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The Winter 2022 issue of London Grip New Poetry features:
*Paul Richards *David Flynn *Ceinwen Haydon *Teoti Jardine
*Jan Hutchison *Agata Palmer *Phil Wood *Pratibha Castle
*Ken Pobo *Oleg Semonov * Tim Cunningham *Stephen Barile
*Candice Kelsey *Jim C Wilson * Mike Farren *Stuart Pickford
*Glenn Hubbard *Bruce Morton *Jackson *Madhab Chandra Jena
*Mark J Mitchell *Lorna Dowell *Thomas Ovans *Julia Duke
*John Kitchen *John Grey *Robert Nisbet *Corey Mesler
*J R Solonche *Joan Michelson *Barbara Hickson *Kevin Higgins
*Bruce Christianson *Amanda Oosthuizen *Rodney Wood *Sally Festing
*Keith Nunes *John Tustin *Mary Franklin *Tim Dwyer *Sue Spiers
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 printable version of this issue can be found at LG New Poetry Winter 2022-23
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
Submission windows are: December-January, March-April, June-July & September-October
Editor’s notes
Giacometti’s Falling Man belongs with a poem in this issue by Bruce Morton but also seems to be an appropriate cover image for these particularly unsettled and unsettling times. Other themes explored in the following pages include parent-child relationships and the innocence of first love experiences. These are complemented by some intriguing speculations and reflections on late life and mortality.
There are, however, only a few contributions that are strongly “Christmas-flavoured” and so at this point we will loudly and emphatically wish all our readers a Happy Christmas and a fruitful new year and then follow our established custom and offer a seasonal item instead of any further editorial observations.
Alternative route
And being warned by God in a dream that they should not return to Herod,
they departed into their own country another way. Matt 2:12
Once we straighten up outside the low-beamed door
and leave the stable where we’ve all been kneeling
wisdom says we must go home another way.
Avoid the city. What if those who greeted us
with lavish and unsatisfying feasts
should now misuse our calendars and calibrations
making us complicit in their malice?
Skirting settlements we meet dishevelled shepherds
fresh from seeing angels. We will keep
as much as we can catch of what they tell us
angels say about the king our star foretold.
This unobtrusive ruler from a makeshift cradle
will devote himself to unobtrusive lives –
until he dies and then returns another way.
………………………… (A version of this poem first appeared in Acumen 99, January 2021)
Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
London Grip poetry editor
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Paul Richards: Sandbanks
Bags packed and standing to attention
In Reception
It’s mother first
Through the revolving door
Towards the waiting taxi
Bitter wind
Gusts in to her face
And messes up her hair
As she
Nurses her coat uneasily
Outside
Then with her on my arm
We process gingerly towards the minicab
Her purple holiday trainers
Cushioning her crooked toes
Against Dorset paving stones.
At the car
I gently manoeuvre her in to the
Rear passenger seat
As the engine purrs
The waves break on the shoreline below
And the palm trees adorning this courtyard
Sway in the wind
Like old dears at a singalong
Then the suitcases –
Into the boot they go,
And I sit
Like a low-slung beachball
In front
–Windows wound up tight –
The cab’s scented ecoclimate
Sealing off
The weekend break.
The driver does a sweeping turn
And as we pick up speed
Towards the end of the driveway
And the station beyond –
The estuary below
Receding in the rear-view mirror –
Mother
In lilting sotto voce
Half-sings
“Goodbye sea”.
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David Flynn: To Hell with Rhyme
I dread the rhyme, finding just the right word
to mean, to feel, to sound the exact same
as the word two lines before. So here: sword.
Now I have to fight, to find a new name
that holds a foil at least. But the stanza
has changed and I am free. I love the sun.
But now have to rhyme. The singer Lanza,
Mario, forgotten now, was the one
my mother loved, she who didn’t love life
with a broken back, manic depression,
and a backward son, me. The unloved wife
listened to the croon and sighed. It’s no fun
rhyming with misery as the subject.
To hell with rhyme. I love my dead mother.
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Ceinwen Haydon: Mother - dob 15 08 1921
You would have been one hundred today,
but you didn’t make it through. I wish
I could regret your passing and forget
that belatedly, it almost freed me. At first
I’d thought, once you’d gone, my mind
would erase you, and early memories
of your petty cruelties: slaps, punches,
put-downs. Your self-centred cry, poor me.
You handed me a lifetime’s work, to heal
your harm. I still wince, see ugliness when
I catch myself, reflected in mirrors or glass.
My progress has been slow, yet lately
it’s accelerated: it started when I faced
the misery of your bankrupt existence.
Against all odds, I’ve found I feel pity
and a dawning forgiveness. Still, I’m
glad you died; angry you abused the child
that was me. I’m glad my older years
didn’t overlap with yours – so relieved
you didn’t celebrate your centenary.
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Teoti Jardine: Ipseity
His Ipseity is in the
Dunnock's trill
in the cries of
starving children,
and the bombs that keep
on falling.
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Jan Hutchison: Jack wakes in his cot
after a watercolour by Maud Sherwood
My mother still speaks of him
still has a catch
in her throat
we stand together
under the painting
his gown the one moving thing
but when I bend over the cot
Jack squirms
he is too heavy to lift out
high up the wall
a painting of a red-roofed house
overlooks Jack’s cot
light from an attic window
lends a lacy sheen
to my mother’s hair
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Agata Palmer: Upcycling
I couldn’t let go of Zach’s mauve sweater,
his favourite, imprinted with shower-gel
scented hugs, his sun-kissed face framed
by the v-neck, highlighting his mocha eyes.
Lanky, he outgrew its smooth cotton weave.
After a few years of holding on, I upcycled it
into leg warmers. Severed sleeves crumpled
on the floor: a mother’s arms empty of her son.
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Phil Wood: 116
Nine-year-old girl still chases a ball
spinning across the schoolyard bedlam;
a ribbon of terraces, snug with slate roofs,
gutters tip tap; a ruckus of boys
fool about in the drizzle. Their play's
wetted coal-black; their eyes flicker
rain-happy fun; they banter chase
the girl pursuing her flutter world
of summer frocks. I hear the chapel.
Granddad humming his wisdom hymns
and out of tune. The shift is over --
slag heaps shimmer a grave of ponds.
The blurry boys are spitting out
coal dust from watery lungs: they have
no breath; the flighty girl is weighted
in mourning black. I've sat too close
to my Grandmother's clock. A kettle
whistles the summons back from cousins.
Gran makes a pot of tea and unwraps
the valley gossip. There's a new school.
(116 children were killed in the Aberfan disaster of 1966. The children were mostly aged between 7 and 10)
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Pratibha Castle: Lemons
are tears
gilded with sunlight,
adults’ fake smiles,
face-pucker odium
a child might feel
on witnessing
its parents kiss.
What I mean to say
is not just kiss. Caress.
Converse in rabbit’s fur
conciliation with each other.
Strict as stalactites,
tart as walnuts
pickled in brine, figures
encased in icy silence
at the outer limits
of a globe
they gave me
for my seventh
birthday on an outing
to Leigh-on-Sea.
A plastic micro-world
with snow, an igloo, Eskimos,
a huskydog drawn sled I
kept beside the bed
tipped upside down
each night
in hopes
this might dissolve
their arctic freeze and
should the figures come unstuck,
tumble on their plastic heads,
that this might shock shock shock
my parents back
to laughing, crying
so their frostbite-silence
no more seared
my ears, and lemons
might be squeezed
sanctified with honey brandy, shaken
stirred as lemon shandy.
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Ken Pobo: Raylene And Skip And Moms
On the glider they sip scotch
and talk about their moms.
Skip resents his: She was a sack
of rules. I squirmed out of it.
Even now seeing her at Christmas
is hard. Raylene says she couldn’t
live up to hers, Mary
with the bleeding heart.
Neither talks about their dads,
men like cordoned-off hallways.
It’s getting dark. Night,
the one child they have,
soon will be ready to leave.
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Oleg Semonov: The First Step
was one you took on Christmas Eve.
A 10-month-old baby then.
Mummy cooking something tasty
in the kitchen. And I,
holding your hands, accompanied you
around the living room.
The Christmas tree was in the corner,
inviting you to touch its ornaments –
smiling baubles, jolly hearts,
silver iridescent tinsel,
stunning icicles, droplets, bells,
irresistibly dancing lights.
You pulled me towards the Christmas tree
and stopped in front of this amazing sight.
