London Grip New Poetry – Summer 2024

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Issue 52 of London Grip New Poetry features poems by:

*Julia Stothard *Rod Whitworth *Keith Nunes *Rosemary Norman
*Kathleen McPhilemy *Pam Thompson *Thea Smiley *Mimi Kunz
*Sue Norton *Martine Padwell * Jenny Mitchell *Konstandinos Mahoney
*Jane Simpson *Lorraine Carey * Rachael Clyne *Pam Job
*Tess Jolly *Pam Zinnemann-Hope * Maria Taylor *Marian Kilcoyne
*Lydia Harris *David Flynn *Sylvia Cohen *Kerry Gray
*Angela Kirby *Mary Mulholland  *Janet Hatherley *Jan Hadfield
*Julia Webb *John Grey *Elizabeth Smither *Caleb Murdock
*Sarah James *Helen Evans *Denise O’Hagan * Clifford Liles
*Katherine Gallagher *Ben Bruges * Eva Skrande *Hannah Linden
*Emma Lee * Jake Wild Hall *Holly Day *Kay Feneley
* Lee Fraser *Shadwell Smith *Linda Ford *Annie Brechin *Prue King

Contributor Biographies and Editor’s Notes are also included.
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A printable version of this issue can be found at LG New Poetry Summer 2024
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Copyright of all poems remains with the contributors.

London Grip New Poetry appears early in March, June, September & December
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SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
Send up to THREE poems & a brief bio to poetry@londongrip.co.uk
Poems should be in a SINGLE Word attachment or included in the message body
OUR SUBMISSION WINDOWS ARE NOW JANUARY, APRIL, JUNE & OCTOBER

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Editor’s notes

London Grip New Poetry would, of course, be nothing without its contributors and we are always thankful for (and never take for granted) their willingness to entrust their work to us. In this issue we have squeezed in rather more poems than usual – nearly fifty rather than the more typical forty-ish – simply because there were so many good offerings that fitted well together.

Inevitably there are submissions which we are grateful for yet find ourselves unable to use – perhaps because they do not match the overall tone of an issue or simply for lack of space.  Of course, as an online magazine, we could publish an arbitrary number of poems; but in fact we stick to a self-imposed limit of twenty landscape pages for the printable form of each edition. Making this “hard-copy” version available is, in a manner of speaking, our trademark.  A handful of readers have spontaneously told us that they enjoy it; but we also do it for our own sakes so as to feel we are leaving something more tangible and less transient than a small disturbance in The Cloud.

In view of our opening remarks we must make clear that a forthcoming change in our submissions policy is NOT meant to discourage contributors! As we have already broadcast via social media, our poetry submission windows will in future be smaller.  We have noticed that a majority of offerings arrive either near the start or at the very end of each two-month submission period and we hope our editorial efforts can be more tightly focussed if we reduce each window to a single month. Hence we shall now be open in June (for the September issue), October (for December), January (for March) and April (for June). Full guidelines are at https://londongrip.co.uk/home/

Alas, we now learn that some submissions are not what they seem. Other editors have begun passing on warnings about serial plagiarists trying to pass other people’s work off as their own. It still puzzles me that anyone would choose poetry as a medium in which to practise fraud when there would seem to be much more lucrative openings in popular fiction – let alone in the art market!  Nevertheless, there is now a software tool for checking whether a poem has already appeared on the internet.  If I find I need to use it then – as an oft-quoted ancient source probably didn’t say – every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching.

Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
London Grip poetry editor
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Julia Stothard: Proof of ID

The  day my signature  disowned me, they
 looked up  and saw nobody  there.   I took 
myself home and tried all manner of being 
but    the    systems   didn't     agree.     The 
overlords  of  identity  say  my  fingerprints
don’t   match   their  records,  the  captcha
claims I’m less than human   and  chatbots
politely  refuse   every  request.    I’m   The 
Occupier, Dear Customer, Sir and  Madam; 
a  conglomeration  of  null  and  void.  One 
more  click  and  my  face  doesn’t   fit,  my 
volume  is muted  and  permission  denied. 
My PC is searching the folders for files that 
prove I  exist;  its  latest  update  is  on  the 
screen:

I'm working on it…

In   my   passport   photo,  my   eyes   have
 become  two dots, leading into an  ellipsis 
and   now,   I  am  drifting  into  the   cloud, 
distilled to a signal en route to Mars.

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Rod Whitworth: Technology

You see these glasses on the red string
and with blue lenses. They are for wearing.
Hooked on my ears, they make things clear
and I can see the iPad 7.2
that I bought on some yesterday next year
in the Apple store in the Manchester Arndale,
so thin I brought it home folded
in my top pocket instead of the green
and yellow Paisley pattern hanky.

