The Lion in the Forest (Katabasis, 2005).

Nancy Mattson’s fourth full collection is Vision on Platform 2 (Shoestring 2018).  She contributed the title poem for Her Other Language, an anthology of Northern Irish women’s writings on domestic violence, ed. Ruth Carr & Natasha Cuddington, (Arlen House 2020).

Emma Neale is a writer and editor based in New Zealand, who has had 6 collections of poetry and 6 novels published. She has a collection of short stories due out later this year. This year she received the Lauris Edmond Memorial Award for a Distinguished Contribution to New Zealand Poetry. She is the current editor of Landfall

Robert Nisbet is a Welsh poet and sometime creative writing tutor at Trinity College, Carmarthen. He has published widely and in roughly equal measures in Britain and the USA. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee for 2020.

 Rosemary Norman lives in London and has worked mainly as a librarian. One poem, Lullaby, is much anthologised and her third collection, For example, was published by Shoestring Press in 2016. Since 1995 she has collaborated with video artist Stuart Pound. Her poems become soundtrack, image, and sometimes both, and she has performed live with film. The work has been screened regularly at film and video festivals, and is on  Vimeo

Moya Pacey was born and grew up in Middlesbrough in what was then Yorkshire. She now  lives in Canberra, Australia. She published her second collection: Black Tulips (Recent Work Press, University of Canberra) in October, 2017. She co-edits the on-line journal, Not Very Quiet  notveryquiet.com. Her next collection will be published by Recent Work Press in 2020.

Tom Phillips lives and works in Sofia, Bulgaria. His poetry has been published in a wide range of journals, anthologies, pamphlets and the collections Unknown Translations (Scalino, 2016), Recreation Ground (2012) and Burning Omaha (2003). His plays have been produced by theatres in Bristol and Bath and he currently teaches creative writing and translates contemporary Bulgarian poetry.

Colin Pink’s poems have appeared in various magazines such as Poetry Ireland Review, Acumen, South Bank Poetry, Magma, Under the Radar and Poetry News. He has published two collections: Acrobats of Sound, 2016 from Poetry Salzburg Press and The Ventriloquist Dummy’s Lament, 2019 from Against the Grain Press.

Bethany Rivers has two poetry pamphlets: Off the wall, from Indigo Dreams; the sea refuses no river, from Fly on the Wall Press. Author of Fountain of Creativity: Ways to nourish your writing from Victorina Press.  She is editor of the online poetry magazine As Above So Below. She mentors writers from the start of their projects through to publication.

Mary Robinson’s poetry publications include Trace (Oversteps 2020), Alphabet Poems (Mariscat 2019) and The Art of Gardening (Flambard 2010). A poetry/photography collaboration Out of Time was exhibited in 2015.  She lives in North Wales. www.poetrypf.co.uk/maryrobinsonpage.shtml

 Indian writer Shikhandin has been published worldwide. She has won awards in India and abroad. Books include Immoderate Men (Speaking Tiger) and Vibhuti Cat (Duckbill-Penguin-RHI). Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Shikhandin/e/B07DHQM6H5/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1533117978&sr=1-2-ent Face Book: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorShikhandin/

 Ian C Smith’s work has appeared in, Amsterdam Quarterly, Antipodes, cordite, Poetry New Zealand, Poetry Salzburg Review, Southerly, & Two-Thirds North.  His seventh book is wonder sadness madness joy, Ginninderra (Port Adelaide).  He writes in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, and on Flinders Island, Tasmania.

 Fraser Sutherland is a poet, editor, and lexicographer. He lives in Toronto.

Tanner was shortlisted for the Erbacce 2020 Poetry Prize. His latest collection Shop Talk: Poems for Shop Workers is published by Penniless Press

 Ruth Valentine is a writer & an activist for migrant & refugee rights.  Her latest publications are Rubaiyat for the Martyrs of Two Wars and A Grenfell Alphabet.  She lives in Tottenham