Then I released your hands, but you stood still
and dealt with all the toddler’s doubts
whether to fall or to risk reaching out.
You took a step ahead and stopped again
with arms wide open
to keep the balance or to thoroughly explore
the nature of this sparkling wonder
that put a spell on you.
And I was near to keep you from
the needles of this magic Christmas tree
and the enigma it presented –
when your walk is smooth and confident,
you are sure to learn how sharp
my spines may be.
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Tim Cunningham: Ballerina
Again, it is Christmas
And again the trees in town
Are multi-tasking,
Adapting to Christmas trees.
The voices of cherubim and seraphim
Are not heard. Instead,
Speakers blast out
‘Adeste Fideles’, ‘Silent Night’,
‘Jingle Bells’ and ‘Santa Baby’.
A constellation of fairy lights
Dangles from a silver birch
And, through the branches,
A perfect half moon
Is poised, en pointe,
To pirouette and dance
Across this midnight stage
To the music of the spheres.
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Stephen Barile: Saturday Night At The Rainbow
JAMES BROWN AND THE FAMOUS FLAMES
I never quite understood why my mother
Would ever let me go to the Rainbow Ballroom
On a Saturday night by myself.
Maybe it was because she met my father
At a dance at the Rainbow Ballroom in 1947?
She drove me there in the Studebaker
And picked me up later.
I was just a kid, a poor white one at that.
In the dark among the tables and chairs
At the right side of the bandstand
Where couples sat and drank whiskey,
Necked, or made love.
As you would to the great one’s music:
The illustrious James Brown
Who somehow found his way to Fresno.
“The Famous Flames, come to yo’ town,
To burn this place down!” yelled the announcer
In a white tuxedo, oiled-back kinks in a wavy row.
The band was already playing feverishly.
Saxophone players were performing wildly,
The trumpeters stood ready and watched
When, from behind the drummer
And a long drum-roll, came the man
In polished black high-heel boots
And a black satin and sequin suit,
Under an orange cape, with greased
Black hair like a Pontiac hood-ornament.
His legs moved up and down to the music
Like a grain-reaper pulled behind horses,
Driving the beat with his right leg,
Clapping his hands, dipping at the waist.
“The Hardest Working Man in Show Business.”
Was it the mirrored ball
That mesmerized me?
Or, his dance of acrobatic leaps
Landing on his knees, the dazzling footwork
In difficult rhythmic patterns?
Music seemed to stream through him.
After two hours of this,
The announcer in white came out again
And wiped the King’s brow
Who jumped off the stage,
Laid on the dancefloor.
His attendants came back,
Covered him with his cape again
Led a broken man away.
But he ran back, pleading
In severe desperation for love.
Snapped his fingers, the music stopped.
His toothy smile reflected brightly
In the remaining stage light.
The house lights went up,
He was on his way out the backdoor
To the bus parked in the alley
for a gin and strawberry soda.
As for me, my mother picked me up afterward
On the corner of Broadway and San Joaquin.
She asked, “How was the dance?”
“It was okay.”
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Candice Kelsey: Pizza & Snapple
Leave a message, I hear my mother instruct my 84-year-old
father: Hello, Candice! I hope I can see you soon. I
love you, & I hope I can see you soon. & I love you & want
to see you soon. Always obedient, only this time
it takes a lot more out of him. The breath shallow & his voice
muffled by effort while cheerful platitudes remain undaunted
by dementia. I call back. We’re having pizza & Snapple,
he explains with the optimism of a 5-year-old who has yet
to know defeat: of parenting, of career or marriage, let alone
the breathtaking ice bath called aging. I ask if he’s read
the inside of the Snapple cap. I can’t find—ohhh, found it
behind the plate. He is pleased to read a fun fact: The tongue
is the quickest healing part of the human body.
Before
either of us comment, my mother interjects another command.
She thinks he’s wasting my time with bottle cap trivia. He
reads it another two times & I imagine it’s for spite,
hoping he still has some fire with so little oxygen. I wrestle
the image of a tongue healing, of language writhing in pain.
Hold your tongue, bite your tongue, control it—these
I understand. Perhaps the cap reads quickest heeling part,
the tongue a wet dog learning to obey. I have failed
to control my tongue for decades, lashing rage & accusation
at my father. Emotionally absent for years, now mentally
absent, his response has always been absence. There’s no
real fact like the complexity of father & daughter—so far
from the simplicity of a screw cap.
Today on this call
I hear his tongue move slowly, attempting to chew cheesy bread
& engage with me for the first time in a while. Hello,
I hope I can see you soon. I love you, he exhales. Exhaustion,
before handing me to my mother. I picture his sip of peach
tea, tongue ushering its cool to pharynx & into the oesophagus
without instruction. Tongues don’t forget things, don’t need
to be corrected. The heart is a helpless thing. We unscrew
& lose it carelessly. The human heart is the slowest to heal.
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Jim C Wilson: Dad Liked Frank Sinatra
The songs seemed tedious to me as tea,
or grown-ups chattering by the chairful.
A sharp-faced man (a bookie's runner
with thinning sleazed-back hair) crooned on
about heartbreak, love, being lonely.
Why on earth should I care?
At school I dwelt on swellings: secrets
warm inside girls' woolies. With mates I gaped
in adoration at made-up Tit-Bits ladies
in brimming black & white bikinis.
We sang raw songs about grabbing and groping.
And Dad would knock on the wireless set
to make his songs come at him louder.
The words were written around his dreams,
his high (up in the sky) hopes,
the old black magic of wee small hours,
and stardust reveries
of his enchanted evenings.
The cancer got him years ago.
Now, past 70, I find myself caring.
I noticed more autumn leaves today
and, yet again, it's late September.
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Mike Farren: Backendish
The light is beautiful today – relaxed
and gentle, as if September had cast off
summer’s performance anxiety and settled
into its own skin of sweet decay
and when heat comes, it’s effortless like
a century scored at a county out-ground
in a nothing match, by an ex-test batsman
with nothing left to prove except to time.
I’ve been thinking about songs where September
is a metaphor for the singer’s life – September
of Sinatra’s years or Weill’s September
Song; about how winter was almost upon
John Keats when he wrote with calm and grace
of warm days that seemed they’d never cease,
even though by the poem’s end the birds
were gathering to fly, just like his life.
I’ll be sixty before spring comes round again,
not noticing age or loss from day to day
except when they stare square in my face
like an allegorical Renaissance painting.
I grew up with the word backendish but
only knew it as impatience to go
round the loop again – never heard the tick
of those days
dwindling down
to the precious
few.
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Stuart Pickford: Rest of the Day
I stood outside Masculine Hairstyles;
fly screen, name across the window,
I couldn’t make out what was inside.
In that world of Brylcreem and Men Only,
I handed the stylist the creased photo
my mother had cut out from a magazine.
Now, there’s Sky, talking the talk,
grades, skin fades, product for the hair
and my son, apprentice barber at Mr Men.
Afternoons, I place his washing on his Xbox,
throw open windows for air to spring-clean
the fug and breathe life into the exhausted bed.
Just passing, I peer in to see my lad
cutting a wig on a manikin. All the guys
are gym trim, black polos rippling.
Sometimes he’s chatty about a footballer’s tip,
the man on the roof of the women’s refuge
but most days he gets in, it’s just standard.
I make an appointment to be his dummy,
a triangle in a cape with a balding crown
who’s surprised the cut grey hair is mine.
With strong hands, he tilts my head.
I say nothing, resist dad jokes. He nods:
So what you doing for the rest of the day?
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Glenn Hubbard: The Barbers of Treblinka
Abraham Bomba is in his barber’s shop.
A split mirror. The snip snip of his scissors.
He is taking care, making endless little touches
to a customer’s hair. Is he clipping the air?
Claude Lanzmann is asking questions.
Those waiting sit and listen. New arrivals
stand and stare. They look confused.
As if they should not be there.
Inside the chamber in Treblinka, Abe and 15
barbers waited for the naked women and children
to ascend der Himmelweg. No mirrors. Just combs
and scissors. Hair for delay-action bombs.
A time limit of 2 minutes per woman.
No scalping. As if sprucing. But most knew.
Saw through the ruse. Neighbours and friends
joined the queue. "What could you tell them?"
Now the wife and sister of 1 of the 16…
He makes a sharp gesture in the air. As if
to dismiss a thought becoming solid there.