It lies on my desk and I’m going to need
tweezers to pick it up. Just now it’s sending
signals to the 3D printer to brew
a cup of English Breakfast tea
with a shot of cooking whisky in it.
After that it will sharpen pencils, phone
the bookies, wash the pots, put the laundry
in the machine, check my emails. But
I won’t let it write this poem.

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Keith Nunes: keeping up

The fatigue is great,
I’m conscious of odd-shaped glasses sitting on my nose
Up against the Triangle of Sadness
Seeing clearly yet still, still unbelieving,
Throbbing ankle, straining lungs,
All compressed 
Jammed into a duffle-bag-torso, four wobbly limbs protrude,

Toast or cereal, soy or oat or the blue cow stuff,
Rub the forehead clockwise, watch the clock sideways,
There’s still time to score that lifetime goal! 
For achievements befitting a once promising young man, 
The award goes to, who, who are you again?

Whenever I pass the cemetery
I call out to my dead-and-buried mates
‘Come on, keep up’
I cycle on
Go back to where I came from.

The Triangle of Sadness is the area between the eyebrows and the top of the nose bridge 

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Rosemary Norman: Spring 2020  

We ceased to tend our hair
for lack of salons,

closed because that intimacy
between strangers

that spread disease before,
mattered enough

now to need containment.
The sun shone gold

in a blue sky while our hair
grew like weed

curling abundantly in the park
where we walked

only once a day, so as not
to become a crowd.

Elbows on window ledges
we leaned as far

as was necessary to converse
with the wild-haired

visitor from the next street
by our front gate,

often as not about weather
so blessedly dry.

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Kathleen McPhilemy: Out and About

Here is where you might expect a heron,
I said to my imaginary companion,
here, by the water race, and there he was
long neck, long legs, long yellow beak 
a bit bedraggled, looking slightly bored
waiting for fish, or spring, or another heron.

The fork-tailed kite cruising high above
I remarked to my imaginary companion
could be a sky-eye camera-carrying drone,
and robins stationed each three yards of hedge
CCTV recorders, walkie-talkie sentries
pertly chirping, checking, reporting back.

Crashing, splashing down, a mallard drake
unsubtle as a seaplane, neared his dowdy duck.
Clumsy courtship ploy! Why does he think
he’s so entitled? I grumbled to my friend,
who, unlike the birds and walkers clanging gates,
stayed silent.

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Pam Thompson: In my absence

You waited near the harbour. Across the bay,
lights were coming on. You hadn’t realised it was so late. 
The primary school had all but vanished. 
You’d watched two diggers lumber in lopsided circles 
like tortured bulls. A steep drop down 
to where waves slapped the rocks,
agitating clumps of dulse and bladderwrack. 

Maybe it would have been better
to have come back as a forager, to gather nutrients, 
to impress no-one in particular with wholesome and unusual meals 
although you’d read somewhere 
that most seaweed tasted like rubber gloves.

A spring tide didn’t actually happen in spring –
it was an elastic tide when the best pickings could be uncovered. 
All this palaver in February where you could be waiting forever,
protecting this private sea-filled space in your head,
contemplating rusty haulage machinery
in trawlers that didn’t go out to sea anymore, 
every now and then inhaling the smell of rotting fish,
in salty rain that was sure to persist all night.


Pam Thompson: Fireflies

Remember those trainers with lights in the heels?
How they flashed red at each leap in aerobics.
It was obvious those trainers spelt danger.
You copied Donna when she wore them in class.

How they flashed red at each leap in aerobics.
They led you to places you shouldn’t have gone.
You copied Donna when she wore them in class.
You weren’t to know those trainers spelt danger.

They lead you to places you shouldn’t have gone.
Dared you to run home in the dark.
Those trainers spelt danger, no-one told you
that they would make you trip and fall.

They led you to places you shouldn’t have gone.
Your heels, sparking on cold pavements
before the trainers made you trip and fall.
Donna didn’t notice when you failed to turn up.

Your heels, sparking on cold pavements.
Everyone warned you but you wouldn’t listen.
That they would make you trip and fall.
You always wanted to attract attention.

Everyone warned you but you wouldn’t listen.
Your heels, sparking on cold pavements.
You tied them so tightly before you went out.
Ahead of the trend, you loved those trainers.

Your heels, sparking on cold pavements.
It was obvious that those trainers spelt danger.
A car stopped to see if you were all right.
You became used to falling in the end.

You tied them so tightly before you went out.
It was obvious that those trainers spelt danger.
A car stopped to see if you were all right.
Remember those trainers, the lights in the heels.

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***

Thea Smiley: The Learner

A parachute drifts over the airstrip, ring road, recycling centre 
and crematorium, two bodies strapped together,
preparing to land somewhere out of sight.