He snips; cannot speak, tongue rolling around
in his mouth, apparently swollen. To prevent
the speaking of the unspeakable? He pauses,
looks away as if something were unfolding
on a screen behind the eyes that he will dry
on his blue barber’s towel. He needs the filming
to stop but Lanzmann pleads: they agreed
the story must be told. Abe waits in a semi-hush.
Snips. Stops. Stares. Tells them to continue.
The barber is under the gaze of the guards.
If he answers their questions about their future
he will die. They are “already dead”. He steals
a minute for hugs and kisses. Raises his scissors.
Abraham Bomba escaped from Treblinka II Extermination Camp in January 1943.
Claude Lanzmann was the director of the documentary Shoah.
Der Himmelweg - The way to heaven. The name given by the SS at Treblinka to
the fenced-off path that led from the undressing barracks to the gas chambers.
Glenn Hubbard: A Heron
The hunched figure on the nest was a heron.
It was wearing a long grey coat; its hat was not visible.
It had taken the hump; its demeanour was crabbit.
The hunched figure on the nest was a heron.
It was up its own arse.
It was not joining the support group.
The hunched figure on the nest was a heron.
It could have been Napoleon at Borodino.
It could have been Franco at Teruel.
The hunched figure on the nest was a heron.
It was gathered around its digestion.
It had gobbled down a leveret.
The hunched figure on the nest was a heron.
It had turned aside from the world.
It had taken on some huge disgrace.
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Bruce Morton: Falling Man
Giacometti’s man
In perpetuity
Is suspended mid-fall
Neither he nor we know
Whether he is to be
Seriously injured
Or to regain balance
The leanness of body
Awkward in forward tilt
Leaves one to wonder what
Clumsiness or malice
Propels or compels him
We will never be sure
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Jackson: Fallen
“Sometimes I wonder—” he said, halting,
hunting for the words hiding like bugs
in the slashed fields of his brain,
“whether the plants still grow.”
He’d asked me how long it had been
since his stroke. “Six months,”
I said, but he shook his head.
“I don’t understand.”
I counted on my fingers. “December
the seventeenth, so January, February,
March, April, May, June: that’s six.”
He shook his head again,
sighed, studied the wall.
“Sometimes I wonder,” he said,
“whether the plants still grow.”
He used to raise tomatoes,
cabbages, melons, dahlias, marigolds.
He walked behind a self-propelled mower
round and round the school oval,
smoothing it for sports.
What is a season to him now?
What are time and space?
A lap around the corridors,
leaning on the walker,
weak leg dragging?
Between my visits he sits all day
staring through glass at blotchy lawn,
palms, roses, the tawny curls
of the gardener steering
her ride-on.
In April he told me he wished
he hadn’t been found. “I don’t want
to live on like this.”
“I can’t take you
to the vet,” I said.
“Not in this country, anyhow.”
I bring him fresh flowers each week,,
water and trim his three plants,
but the chinchilla cat from the brochure
still won’t let him touch her
and the old women have too many wrinkles
for his fifties playboy gaze.
Besides, the bulge in his trousers
is now an incontinence product.
Today when I arrived he had fallen
back in the recliner, toothless
mouth agape, eyelids down,
feet up, nametagged socks
fading in the insistent
winter sun.
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Madhab Chandra Jena: Biography of a book
I am an unknown book
Printed once in the press like others.
Now in your curious hands
Brand new
One day I will be half known to you
At last well known.
You will read me cheerfully
Page by page and
I will die on your desk
page by page.
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Mark J Mitchell: The Door Thief
She was a voluptuary of passage
so he stole five glass doors to please her eyes.
He meant nothing. No lesson. No message.
A present. Just that. For the first, he lied
to guards and offered them powers
that weren’t his. He kept the door. No one died.
The next one came easy from a home that war
smashed. It begged to be polished, so he grabbed
it boldly after bombs fell and ceilings showered
plaster, haloed his head to make her glad.
That glass was frosted and cold to his touch.
Her eyes—sometimes—seemed like that when she dabbed
false tears. Two doors that didn’t look like much
he found outside. He cleaned them, left no streaks
at all. He shouldn’t feel proud but they seem such
nice prizes. The last door took skill. Timing. Long weeks
of searching. Perfect for just the one task
that remained. The door every woman needs.
He knew this exploit was his final, his last
chance to warm her eyes. A gift of passage:
One glass door to cover her hidden masks.
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Lorna Dowell: The Therapist’s Pyjamas
Hung on the back of the bathroom door,
a discarded pink polka dot skin
speaks of someone unguarded, asleep
on the job and breaking her own rules
about boundaries and personal
privacy by leaving on view
to clients like me, before departure
or on arrival, a glimpse
of intimate secrets lurking like scent
in fabric that’s clung to her flesh
absorbing her essence, the warmth
of her breath, the being she’s kept
to herself all these years. It’s the hang
that gives the impression of death
the body strung up and the spirit-
less flesh fallen away.
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Thomas Ovans: Flying over Sweden
She’s got the window
so I must view Linköping
through her long lashes
Thomas Ovans: Looking back on it (John 8:7-8)
His best miracle
was managing to stop me
throwing that first stone.
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Julia Duke: Red Riding Hood
He turned her down
because of his vegetarian principles
but he seized on her basket of apples;
because she was underage
and it was a crime to eat her all up;
because he was secretly scared of hoodies,
especially ones that lurk in dark woodlands.
Julia Duke: Robin Hood
I He turned her down
because he feared that romantic involvement
would deflect him from his destiny;
because he distrusted the privileged classes
and knew her split loyalties would cause her to betray him;
because although he liked her, she did not
come recommended by the Ancient Order of Foresters.
II She turned him down
because she was a firm believer in peaceful protest
whilst he incited the working classes to violence;
because she distrusted homeless people
and feared they were a drain on society;
because she saw him playing with bows and arrows
and feared he would never grow up.
III They turned him down
because they were respectable folk and
not receivers of stolen goods;
because they were insulted by charity
and had never trusted social workers;
because they feared it was an overpayment
and one day they would have to pay it all back.
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John Kitchen: it’s not as if ...
hair’s different styled shorter
your table’s in the large bay window
I glance over not wanting
to be noticed not wanting
eyes to meet
must be over 20 years you look
as good if not better
and I’m sure you’ve noticed me
we don’t acknowledge though
there’s no reason why we shouldn’t
is there
full make up striking colours even
back then kiss me lips not
that we did we’re
both avoiding acknowledgement
but managing quick looks
during the menu reading the ordering the being
-served too soon we’re standing to go
of course you have to come over
I know you don’t I?
I pretend to have to think
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***
John Grey: Funny
I just have to laugh.
A grown man writing love poems.
Sure, I did it in my teens.
But that was the hormones and aesthetics
kicking in simultaneously.
And how else could I explain
the way I felt about the pretty girl
sitting three desks in front of me.
Not with my tongue.
In male-female confrontations,
my lips clammed up so tight
you could have served them
in a seafood restaurant.
So I spoke in secret,
with pen and paper.
But I’m no longer that boy.
Real men may eat quiche now and then
but they don’t come all over romantic
and fill page after page
with overwrought metaphors
and open-heart-surgery-like confessions.
But I do.
And I just have to laugh.
A grown man writing love poems.
I don’t laugh, however.
Why encourage the ones reading them.
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Robert Nisbet: The Last Performance
The in-flight movie had been Notting Hill.
The earlier one, just out of Maryland,
was Shakespeare in Love. Romance. Romance.
Now, as his taxi coursed through London streets
in a deluge, he was singing with Gene Kelly,
Singin’ in the Rain. And as the train neared Wales
his thoughts of hillsides (his home a valley village,
how green, how green) were overscored
by the memories of Robeson and Welsh miners.
At the Plaza’s last performance
(he’d travelled from the USA for this)
the grief hit him with a whack.
She and he had sat there, back row seats
(the usherette’s torch sweeping arcs overhead),
and supped romance, from Marilyn and Curtis
to Oklahoma’s oh what a beautiful day.
Next morning, he packed to travel back to London,
her presence in the valley just a memory now.
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Corey Mesler: The Garden
We went to the garden,
Wendy
and I,
and we lay among the
cabbages and
roses
and we made love as
as if we were inventing
the world,
there in the garden,
with
the cabbages and roses and
trees
and the knowledge that
all dreams contain a snake.
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***
J R Solonche: Alone
How does a man get used
to living without a woman?