I stare past the dust on the dashboard at the ragged flags 
of the karting track, a crash barrier of tyres, cones, 
and arrows painted on the potholed tarmac.

A skylark lifts off with a flutter of notes, as the instructor’s car 
approaches from town, passes and parks up. My son 
climbs out and joins me, sliding the driving seat 

back to accommodate his legs. He straps in, starts the engine, 
checks the mirror, clicks the indicator, and we’re off 
towards the roundabout and old roads home. 

He drives me through villages, past ripening crops and oaks 
with red ribbons around their trunks. My feet press 
the floor, hands grip the seat, as I sit back, 

trying to ignore the gravel skittering at the side of the road, 
the truck on our rear bumper, thinking of how far 
we’ve come and how far we’ve got to go.

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***

Mimi Kunz: The O in Grow
to my daughter and her great-grandmother

We smell fresh flowers.
I read you stories and magazines.
We eat biscuits.
I talk to you, not knowing if you understand.
We laugh at a carrot.
I push you around the streets.
We wait for snow.
I repeat names of places and people.
We hide from the rain.
I help you change.
We look at pictures.
I butter your toast and cut off the crust.
We listen to music.
I tell you how much I love you.
We sing.

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Sue Norton: Walking the path

I’m walking the path we walked
thirty-five years ago, me with a pram, 
you with an expectant bump.

We laughed at the u- shape 
of the lime tree, that’s still here
speckled with yellow lichen

two parallel stems rising
like siblings from the main trunk
as if from a Jesse tree.

Today I’m walking the same path.
Our children are grown, but you
and three husbands are gone.

The lime tree looks much the same. 
It’s hard to tell how old it is,
how hollow it is inside.

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Martine Padwell: The Board men 

If I refused school, Mum said the Board men 
would come to our house. 
She didn’t describe – but I saw, all the same, 
a gang of bald men break down our door, heave
a coffin-length board up the stairs, drag
me out from under my bed and tie 
me up with a scratchy rope 
to be carried in shame through the streets of the town
then down the hill to a desolate field
planted with boards – hundreds of boards - 
each one bearing a full set of bones.

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Jenny Mitchell: Sunday School 

God was in her face – the pout – Miss Nora with her church-
wide nose, altar of a chin that wagged, sermon for a tongue. 
Holy, Holy on my palm with a stick so thin it cut through air, 
left it dripping all my blood as the steeple of her head pointed close,
peering grin to see tears on my cheeks. A hymn released, her head 
swayed back, pulpit of a mouth shooting words up to the roof 
like birds thrown to be shot, prayers held in her lids close
together tight. Cloisters in both eyes. What a nave! Chasing 
down the aisle. Bible chained to stop my feet, chapel hair 
beneath a bud-strewn hat waving back to God.

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Konstandinos Mahoney : Justice

Head lolls, upturned eyes,
body draped across the metal bracket of her outstretched arms.

She strides along the highway against on-coming traffic 
taking him to where earth meets sky,
 
the Supreme Court of Strangled Things

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Jane Simpson: stronger than innocence

wind strips the cherry tree
yet faith is not deflowered
in women’s bodies taken
without their consent

for faith need neither be innocent
nor blind;
nor can it be forced or
taken away

Eve took the apple
knowingly
from the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil

faith is not deflowered but redefined 
by women survivors
shaking
the apple tree

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Lorraine Carey: In the Blue Room 

The therapist’s pen is the same as
the one leaking in my pocket.
This narrows the gulf for a second
and as she rates my child an eight
on the scale of suicidal ideation

I wonder if she’s a mother too,
if anyone fed the cat and if there
are enough potatoes for dinner.
She asks how I am, but fear
coats my throat, black as treacle

from a warm spoon and while
her face blurs I try to stay in the room,
eyes darting to the ink glide
on the page as she writes
up her weekly notes.

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Rachael Clyne: Her Voice

Not the usual doctor, patient session –
this was my request, to record them 
for my book. My sister even flirted, 
if we’d met at a party, we might’ve been friends.

A rapport that allowed them to touch 
on those personal questions –
how she felt as he said he could do no more; 
how he felt delivering her final prognosis.
  
I kept the tape for a right time 
when her children were grown; 
so they might hear her and 
the grace with which she left us.

Decades later, I played it back. 
Shocked at how sad and stilted
she sounded, it felt kinder to let her go, 
but not just throw her away.

I made a clootie tree
from her voice, unspooled it 
onto branches of forsythia  
to be taken by wind.