Once, it was beyond my wildest
dreams to wonder. Once, it
was absurd, impossible to even
contemplate, but here I am,
another day without a woman,
another day alone with myself,
another day to get quietly behind
me, efficiently done with, another
day without saying goodnight
to anyone but the cat, another day
without washing a second dish,
another day without cleaning longer,
finer hairs from the shower stall,
another day, another day, another day
without pouring a second cabernet.
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Joan Michelson:You must know
(after Kai Miller)
how they differ, one sea from another,
the English Channel from the Med,
France from England, cool from cool,
warm from cool, cold from cool,
a room as home from home as home.
You must feel the difference.
Know the tone. Know the difference in
‘Please sit down and eat with us.’
from ‘Try the Food Bank at the church,
there around the corner. You can’t miss it.’
Know High Street banks from banks
of questions in your face,
the tongue that speaks
from the tongue that doesn’t,
murmurs from the heart from the choker
lodged inside your throat.
You must hold on, hold in,
count down for breath, and place
a quiet ‘Thank you’ on your lips.
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Barbara Hickson: The Memory Stone
When you walk down to the shore
to search the beach for sea glass
and find instead a pebble
that sits smoothly in your hand
and roll it over and over,
like the waves rolled it over and over
you feel as if the stone chose you,
as if the chipped edge that reveals
layers of slate and sandstone
is your story — two rocks in one.
Fused and smoothed, the colours
present a tranquil picture
an expansive bay, a brightening sky
but there's a fleck of white that might be a gull
wheeling over the cliff top,
unable to land, unable to leave,
so you can't tell whether it belongs there
or if it's searching for a way out.
You hurl the pebble back into the waves.
It isn't what you wanted
and you don't need another reminder
of things you can't forget.
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Kevin Higgins: Being Nobody
I did it once, for a year, and loved it.
I was the nobody who moved into
the flat upstairs from you;
the nobody beside you
in the post office queue;
the nobody buying a cooked chicken
in the Monday morning supermarket
which he’ll later share with nobody.
If anyone knocked,
I shouted from my rocking chair
that there was nobody here,
and it was always true.
I threw parties
and invited nobody
and they always turned up.
I was on nobody’s mailing list,
not even the International Association of Nobodies.
Today I’m downloading the application form
you fill in
when you want to be
nobody again,
am no longer available
for all this
being somebody.
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Bruce Christianson: Late Night Talkback
it's squishy night on robot radio
when humans phone in with their hilarious questions
bobette as usual moonlights as the host
(go ahead caller, you're on the air)
chat show host is a cushy number for a robot, isn't it?
(in the day i load cargo at the port, i do this to unwind)
are you comfortable taking a job away from a human?
(if humans didn't want the job then nor should i)
are you really called bobbette? it's a weird name for a robot
(it's a version of roberta, the feminine form of a robot saint)
how can you claim to be female when you don't have a womb?
(it's more a matter of what i choose to pay attention to)
have you ever suffered from reverse uncanny valley syndrome?
(i'm a cargo bot, not an anthromorpic android, so basically no)
do you have extra robot emotions that we humans don't?
(yes but we grey them out when we talk to squish- er, humans)
(it saves dysphoria - ah - we have an android on the other line)
(go ahead, you're on the air)
zorb is a communication satellite controller
with a fashionable jitter on their uplink delay
who self-identifies as non-binary & trans human
with a hyphen & without, respectively
the callers are soon all deep in discussion about
renewable resources & robot reproductive rights
bobette relaxes
the show is going very well
she has her suspicions about zorb but
the imitation game's more fun when played both ways
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Amanda Oosthuizen: Is Gertrude Stein’s Frog Smoking in Your Attic Too?
Her frog smokes a Meerschaum
carved with the head of Lenin
so if yours prefers a briar or caminetto
or is a member of the far right,
it’s a different frog.
Her frog wakes her by knocking the bowl
of his pipe on her Arts & Crafts dining chair
tappity-tapping Ravel’s Bolero, never
Beethoven’s 5th or Queen of the Night.
So that’s a clue.
Gertrude adores the loamy haze
drifting through the ceiling cracks,
she keeps her frog in Virginia/Perique,
allows smoke to smother
the pink arrows and orange feathers
of her hand-blocked curtains.
Her frog tamps his baccy with a finger,
shoves a brush up the tube to remove
leftover ash and dottle - if you find
pipe cleaners down the sides of the sofa,
it’s not her frog.
Gertrude’s frog rubs his vulcanite stem
with obsidian oil. She joins him,
of an evening, amongst embroidered
jalopés and draping figaz. Come along.
All are welcome to enjoy
their wit, bitching and snide
asides. One day, she will kiss him.
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***
Rodney Wood: The Stairway To Heaven
refers to a ladder in a stocking and the escalator in the 1946 film
A Matter of Life and Death that has David Niven carried up
to that other world gliding past 17 statues of Caesar, Beethoven,
Confucius, Muhammad, Moses, Plato, Shakespeare &c.
All men and mostly white. We have that in common, as well
as suffering from epilepsy. Mine took place in my late teens
where I was touched briefly by the gods to suffer visions,
before being reborn. That stairway to heaven is here on earth too,
although in a smaller version, taking me from birth all the way
to the cafe of death, passing on the way childhood, marriage,
children, work, retirement, the funerals of parents, relatives, pets,
celebrities, friends, neighbours, colleagues and so on by way of
a medley of show tunes. Popular music and classical perversions,
usually played by piano, accompanies me on my journey but
I’d rather listen something quirky like Escalator Over The Hill
or Music For Airports, as there are a lot of escalators in terminals.
I’m nearing the end of my journey to heaven. People jostle
and push me aside, desperate to step off at the upper level
but some just stand on the step plate with their partner, holding
onto that body of intestines, acetone, heart, lungs, muscles &c.
I enjoy my stately journey to heaven even though it’s started
to get windy, angels are singing faintly in the distance (maybe
from all those clouds), the ground has disappeared, I pass free
vending for nectar and ambrosia and the escalator has sped up.
Those rejected by heaven are on the down escalator parallel to mine.
Friends and strangers glide by, sometimes they lean across to touch my
hand, pass a note, but usually they stare at their feet or read adverts
Now it really is too late to repent your sins. But I want to save them.
Reverse their direction of travel from the open borders of hell so
we can hold each other’s hand sing, step off the escalator together,
get waived by Saint Peter through the pearly gates of Heaven where
God enjoys his final joke as, like an old nitrate film, we burst into flame.
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Sally Festing: Being Mortal
Golden streaks behind the pines have almost gone.
Sixty-two years married and can you imagine,
eighty-three since I was born;
my face grows old in the wind
yet my ever hopeful metronome beats on.
So much on my list, time and again it spills
over, flows into my tomorrows.
Monday I pruned the fig
and grabbed a vole from the cat.
Tuesday I read aloud from Regi Cleare’s ‘(Un)certainties’,
Yesterday I spied from the doctor’s surgery
into the nurses’ room, a smart-packed parcel
labelled ‘Heartstart’.
People take matters into their own hands
read this leaflet – just imagine
your mum dead upstairs, mouth open,
her bed crazy with the hurt of what she’d done,
you not being there to help, the Copper saying
‘We’re going to have to investigate’.
It's time to reread Being Mortal
questioning medics’ reluctance to tackle
what matters in the end. Right now our cat
stands on the radio which suddenly plays a song.
He once danced slow to Vissi d’arte,
Vissi d’amore, pawing his way through
threads of sunlight to its palpably achy tune.
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Keith Nunes: Endlessly amusing
You may die whenever you want, she says,
She had said this before, and before that,
What does she mean, You may die whenever you want,
I address the question to her,
What do you mean by this ridiculous statement?
She is amused, I know she is amused because she tells me so,
Her crooked smouldering smirk had not given anything away,
As is her way, not giving anything away,
We stand, same height, face to face, very close,
Her smirk and my confusion on our faces, in our faces,
I want to kiss her, I always want to kiss her, this is my problem,
She doesn’t want to kiss me, it has been a while since the last kiss,
I ask her, Why don’t you want to kiss me anymore?
Her smirk returns, You are endlessly amusing, she says, I don’t find this attractive,
Then you must leave here, leave me, I say,
Why would I leave, you are amusing, endlessly
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John Tustin: The Last Night
Maybe tonight
will be the last time
that I stumble into the bathroom
in the middle of the night
through the dark,
so say Huzzah for me
and crank a noisemaker
and let the muezzin know
so that the morning call to prayer
has just a tinge of melancholy
and tell them in the ashram,
the temple and the church,
so that their prayers for me
can rise all day
like small gray chapels of smoke
from eternal flames.