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Pam Job: When I was mad

I never owned this cardigan the woman wore,
Merino wool, handknitted, snatched off the hook 
on the garden door. I never glanced out to see
the east wind begin to fold together clouds.
I would have liked such a cardigan, serviceable,
with pockets deep enough to hold a line of pegs, 

a few small potatoes, dug up. No, I never
shrugged on the cardigan, pulled it to my ears
against the weather rolling across the Downs. 
I wouldn’t have noticed the last thing she saw
in the garden, a shaft of sun setting fire
to the tall grasses along the wall, a shimmer 
of seed heads falling fast into shadow,

a shadow that followed her across the fields
and down to the river, bending with her as she
stooped to pocket pebbles, still damp and shiny 
from the morning’s dew. I would never have done that, 
and my shadow wouldn’t have stepped with me 
into brown water, and only left me when my pockets
filled with the river. I was never that desperate.

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Tess Jolly: Navigation
 
Everyone looks so lost, you said,
as we left the psychiatric unit
where we’d visited your grandad.
 
Relieved to walk away from the years
those long corridors of locked
double doors reminded me of,
 
I drove back following the satnav’s
guiding voice through the dark,
and when that had me circling
 
a dead end and I floundered,
when the thoughts amassed
like crows articulating familiar forms
 
in the fields, preparing to torch
nest after nest in dawn’s hit-and-run raids,
it was you – the younger of the children
 
I doubted I’d be strong enough to hold –
who worked it out, and mapped
the star that set us homeward.

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Pam Zinnemann-Hope: In the Corridor

While she was having the caesarian 
I stood in the hospital corridor with him.
We stood opposite the clock face on the wall, 
both watching the hands slide slowly round, 

and talking about the weather, 
which was warm for the time of year,
about my garden – 
how the daffodils were doing, 
about my drive up there, 

about how to make curry,
which he knew and I didn’t,
and all the while we each separately watched 
the hands crawling round on the clock face 
and wondered when it would end. 

Months later I asked him,
What were you thinking in that corridor?
I was frightened she was bleeding to death, he said.
And you?  
I was really worried the baby had died.

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Maria Taylor: In Regent’s Park

Mum dresses me 
too warmly for August. 
She doesn’t trust English weather.
I’m swaddled in a jumper 
the colour of porridge
and wear navy-blue jeans
underneath a daisy-print frock. 
My cheeks are puffed.
I feel bad about something 
and don’t know why
as I zip in-between the bodies 
of gum-pink sunbathers,
drifting away from mamma,
who’s now smaller than me. 
Winter edges in. Part of her
is still in a hospital bed
a little before my birth 
seeking my foal’s kick
with her hands, as she did 
with my stillborn sister. 
I survived. Sister didn’t. 
Even if I hide in the tangle 
of weeping willows
guilt will seek me out
and pull me back. 

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Marian Kilcoyne: Reviewing 2023

Hurry he said. I did and made it across
the road to where my mother lay. In the three
scant minutes it took me to pull on clothes,
run jelly-legged, scramble across the wall,
she was gone. Just dead. I had read somewhere that 
the brain lives 2 minutes and 14 seconds after death, so I
knew something my two siblings did not, and while
my sisters face curdled with hate and my hapless
brother stayed hapless, I got to mouth goodbye 
silently.
.
Later while my mother was still warm, my sister 
(now former) got her hate together, like you get your shit 
together and screamed the house down attacking yet
again, myself and my husband.
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My hapless brother (now former) had to pull her off us
and later I marvelled at what jealousy and hate can do to
the human face. No amount of Botox will reverse that visage
and no one has pinned down the soul yet, to inject it with similar.
Three days and three nights it lasted, the wake, mass and burial
piling on relentlessly. Irish people love to pat themselves on the
back at how well they do funerals. Drivel. There is an unseemly
haste to get people into the ground or oven. Whatever.

The greatest thing we can do in face of ignorance is walk away,
fast. Jealousy is a hank of yarn, long, twisted and easily packed away.
Forgotten.

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Lydia Harris: My father at White Moss 

wears his Hawkins boots
lugs the bergen on his back
carries a net knotted on a metal hoop 

he long ago renounced the trickery 
the hungry snap he steadies me 
as I step to the next clump 

lead the way death sent us here  
his ghost must lie down with the peats
at home as my silk dress with chiffon sleeves 

my father follows our feet are dry 
asks why I let him die asks 
about dust underground 

from his father’s lungs
the amethyst brooch
when did you forget to pick it up 

and no I couldn’t keep him 
he had a sister but she’s fathoms down 
the stars set sail take their turn he’s leaving now 

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David Flynn: Two Quotes from My Poems I Want on My Tombstone

Where before he was at one point
Now he is everywhere

As if I walked through a field
And that field a year later.  

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Sylvia Cohen: Way to go 

So, how would it be 
if you were taken in your sleep 
and you the only person
not to know it? 
Sleep coming hand in hand 
with Death, 
both of them 
dressed in their best. 

She wears her moondusted
whisp of lilac chiffon
that swirls as she moves, soft blue
sparking from her necklace.