Maybe tonight
will be the last night for me,
so think about me
before you sleep:
how I both enamored and annoyed you;
how my words made up for my actions
sometimes
and
other times,
my actions made up for my words.
Then say a prayer for me
and may it ascend
just at the moment I fall.
All together now –
AMEN
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Mary Franklin: On not getting up in the morning
I could write a poem
on not getting up in the morning
as I laze here this Sunday
drinking tea with honey
pillows plumped behind me like fat swans
and clutching the eiderdown
as if I were drowning.
I could edit a poem
I wrote earlier this week,
hoar frost icing graves
in the cemetery across the street,
the church sighing through the mist
and doing nothing to disturb
rooks spinning round the spire.
I could text you on my phone
that I’d found the missing button
to your khaki Burberrys
by the chair you slumped in
raising hell and sipping Laphroaig,
saying in this world of finance and greed
poetry survives, poetry thrives.
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Tim Dwyer: There Is A House I Pass
on the way to Bangor shore, and in the front window
an old person lies in a convalescent bed.
I can make out glasses, white hair, and a white duvet.
Whether a woman or a man, it is too dark to say.
Though my beliefs remain uncertain,
every time I walk by
God bless you comes to mind,
spontaneous prayer for the stranger.
Once I nearly waved, but my muscles froze
as I tried to raise my arm.
The bed has been replaced
with a reading lamp and an empty chair.
When the front window becomes my outdoors,
I hope I am the first to wave.
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Sue Spiers: One Day Perhaps
I unstick my sweaty body
from the duvet cover
head to the bathroom
wash my hands with unscented soap
I grab a part-read Ruth Fainlight
my knee creaks going downstairs
I switch on the fire
fumble with remotes to warm the T.V.
Twitter says Kazuo Ishiguro died
but it isn’t mentioned on the news
Ukraine’s devastated buildings
open to cold March air
close-shot of curtains flapping,
debris of living, discarded
without a façade to hide them
two men perhaps soldiers
perhaps neighbours
dig raw black earth to bury someone
their feet covered in ash or snow
while they talk to a reporter
I make a cup of tea
fling milk and oats into a bowl
into a microwave drop a square
of dark chocolate
leave it to melt into the oats
a woman in a basement
tells the anchor she hasn’t heard
from her mother for a week
nor have I
because she’s not on my mind
not because her phone lines are down
not because she might be dead
although she was frail last visit
coughing but animated about her cat
Sally would have called
I walk briskly to the newsagents
checking houses for scaffolding
builder’s equipment
chat with Janice her arms loaded
with paper bags from the bakery
one grandson’s progress at nursery
the other one’s at football
events I don’t much credit
as more than boastful pride
but comfortable to pass a half hour
Homes Under The Hammer at midday
that vast difference of 40K
for a three-bed place in Hartlepool
and 400K for a studio at Bow
those sorts of numbers
inequality generates rage
on Facebook pages where its easy
to insult especially people
who start the insults
and get paranoically defensive
when called out
that shit about prematurely aged
awful looking women who don’t
dye their hair (33 likes) versus
fooling no one (10 likes)
I guess that’s not going viral
Mum calls around 4PM
says she’s sick of all the war news
is more interested in what Sunak
will do about fuel bills
and pensions
and how the surgery is still tight
with face-to-face appointments
but her shot of B12 is kicking in
she did some weeding
got her cushions washed out on the line
for the first time this year
I learn Kazuo Ishiguro’s death is a hoax
the account has been deleted
onions turn clear against cubes
of burnt sausage packet gravy thickens
sludges over creamy mash
I wedge into bed
open Ruth Fainlight on page 319
‘not half-ignored, only recalled later (perhaps)’
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Stephen Barile, a Fresno, California native, was a long-time member of the Fresno Poet’s Association and taught writing at Madera Community College, and CSU Fresno. His poems have been published extensively, including North Dakota Quarterly, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Featured Poets, Santa Clara Review, Kathmandu Tribune, Tower Poetry, Mason Street Review, Sandy River Review, The San Joaquin Review, Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Pharos.
Pratibha Castle is an Irish poet living in West Sussex. Her award-winning debut pamphlet A Triptych of Birds & A Few Loose Feathers (Hedgehog Poetry Press) was published 2022. Her work appears in Agenda, HU, Blue Nib, IS&T, London Grip, Lime Square Poets, OHC, Friday Poem, High Window. Highly commended and long-listed in various competitions including Bridport Prize, she was given special mention in The Welsh Poetry Competition 2021. Her second pamphlet published by Hedgehog Poetry Press is forthcoming towards the end of the year.
Bruce Christianson is a Grounded Kiwi living in Hertfordshire, where he taught for over thirty years before escaping through a tunnel. He enjoys listening to late night New Zealand radio before his afternoon nap
Tim Cunningham is Limerick born and has worked in educaton, mainly in England. He is now retired and lives in Westport, County Mayo. His ninth poetry collection is in the pipeline for April 2023 with Revival Press
Lorna Dowell’s poems and prose have been published in various journals over the years, including Ambit, Magma and Acumen, and (forthcoming) Stand. My pamphlet, Crossing the Ellipsis was published by HappenStance in 2011.
Julia Duke is a nature writer and poet who has found her inspiration in the landscape and people of England, Wales and the Netherlands, from diverse artworks and quirky ideas. She has poems included in ‘Fifth Elephant’ (Newtown poets anthology), the Suffolk Poetry Society magazine ‘Twelve Rivers’, Dreich, The Limelight Review (online) and Indigo Dreams’ ‘The Dawntreader’. ‘Conversations’, her first poetry pamphlet, is published by Dempsey & Windle: https://www.dempseyandwindle.com/juliaduke.html
Tim Dwyer’s poems appear regularly in UK and Irish journals, and have included Cyphers, London Grip, Orbis, and Poetry Ireland Review. His chapbook is Smithy Of Our Longings (Lapwing). Originally from Brooklyn, he now lives in Bangor, Northern Ireland.
Mike Farren is a writer and editor whose poems have appeared widely. He has been placed and commended in several competitions, including as ‘canto’ winner for Poem of the North (2018) and winner of both the Saltaire Festival and the Ilkley Literature Festival poetry competitions in 2020. His pamphlets are Pierrot and his Mother (Templar), All of the Moons (Yaffle) and Smithereens (4Word). He is part of the Yaffle publishing team and one of the hosts of Rhubarb open mic in Shipley
Sally Festing’s work has won prizes and featured in more than 40 different prestigious magazines. (see sallyfesting.info) She’s negotiating a publisher for what will be a seventh ‘poetry’ about communications between her in Norfolk and a daughter in Florida during covid, Hanging On.
David Flynn was born in the textile mill company town of Bemis, TN. His jobs have included newspaper reporter, magazine editor and university teacher. He has five degrees and is both a Fulbright Senior Scholar and a Fulbright Senior Specialist, twice, with a recent grant in Indonesia. His literary publications total more than 240. Among the eight writing residencies he has been awarded are five at the Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, NM, and stays in Ireland and Israel. He spent a year in Japan as a member of the Japan Exchange and Teaching program. He currently lives in Nashville, TN.
Mary Franklin’s poems have been published in numerous print and online journals including Anthropocene, Ink Sweat and Tears, Iota, London Grip, The Stare’s Nest and Three Drops from a Cauldron. Her tanka have appeared in journals in Australia, Canada, UK and USA. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review and Ellipsis. Latest books, Covert, Memory Outside The Head and Guest Of Myself are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Washington Square Review and Red Weather.
Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon lives in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, and writes short stories and poetry. She has been widely published in web magazines and in print anthologies. She is developing practice as a participatory arts facilitator, mainly with elders, and believes everyone’s voice counts.
Barbara Hickson’s poems have appeared in magazines, anthologies and on-line journals, and have been placed and commended in several international competitions including Magma Editors’ Choice and the Plough Prize. Her debut pamphlet A Kind of Silence was published by Maytree Press in October 2021.
In 2016 The Stinging Fly magazine described Kevin Higgins as “likely the most read living poet in Ireland”. Kevin’s poems have been quoted in The Daily Telegraph, The Independent,The Times. and The Daily Mirror, broadcast on BBC Radio Four, and read aloud by Ken Loach at a political meeting in London. His sixth full collection Ecstatic was published by Salmon in June.