He in his favourite
wine-red tuxedo over black
pinstripe trousers, new Gucci 
sunglasses, 

They want to do you proud. 

The two of them, tiptoeing
round the house 
so as not to disturb the neighbours,
flatten themselves 
out to shadows,
creep under thresholds, 
flow like sweet nectar
through cracks
in the brick work.

Sleep strokes 
your eyelids
with honey-soft 
fingers, Death 
folds you gentle 
in his arms 
to your berth 
on the ferry.

There are worse ways to go. 

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Kerry Gray: Father of the Bride
(in memory of JC )

The black car waits beyond the copper beeches,
an Irish harp pins late arrivals to the still-cold pews.
Making light of sudden squalls you muster up and take a bow,
fragile in your suit-of-armour rented from the village shop. 

An Irish harp pins late arrivals to the still-cold pews.
We hold our breath and look back to the needled sweep of mountain fir,
fragile in your suit-of-armour rented from the village shop.
Waiting in my mock-silk dress, cocooned in veils and No.5

we hold our breath and look back to the needled sweep of mountain fir.
Stage fright on the chapel steps, high above the silver lough.
Waiting in my mock-silk dress, cocooned in veils and No.5.
Sí beag sí mór through open doors – and I no longer centre stage but you.

Stage fright on the chapel steps, high above the silver lough.
Making light of sudden squalls you muster up and take a bow.
Sí beag sí mór through open doors – and I no longer centre-stage 
but you. For you the black car waits beyond the copper beeches.

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Angela Kirby: What is it with the burial of the dead

at my father’s funeral we sang The day Thou gavest
Lord, is ended, the darkness falls at thy behest, and
I wept as his coffin slid smoothly into the last space
of the family vault. But have you noticed how funerals
often engender unseemly bursts of somewhat hysterical
laughter which shock the undertakers and prove difficult

to control?  We cling to each other, rocking with
barely suppressed mirth, horrified by our own
misbehaviour which can suddenly switch to tears,
as when my mother died, and my three sisters-in-law
rode with me in the funeral limousine. Lord knows
what started us off but it seemed impossible to stop

though it was obvious from his rigid back that our driver
was not amused, which started us off again. Only when
we arrived at the small Pugin church, just as the hearse
disgorged her polished coffin, did reality sober us.
Sheepishly we accepted the crumpled hymn sheets and
were ushered into the front pew as the organist tuned up

then stomped into Salve Regina. Mater misericordiae
we sang, Vita dulcedo et spes nostra, salve. The priest
who did not know her did his best to say something relevant
but I found myself wondering if she was pleased by it all –
the church, the priest, the flowers, the music, was it even
possible that she knew, and if so, did she care?

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***

Mary Mulholland: Cake				

A whistle. It's my father-in-law's nostrils
as he enters the kitchen. There, he says

and takes a paperback from his jacket pocket,
sits at the table with a groan, There, again

as he stretches his long legs. Like a stick insect,
gangly and tall. I frame my lips to a smile.

I'm baking a Victoria Sponge for him 
to take home. Our monthly ritual.

He never says which flavour he likes best, 
only that sometimes he buys cake from a shop. 

There, he says as I stick it in the oven. Soon he and I 
will eat lunch. Once more he'll recall his fall 

from a haystack, and how he played clarinet in a band, 
crossed the Himalayas with a Sherpa guide, the plot

of his latest thriller. It's not dementia and should be 
interesting, yet it's like listening to a play 

I've heard too often before, with no interval. I serve 
him Irish stew. He talks and I nod. 

A month or so later I find him in hospital. 
There you are, I say. His bony grey face

tries a smile. He takes my hand and presses a book 
into my palm, There, you can read it now. 

After he dies I help clear my father-in-law's house. 
His son is binning photo albums, diaries, letters. 

With guilt I add the paperback, then find the cakes
I made in his freezer: chocolate, fruit, coffee and walnut,

There, I say and chuck them all into the skip.

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***

Janet Hatherley: Fish & chips

Don’t go she said.
I’ll be back in six weeks I said.

Six weeks!
You’ll be dead in six weeks.

But I wanted to go
because if I left now

I’d be just in time
to buy fish and chips

sprinkle them with vinegar
and salt

sit in the fish and chip shop
outside the station

before it closed at five,
before getting on one train, 

then another, 
knowing there’d be nothing

on the journey back.
Later I realised

what she meant was
she’d be dead in six weeks.