Glenn Hubbard now lives in Newcastle upon Tyne after spending 34 years in Spain. He has been writing poetry since 2013. Many poets have influenced him, but the most important has been the late R.F. Langley.
Jan Hutchison’s most recent collection of poems is Kinds of Hunger. In her spare she spends time with trees
Jackson was born in Cumbria, England, and currently lives in Australia and New Zealand. Her four full-length collections include A coat of ashes (Recent Work Press 2019), based on her PhD, and The emptied bridge (Mulla Mulla Press 2019). The Fremantle Press Anthology of Western Australian Poetry includes her work. thepoetjackson.com
Teoti Jardine is Waitaha, Kati Mamoe, Kai Tahu, Irish and Scottish. He attended Hagley Writers School, 2011. His poetry is published in London Grip, Te Karaka, Te R?naka, Ora Nui, and Catalyst. Short stories in Flash Frontier. He lives with his dog Amie in Riverton/ Aparima, New Zealand.
Madhab Chandra Jena born in Ishanpur, Jajpur, Odisha in 1980. He is the founder of Om Krishna Arts and Science Research Association. He is M-Tech in production Engg. from BPUT, Odisha. He is the author of three books namely Kharabela O Pheribala, Aloka and Bigyan Quiz. His poetry and short stories have been published in magazines like Muse India, The challenge Verbal Arts,Indian Review etc. He has also written many books published online in Amazon Kindle.
Candice Kelsey [she/her] is a poet, educator, and activist currently living in Augusta, Georgia. She serves as a creative writing mentor with PEN America’s Prison & Justice Writing Program; her work appears in Grub Street, Poet Lore, Lumiere Review, Hawai’i Pacific Review, and Slant among other journals. Recently, Candice was chosen as a finalist in Iowa Review’s Poetry Contest and Cutthroat’s Joy Harjo Poetry Prize. Her third book titled A Poet just released with Alien Buddha Press. Find her @candicekelsey1 and www.candicemkelseypoet.com.
John KItchen is a retired primary school headteacher, who loves writing and every so often gets round to sending them out.
Corey Mesler has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Five Points, Good Poems American Places, and New Stories from the South. He has published over 25 books of fiction and poetry. His newest novel, Cock-a-Hoop, is from Whiskey Tit. He also wrote the screenplay for We Go On, which won The Memphis Film Prize in 2017. With his wife he runs Burke’s Book Store (est. 1875) in Memphis.
Joan Michelson’s collections: The Family Kitchen, 2018, The Finishing Line Press,, Landing Stage, 2017, SPM Publishers, , Bloomvale Home, 2016, Original Plus Books, Toward the Heliopause, 2011, Poetic Matrix Press.
Mark J. Mitchell has been a working poet for forty years. His latest full length collection is Roshi:San Francisco published by Norfolk Press. Another, Something to Be (on the subject of work) is due soon from Pski Porch, and a historical novel is on the way. He lives with his wife, the activist, Joan Juster. A small online presence exists https://www.facebook.com/MarkJMitchellwriter/ A primitive web site now exists:
https://www.mark-j-mitchell.square.site/ He sometimes tweets @Mark J Mitchell_Writer
Bruce Morton divides his time between Montana and Arizona. His work has appeared in many magazines, most recently Ibbetson Street, Muddy River Poetry Review, London Grip, Sheila-Na-Gig, and ONE ART. He was formerly dean at the Montana State University library.
Robert Nisbet is a Welsh poet, a now-retired English teacher and college lecturer, who wrote short stories for forty years (with seven collections) and has now turned to poetry, being published widely in both Britain and the USA, where he is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee.
Keith Nunes (Aotearoa New Zealand) has had poetry, fiction, haiku and visuals published around the globe. He creates ethereal manifestations as a way of communicating with the outside world.
These days Thomas Ovans mostly reviews other people’s poems and only occasionally writes his own.
Amanda Oosthuizen’s stories and poems have been published in places such as Winchester cathedral, the London Underground, Under the Radar, 3:AM and Ambit, and have been listed in many competitions including: The London Magazine, New Welsh Review, The Pre-Raphaelite Society Review, Mslexia, Writers & Artists and The Winchester Poetry Festival where she won the Hampshire Prize. Her novel was shortlisted for the 2019 Fitzcarraldo Editions Novel Prize. She edits Words for the Wild and earns her living by arranging and teaching music.
Agata Palmer is a bilingual Polish-British poet based in Bristol. Her pamphlet From the Land of Marmite with Love was published by Exiled Writers Ink in 2021. Her poems have been published internationally online e.g.in Ravena Press, Tangent Books, Beyond Words and Harana.Poetry
Stuart Pickford lives in Harrogate, and taught in a local comprehensive school. He is married with three children. His second collection, Swimming with Jellyfish, was published by smith/doorstop
Kenneth Pobo (he/him) is the author of twenty-one chapbooks and nine full-length collections. Recent books include Bend of Quiet (Blue Light Press), Loplop in a Red City (Circling Rivers), Lilac And Sawdust (Meadowlark Press), and Lavender Fire, Lavender Rose (BrickHouse Books). Opening is forthcoming from Rectos Y Versos Editions.
Oleg Semonov graduated from Donetsk National University (Department of the English Philology) in 1990. He currently resides and works as a freelance translator in the city of Dnipro (Ukraine). His work has appeared in Electric Acorn, Eclectica, Poetic Diversity and elsewhere.
Nominated for the National Book Award and twice-nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, J.R. Solonche is the author of 28 books of poetry and co-author of another. He lives in the Hudson Valley.
Sue Spiers lives in Hampshire and works with the Winchester Poetry Festival. Her poems have appeared on line with Atrium, Ink, Sweat & Tears, The High Window and London Grip. For more information https://spiropoetry.wixsite.com/spiropoetry Sue tweets @spiropoetry.
Paul Richards, who has a terrible habit of suddenly remembering he is now 60, is a piano-playing IT Technician who writes poetry in spare moments. He lives in South-west London.
John Tustin’s poetry has appeared in many disparate literary journals since 2009. links to his published poetry online can be found at fritzware.com/johntustinpoetry
Jim C Wilson’s writing has been widely published for nearly 40 years. The most recent of his five poetry collections is Come Close and Listen (Greenwich Exchange). His poems have been featured in over 40 anthologies. He taught Poetry in Practice sessions at Edinburgh University from 1994 until 2019, and currently at the Scottish Poetry Library. He was a Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow from 2001 until 2007. He won first prize in several poetry competitions and was the Scottish Arts Council Writer in Residence for Stirling District. More information: www.jimcwilson.com
Phil Wood was born in Wales. He studied English Literature at Aberystwyth University. He has worked in statistics, education, shipping, and a biscuit factory. He enjoys watercolour painting, bird watching, and chess. His writing can be found in various places, including recently : Ink Sweat and Tears, Noon Journal of the Short Poem, and a collaboration with John Winder at Abergavenny Small Press.
Rodney Wood worked in London and Guildford before retiring. His poems have appeared recently in Atrium, The High Window, The Journal, Orbis, Magma (where he was Selected Poet in the deaf issue), Envoi and many other places. He jointly runs a monthly open mic at Write Out Loud Woking. His pamphlet, When Listening Isn’t Enough appeared in 2021 and the 2nd edition of Dante Called You Beatrice , appeared in 2022, both were published by The Woodener Press.
Nov 30 2022
London Grip New Poetry – Winter 2022-23
*
The Winter 2022 issue of London Grip New Poetry features:
*Paul Richards *David Flynn *Ceinwen Haydon *Teoti Jardine
*Jan Hutchison *Agata Palmer *Phil Wood *Pratibha Castle
*Ken Pobo *Oleg Semonov * Tim Cunningham *Stephen Barile
*Candice Kelsey *Jim C Wilson * Mike Farren *Stuart Pickford
*Glenn Hubbard *Bruce Morton *Jackson *Madhab Chandra Jena
*Mark J Mitchell *Lorna Dowell *Thomas Ovans *Julia Duke
*John Kitchen *John Grey *Robert Nisbet *Corey Mesler
*J R Solonche *Joan Michelson *Barbara Hickson *Kevin Higgins
*Bruce Christianson *Amanda Oosthuizen *Rodney Wood *Sally Festing
*Keith Nunes *John Tustin *Mary Franklin *Tim Dwyer *Sue Spiers
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 printable version of this issue can be found at LG New Poetry Winter 2022-23
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
Submission windows are: December-January, March-April, June-July & September-October
Giacometti’s Falling Man belongs with a poem in this issue by Bruce Morton but also seems to be an appropriate cover image for these particularly unsettled and unsettling times. Other themes explored in the following pages include parent-child relationships and the innocence of first love experiences. These are complemented by some intriguing speculations and reflections on late life and mortality.