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***

Jan Hadfield: Bruce

when my father was sick
my mother painted 
the ceiling with stars
It was overcast
outside the magnolia bowed
and her perfume
seeped through the window
I played scarlatti sonatas 
in the next room
my father sleeping
heard all of this
my mother called me
she couldn’t wake him
nothing will wipe away a word of this

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***

Julia Webb: She Died

and we were on the train
me with my grief
and you with your leather man bag
your patience of a saint
and the train was crowded
and I was crying most of the time
and we weren’t at a table
even though we usually get a table
but we had booked last minute
and no one needed confronting with my pain
and there was horrible tea that scalded 
and nowhere to put the teabag
and there might have been a sandwich
and she was still dead
and though I knew I couldn’t have prevented it
part of me believed I could have 
if I had got there sooner
if I had taken an earlier more expensive train
and not believed the nurse who told me
she’s fine for now come in the morning
and you put on your headphones 
and buried your head in your newspaper
impatient with my grief but trying not to show it
because at that point you hadn’t suffered 
any significant losses yourself

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***

John Grey: Different

A different man
will come to your door
and at an hour
when you’re not 
expecting anyone,
not a friend,
not a relative,
not anybody you know  
or have even seen around
and he won’t be 
trying to sell you 
solar panels 
or an alternative
to your current 
cable provider,
nor will he be 
running for 
the local council 
or the state senate 
and squawking 
how he could 
really use your vote,
and he sure won’t
be congratulating you
on winning some raffle
that you don’t remember
even having entered,
or wanting to use your phone
or asking directions
to a street
three blocks away.
I don’t know who he is.
He could just as easily
be death 
as your life partner.
That different man
might even be a woman. 

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***

Elizabeth Smither: The angel of death








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In an illuminated book of angels
there’s an angel labelled ‘The Angel of Death’.

Many shades of black and grey, wings
like a bat, half-folded as if

the angel does not wish to disturb.
His raiment is so obvious: the room darkens

slightly or a candle flickers. The angel
cups the flame to take away the fear

but his presence in the room cannot be gainsaid
whatever gesture he makes, however softly,

rustles the dark feathers of his wings.
He’s still an angel, you said, when I complained.

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***

Caleb Murdock: The Sky

It’s sad, this loss of innocence.
The ever unyielding Truth has come
to “save” us. The sky has been debunked.

The skies were the Heavens once, a place
where mankind’s benefactors dwelled,
plotting our future and salvation.

Heaven has been erased, replaced
by ozone, a vacuum, an empty space;
the Sun gods, the Greek gods are gone,

found only now in song. The One God
and One Son are headed for Barbados.
Where will we go when we are dead?

Not there. Seemingly, not anywhere.
Not to clouds on freshly sprouted wings.
Not to a party in God’s den. We simply end.

Held tightly to the ground in a slender
cloak of sooty air, we soldier on
with science as our only friend.

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***

Sarah James: Handfuls of cloud

Clusters of white petals ghost
along the pavement as if
a passer-by had reached up
to turn the sky inside out,
and grab handfuls of cloud,
falling like warm snow.

I step over gusts of pollen
drifting amid the grey
of our city’s shadow lives,
the slow-dancing blossom
soon blown away
to who knows where next.

I pick up a lone flower: 
tinier than my fingernail,
white frills feathered with pink.
Already, its edges are curling,
but the long-filamented stamens
are still insect tightropes;

they catch the sunlight
like a hidden silver lining 
not everyone gets to see.

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***

Helen Evans: The morning of the diagnosis

I wake early, to a dim,
underwater light seeping 
through my curtains,

which I stumble towards
and pull back, only to see, 
in the bed below the window,

three startling-red tulips, 
two demurely closed, the third 
unashamedly flung wide, 

its leaves ragged with slug-holes, 
its stem trembling a little 
in the slight turbulence, 

the petals curling back
from its matt black centre, 
the nearest one starting 

to curl away from the others,
the whole flower doing 
the only thing it can do – 

open itself to the sun.

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***

Denise O’Hagan: One more glowing sunset

Give me one more glowing sunset, 
rippling lake, shining moon and all the rest—
I am weary of them all.

It’s—let’s face it—a lopsided relationship:
Nature is indifferent to our appreciation.
She did just fine before we turned up.

Take that oak, showering the pavement
with veined and russet-tinted leaves—
or the often-cited fluffy, tinted,

painterly clouds—even that tiny beetle
creeping across the asphalt like
an errant drop of tar—

all gloriously impervious to our
earnest efforts to straddle the great divide
between a thing and its interpretation. 

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***

Clifford Liles: The Sculpting of Ski Fields

My week-long pass for chairlifts paid, I’m scooped up, 
lofted over clear-felled slopes, through an echo
of crows. I’m sweat-cold, salty lipped. 
Held in a metal macramé, feet heavy 
with skis, I touch the frame but leave a dot
of frozen skin. This rosary of cages, bound
for a red run, climbs the defile, thumbed 
by a pylon, a triple-tap rattle:
just a bit of fun, just a bit of fun.