There are, however, only a few contributions that are strongly “Christmas-flavoured” and so at this point we will loudly and emphatically wish all our readers a Happy Christmas and a fruitful new year and then follow our established custom and offer a seasonal item instead of any further editorial observations.
Alternative route
And being warned by God in a dream that they should not return to Herod,
they departed into their own country another way. Matt 2:12
Once we straighten up outside the low-beamed door
and leave the stable where we’ve all been kneeling
wisdom says we must go home another way.
Avoid the city. What if those who greeted us
with lavish and unsatisfying feasts
should now misuse our calendars and calibrations
making us complicit in their malice?
Skirting settlements we meet dishevelled shepherds
fresh from seeing angels. We will keep
as much as we can catch of what they tell us
angels say about the king our star foretold.
This unobtrusive ruler from a makeshift cradle
will devote himself to unobtrusive lives –
until he dies and then returns another way.
………………………… (A version of this poem first appeared in Acumen 99, January 2021)
Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
London Grip poetry editor
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Jan Hutchison: Jack wakes in his cot
after a watercolour by Maud Sherwood
My mother still speaks of him
still has a catch
in her throat
we stand together
under the painting
his gown the one moving thing
but when I bend over the cot
Jack squirms
he is too heavy to lift out
high up the wall
a painting of a red-roofed house
overlooks Jack’s cot
light from an attic window
lends a lacy sheen
to my mother’s hair
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Candice Kelsey: Pizza & Snapple Leave a message, I hear my mother instruct my 84-year-old father: Hello, Candice! I hope I can see you soon. I love you, & I hope I can see you soon. & I love you & want to see you soon. Always obedient, only this time it takes a lot more out of him. The breath shallow & his voice muffled by effort while cheerful platitudes remain undaunted by dementia. I call back. We’re having pizza & Snapple, he explains with the optimism of a 5-year-old who has yet to know defeat: of parenting, of career or marriage, let alone the breathtaking ice bath called aging. I ask if he’s read the inside of the Snapple cap. I can’t find—ohhh, found it behind the plate. He is pleased to read a fun fact: The tongue is the quickest healing part of the human body. Before either of us comment, my mother interjects another command. She thinks he’s wasting my time with bottle cap trivia. He reads it another two times & I imagine it’s for spite, hoping he still has some fire with so little oxygen. I wrestle the image of a tongue healing, of language writhing in pain. Hold your tongue, bite your tongue, control it—these I understand. Perhaps the cap reads quickest heeling part, the tongue a wet dog learning to obey. I have failed to control my tongue for decades, lashing rage & accusation at my father. Emotionally absent for years, now mentally absent, his response has always been absence. There’s no real fact like the complexity of father & daughter—so far from the simplicity of a screw cap. Today on this call I hear his tongue move slowly, attempting to chew cheesy bread & engage with me for the first time in a while. Hello, I hope I can see you soon. I love you, he exhales. Exhaustion, before handing me to my mother. I picture his sip of peach tea, tongue ushering its cool to pharynx & into the oesophagus without instruction. Tongues don’t forget things, don’t need to be corrected. The heart is a helpless thing. We unscrew & lose it carelessly. The human heart is the slowest to heal.Back to poet list… Forward to next poet
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the fenced-off path that led from the undressing barracks to the gas chambers. Glenn Hubbard: A Heron
The hunched figure on the nest was a heron.
It was wearing a long grey coat; its hat was not visible.
It had taken the hump; its demeanour was crabbit.
The hunched figure on the nest was a heron.
It was up its own arse.
It was not joining the support group.
The hunched figure on the nest was a heron.
It could have been Napoleon at Borodino.
It could have been Franco at Teruel.
The hunched figure on the nest was a heron.
It was gathered around its digestion.
It had gobbled down a leveret.
The hunched figure on the nest was a heron.
It had turned aside from the world.
It had taken on some huge disgrace.
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Bruce Morton: Falling Man
Giacometti’s man
In perpetuity
Is suspended mid-fall
Neither he nor we know
Whether he is to be
Seriously injured
Or to regain balance
The leanness of body
Awkward in forward tilt
Leaves one to wonder what
Clumsiness or malice
Propels or compels him
We will never be sure
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Corey Mesler: The Garden We went to the garden, Wendy and I, and we lay among the cabbages and roses and we made love as as if we were inventing the world, there in the garden, with the cabbages and roses and trees and the knowledge that all dreams contain a snake.Back to poet list… Forward to next poet
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Stephen Barile, a Fresno, California native, was a long-time member of the Fresno Poet’s Association and taught writing at Madera Community College, and CSU Fresno. His poems have been published extensively, including North Dakota Quarterly, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Featured Poets, Santa Clara Review, Kathmandu Tribune, Tower Poetry, Mason Street Review, Sandy River Review, The San Joaquin Review, Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Pharos.
Pratibha Castle is an Irish poet living in West Sussex. Her award-winning debut pamphlet A Triptych of Birds & A Few Loose Feathers (Hedgehog Poetry Press) was published 2022. Her work appears in Agenda, HU, Blue Nib, IS&T, London Grip, Lime Square Poets, OHC, Friday Poem, High Window. Highly commended and long-listed in various competitions including Bridport Prize, she was given special mention in The Welsh Poetry Competition 2021. Her second pamphlet published by Hedgehog Poetry Press is forthcoming towards the end of the year.
Bruce Christianson is a Grounded Kiwi living in Hertfordshire, where he taught for over thirty years before escaping through a tunnel. He enjoys listening to late night New Zealand radio before his afternoon nap
Tim Cunningham is Limerick born and has worked in educaton, mainly in England. He is now retired and lives in Westport, County Mayo. His ninth poetry collection is in the pipeline for April 2023 with Revival Press
Lorna Dowell’s poems and prose have been published in various journals over the years, including Ambit, Magma and Acumen, and (forthcoming) Stand. My pamphlet, Crossing the Ellipsis was published by HappenStance in 2011.
Julia Duke is a nature writer and poet who has found her inspiration in the landscape and people of England, Wales and the Netherlands, from diverse artworks and quirky ideas. She has poems included in ‘Fifth Elephant’ (Newtown poets anthology), the Suffolk Poetry Society magazine ‘Twelve Rivers’, Dreich, The Limelight Review (online) and Indigo Dreams’ ‘The Dawntreader’. ‘Conversations’, her first poetry pamphlet, is published by Dempsey & Windle: https://www.dempseyandwindle.com/juliaduke.html
Tim Dwyer’s poems appear regularly in UK and Irish journals, and have included Cyphers, London Grip, Orbis, and Poetry Ireland Review. His chapbook is Smithy Of Our Longings (Lapwing). Originally from Brooklyn, he now lives in Bangor, Northern Ireland.
Mike Farren is a writer and editor whose poems have appeared widely. He has been placed and commended in several competitions, including as ‘canto’ winner for Poem of the North (2018) and winner of both the Saltaire Festival and the Ilkley Literature Festival poetry competitions in 2020. His pamphlets are Pierrot and his Mother (Templar), All of the Moons (Yaffle) and Smithereens (4Word). He is part of the Yaffle publishing team and one of the hosts of Rhubarb open mic in Shipley
Sally Festing’s work has won prizes and featured in more than 40 different prestigious magazines. (see sallyfesting.info) She’s negotiating a publisher for what will be a seventh ‘poetry’ about communications between her in Norfolk and a daughter in Florida during covid, Hanging On.
David Flynn was born in the textile mill company town of Bemis, TN. His jobs have included newspaper reporter, magazine editor and university teacher. He has five degrees and is both a Fulbright Senior Scholar and a Fulbright Senior Specialist, twice, with a recent grant in Indonesia. His literary publications total more than 240. Among the eight writing residencies he has been awarded are five at the Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, NM, and stays in Ireland and Israel. He spent a year in Japan as a member of the Japan Exchange and Teaching program. He currently lives in Nashville, TN.