My chairlift jolts, pauses, hovers above
this route slashed out for us. Tracks of muddy 
logging trucks, stumps and wood-pile smells. Access 
to the many pistes that glisten like slug 
trails. Frowning, I decide I’m not hooked
                                                                   on downhill.

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***

Katherine Gallagher: The Pause

I’m in love with this thoroughness, the speed
of the wrapping. Three hours under a steady white pelt
and the landscape has been remade,
whatever the terrain beneath:
the great piste with its gentle white topsoil
as take-off point, teaching the beauty of the pause,
alongside phases of covering up --
how in the time left, to start again,
as if remaking were an idea to last?

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***

Ben Bruges: Shooting the breeze

Three swan-white blades turn into grace;
a breeze being enough to keep the leaves
following each other, silently, as if time
 
was nothing, as if the encroaching sea
was nothing, as if we could calmly survive.
A dog walker nodded at the turbine. Isn’t it horrible,
 
he said, a blot on a pristine landscape. Ugly.
I wondered how to reply. We had denuded
the far slope so many years ago, we forgot
 
which sea-battle stripped the hills of trees
and left the purple straggle the sheep search
for something to sustain. The forest used to slow
 
the run-off, held the soil, now crumbling
and silting sea. The river, canal-straight,
has lost curves, weirs, shallows and weeds.
 
Concrete holds up the banks to channel
fresh water yet more quickly away from land,
away from use, and, some spring tides, floods
 
and smears mud through starter houses crammed
at one end of the flood plain. Smelling traces,
the dog jerked his master away. The slim turbine
 
stands mute, tall, in real and imagined landscapes.

 

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***

Eva Skrande:The Woman Who Marries A River

He wears the tuxedo of night. 
The yellow stars along his chest like shirt buttons. 

In the water, the bride's dress billows out behind her. 
Under a canopy of sycamores and willows, 

they say their vows, over and over 
in the green language of rivers, promising 

only a life full of gentle boats, 
that no snakes or alligators will force them apart. 

Dancing, his arms spread wide around her 
like a simple bridge of rope and kisses. Her feet 

of shells match the current’s chorus. 
She holds his fingers of water, and they leap 

over the small rocks of a lucky life together. 
There are no boats named after suffering in this world. 

They step lightly so the refugee boats pass safely, 
so there is no such thing as drowning. Every night

the woman lies on the river bank. She loves 
high tide best when the water, like a good husband,

washes over her body. Asleep, they dream of fish
and children till morning. 

Then he serenades her all day long, his voice,
sunny, loud, and cheerful, 

and she feels safe in her petticoats of white caps
that rise just a little with the wind.

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***

Hannah Linden: We talk about the rain

As if we can already feel
the wet beads slide deep
we leave the real conversation
dripping down the windows.

The earth soaks up the recycled seas
as we sit inside, dry
as withered poinsettias, our
bursts of red becoming
papery brown.

If I could find a way
of sitting you in a pond for a while
I think it might bring back
that natural way you have of setting
the house on fire.

Talk to me about bringing
the outside in again,
your trick for noticing
the world and all its
ridiculous glamour.

Now is not the time
to talk about drought.

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***

Emma Lee: Twelve Years after a Twelfth Anniversary

It's been as long with as without you.
Your side too neat, still empty,
the bed's the same. I sleep on the same edge.
Unless it was figure-hugging,
you never liked the black I wore.
You'd hate the kitchen's muted grey.
The garden's a mess: you'd expect that.
Antiques, you always dismissed as second hand,
instead of the cheap veneer you'd regularly replace.
Our home's walls no longer neutral.
How much would be familiar to you?
I look in the mirror. Your ghost behind me.

I look in the mirror. Your ghost behind me.
How much would be familiar to you?
Our home's walls no longer neutral.
Instead of the cheap veneer you'd regularly replace,
antiques you always dismissed as second hand.
The garden's a mess: you'd expect that.
You'd hate the kitchen's muted grey.
You never liked the black I wore
unless it was figure-hugging.
The bed's the same. I sleep on the same edge.
Your side too neat, still empty.
It's been as long with as without you.

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***

Jake Wild Hall: Small Choir
after Selima Hill

on the first day I thought I could
travel by coach I couldn’t
I thought if I went back to work
that if I made six phone calls
ate the leftovers 
that on the second day
I could

I couldn’t
I tried to plan things  
sing with a small choir
tell my mum I love her
support arsenal

I couldn’t
I thought remembering with friends
would be like the first sound
after silence
it wasn’t

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***

Holly Day: Something Sacred

I feel the tiny insects crawling around in my hair
and disintegrate into paroxysms of flailing and scratching.
“This is why I always stick to the path,” my husband says
grumbles, lectures, intones smugly, arms crossed. 
I don’t have any answer because I know this is true
and he probably doesn’t have any ticks on him
because he didn’t disappear into the woods 
just to look at a really cool tree. 