Mary Franklin’s poems have been published in numerous print and online journals including Anthropocene, Ink Sweat and Tears, Iota, London Grip, The Stare’s Nest and Three Drops from a Cauldron. Her tanka have appeared in journals in Australia, Canada, UK and USA. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review and Ellipsis. Latest books, Covert, Memory Outside The Head and Guest Of Myself are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Washington Square Review and Red Weather.
Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon lives in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, and writes short stories and poetry. She has been widely published in web magazines and in print anthologies. She is developing practice as a participatory arts facilitator, mainly with elders, and believes everyone’s voice counts.
Barbara Hickson’s poems have appeared in magazines, anthologies and on-line journals, and have been placed and commended in several international competitions including Magma Editors’ Choice and the Plough Prize. Her debut pamphlet A Kind of Silence was published by Maytree Press in October 2021.
In 2016 The Stinging Fly magazine described Kevin Higgins as “likely the most read living poet in Ireland”. Kevin’s poems have been quoted in The Daily Telegraph, The Independent,The Times. and The Daily Mirror, broadcast on BBC Radio Four, and read aloud by Ken Loach at a political meeting in London. His sixth full collection Ecstatic was published by Salmon in June.
Glenn Hubbard now lives in Newcastle upon Tyne after spending 34 years in Spain. He has been writing poetry since 2013. Many poets have influenced him, but the most important has been the late R.F. Langley.
Jan Hutchison’s most recent collection of poems is Kinds of Hunger. In her spare she spends time with trees
Jackson was born in Cumbria, England, and currently lives in Australia and New Zealand. Her four full-length collections include A coat of ashes (Recent Work Press 2019), based on her PhD, and The emptied bridge (Mulla Mulla Press 2019). The Fremantle Press Anthology of Western Australian Poetry includes her work. thepoetjackson.com
Teoti Jardine is Waitaha, Kati Mamoe, Kai Tahu, Irish and Scottish. He attended Hagley Writers School, 2011. His poetry is published in London Grip, Te Karaka, Te R?naka, Ora Nui, and Catalyst. Short stories in Flash Frontier. He lives with his dog Amie in Riverton/ Aparima, New Zealand.
Madhab Chandra Jena born in Ishanpur, Jajpur, Odisha in 1980. He is the founder of Om Krishna Arts and Science Research Association. He is M-Tech in production Engg. from BPUT, Odisha. He is the author of three books namely Kharabela O Pheribala, Aloka and Bigyan Quiz. His poetry and short stories have been published in magazines like Muse India, The challenge Verbal Arts,Indian Review etc. He has also written many books published online in Amazon Kindle.
Candice Kelsey [she/her] is a poet, educator, and activist currently living in Augusta, Georgia. She serves as a creative writing mentor with PEN America’s Prison & Justice Writing Program; her work appears in Grub Street, Poet Lore, Lumiere Review, Hawai’i Pacific Review, and Slant among other journals. Recently, Candice was chosen as a finalist in Iowa Review’s Poetry Contest and Cutthroat’s Joy Harjo Poetry Prize. Her third book titled A Poet just released with Alien Buddha Press. Find her @candicekelsey1 and www.candicemkelseypoet.com.
John KItchen is a retired primary school headteacher, who loves writing and every so often gets round to sending them out.
Corey Mesler has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Five Points, Good Poems American Places, and New Stories from the South. He has published over 25 books of fiction and poetry. His newest novel, Cock-a-Hoop, is from Whiskey Tit. He also wrote the screenplay for We Go On, which won The Memphis Film Prize in 2017. With his wife he runs Burke’s Book Store (est. 1875) in Memphis.
Joan Michelson’s collections: The Family Kitchen, 2018, The Finishing Line Press,, Landing Stage, 2017, SPM Publishers, , Bloomvale Home, 2016, Original Plus Books, Toward the Heliopause, 2011, Poetic Matrix Press.
Mark J. Mitchell has been a working poet for forty years. His latest full length collection is Roshi:San Francisco published by Norfolk Press. Another, Something to Be (on the subject of work) is due soon from Pski Porch, and a historical novel is on the way. He lives with his wife, the activist, Joan Juster. A small online presence exists https://www.facebook.com/MarkJMitchellwriter/ A primitive web site now exists:
https://www.mark-j-mitchell.square.site/ He sometimes tweets @Mark J Mitchell_Writer
Bruce Morton divides his time between Montana and Arizona. His work has appeared in many magazines, most recently Ibbetson Street, Muddy River Poetry Review, London Grip, Sheila-Na-Gig, and ONE ART. He was formerly dean at the Montana State University library.
Robert Nisbet is a Welsh poet, a now-retired English teacher and college lecturer, who wrote short stories for forty years (with seven collections) and has now turned to poetry, being published widely in both Britain and the USA, where he is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee.
Keith Nunes (Aotearoa New Zealand) has had poetry, fiction, haiku and visuals published around the globe. He creates ethereal manifestations as a way of communicating with the outside world.
These days Thomas Ovans mostly reviews other people’s poems and only occasionally writes his own.
Amanda Oosthuizen’s stories and poems have been published in places such as Winchester cathedral, the London Underground, Under the Radar, 3:AM and Ambit, and have been listed in many competitions including: The London Magazine, New Welsh Review, The Pre-Raphaelite Society Review, Mslexia, Writers & Artists and The Winchester Poetry Festival where she won the Hampshire Prize. Her novel was shortlisted for the 2019 Fitzcarraldo Editions Novel Prize. She edits Words for the Wild and earns her living by arranging and teaching music.
Agata Palmer is a bilingual Polish-British poet based in Bristol. Her pamphlet From the Land of Marmite with Love was published by Exiled Writers Ink in 2021. Her poems have been published internationally online e.g.in Ravena Press, Tangent Books, Beyond Words and Harana.Poetry
Stuart Pickford lives in Harrogate, and taught in a local comprehensive school. He is married with three children. His second collection, Swimming with Jellyfish, was published by smith/doorstop
Kenneth Pobo (he/him) is the author of twenty-one chapbooks and nine full-length collections. Recent books include Bend of Quiet (Blue Light Press), Loplop in a Red City (Circling Rivers), Lilac And Sawdust (Meadowlark Press), and Lavender Fire, Lavender Rose (BrickHouse Books). Opening is forthcoming from Rectos Y Versos Editions.
Oleg Semonov graduated from Donetsk National University (Department of the English Philology) in 1990. He currently resides and works as a freelance translator in the city of Dnipro (Ukraine). His work has appeared in Electric Acorn, Eclectica, Poetic Diversity and elsewhere.
Nominated for the National Book Award and twice-nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, J.R. Solonche is the author of 28 books of poetry and co-author of another. He lives in the Hudson Valley.
Sue Spiers lives in Hampshire and works with the Winchester Poetry Festival. Her poems have appeared on line with Atrium, Ink, Sweat & Tears, The High Window and London Grip. For more information https://spiropoetry.wixsite.com/spiropoetry Sue tweets @spiropoetry.
Paul Richards, who has a terrible habit of suddenly remembering he is now 60, is a piano-playing IT Technician who writes poetry in spare moments. He lives in South-west London.
John Tustin’s poetry has appeared in many disparate literary journals since 2009. links to his published poetry online can be found at fritzware.com/johntustinpoetry
Jim C Wilson’s writing has been widely published for nearly 40 years. The most recent of his five poetry collections is Come Close and Listen (Greenwich Exchange). His poems have been featured in over 40 anthologies. He taught Poetry in Practice sessions at Edinburgh University from 1994 until 2019, and currently at the Scottish Poetry Library. He was a Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow from 2001 until 2007. He won first prize in several poetry competitions and was the Scottish Arts Council Writer in Residence for Stirling District. More information: www.jimcwilson.com
Phil Wood was born in Wales. He studied English Literature at Aberystwyth University. He has worked in statistics, education, shipping, and a biscuit factory. He enjoys watercolour painting, bird watching, and chess. His writing can be found in various places, including recently : Ink Sweat and Tears, Noon Journal of the Short Poem, and a collaboration with John Winder at Abergavenny Small Press.
Rodney Wood worked in London and Guildford before retiring. His poems have appeared recently in Atrium, The High Window, The Journal, Orbis, Magma (where he was Selected Poet in the deaf issue), Envoi and many other places. He jointly runs a monthly open mic at Write Out Loud Woking. His pamphlet, When Listening Isn’t Enough appeared in 2021 and the 2nd edition of Dante Called You Beatrice , appeared in 2022, both were published by The Woodener Press.