I don’t want to be this person, afraid of ticks
and Lyme disease and mosquitoes bearing Zika 
or encephalitis. I don’t want to be afraid of tripping
over rocks, of going the wrong way
don’t want to know what time it is all the time
always have a schedule driving my day. 
I want to be like the little girl holding my hand
right now, eyes wide and lost in the world around us
marveling only at the birds and the trees and the sun. 

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***

Kay Feneley: The petitioner presents her case

I waited months to tell you
not wanting to divide your loyalties
or see judgement in the eyes of my oldest friend.
You told me off for going it alone for so long.

I anticipated much maternal criticism,
I’m never there as a daughter
so you phone him up for a chat.
You weren’t surprised and called him lazy.

Once I’d confessed I was broken
I braced for your sermon on vows
before you pronounced me forgiven.
Your matter-of-factness was healing.

Married to my husband’s best friend
I thought it inevitable things would cool.
He was on his way to stay with you
when you told me any time is good for a chat.

I thought it would bring back painful memories
of when your wife told you she was leaving,
after all, I’m doing the same.
You immediately offered your spare room.

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Lee Fraser: Best Before

the hummus is dated on your birthday
deep breath, insipid 
line to self
step over the chasm in the kitchen floor
and tuck it away in the fridge
low on cheese
must get a gift while I’m out
are you still into tea
allsorts
any of this?

the kettle stings
your grazes
I just want a drink
all I can think of is my knees
tender from craning under the stove
for a missing puzzle piece
about how we expired
01/06 will bring
another strained card
another dice-roll present
and spoiled dip
I’d remove the calendar reminder
but there’s no deleting
a childhood that orbits special days
like a microwave plate
lit feebly, enchantingly
as the years go round
back to the bench
mind the gap
at least best before
was still good once
I can’t restock you
the milk is use by last week
no use crying
buttermilk pancakes with no candle?
I chuck it out
all set
till next year

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Shadwell Smith: The Snack Bar 
Edward Burra (1930)

Spider lash eyes survey her shop soiled boudoir;
a retrospective of old punters and new ones
waiting to be done by the railway arch down the road.

A crooked hand paints a cast of shady regulars
hungry mouths open to suggestion
and a grubby slice of life bathed in electric light.

Each pocket carries just the right amount
for lazy tongues of flesh cut thin and tasty.
Cured sausage is not the only meat on the menu.

His Mayfair cockney spills across the canvas
like a ten bob tart propositioning from the shadows,
as if to say, “You don’t know the half of it dearie.”

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Linda Ford:  Bruise

This bruise is the colour of celestial heavens
sometimes its cloud is dead-weight, lingers like a hangover
secretes itself to my darkest cells, then leaves in increments
the last time it left, I cried for two days straight
flitted between feelings of loss and elation
it returned as an asp looped around my neck 
as I plumbed the depths of it – peeled it from my skin
felt its clot beat against my heart
on occasion, it multiplies, speaks in tongues
whispers the sweetest things
makes the shapes of those I loved, calls itself Graffiti

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***

Annie Brechin: As I stuff the bloodied sheets into the washing machine 
 
I wonder if you ever think you go too far 
and think of all the times I've gone too far 
like a bad Belle and Sebastian song 
yet landed here with you, my beauty 
 
gash on the forehead you refused to have stitched 
 
that time I cheated and hid it, that time I cheated and told 
to so many other men a lifetime ago 
I still have the wedding menus in my emails 
from all those bastards I was a bitch to 
 
you don't envy their glazed melon and duck a l'orange 
 
thank heaven it's only concussion 
though our friends glance askance 
your left eye flowering like the orchid I bought at Christmas 
when we had no money for bread. 

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Prue King: Washing Day

Checked shirtsleeves flap
fluoro t-shirt swings on the wire
faded denim sends the clothes line
spinning.

Nana enjoys catching the wire
stopping the whirl in the wind
as she pegs out a last tiny top.
Another load done to catch the sun.

He came at her hard
no growling
propelling his massive head
at her neck
blood hitting the concrete path
before her head did.

Like a marionette
her checked shirtsleeves flap
her jeans flail on the ground
waving.

On the wire
the tiny top quivers.

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Annie Brechin lives, writes and performs in Edinburgh. She has been published in Magma, Stand, Bad Lilies, Fourteen Poems, B O D Y, Paris Lit Up, Rising and others. Her debut The Mouth of Eulalie was released by Blue Diode in March 2022.

Living by the sea in Hastings UK, Ben Bruges makes a living in technical support, teaching, filmmaking and volunteers as the Features Editor for a community newspaper. Seeking to avoid being pigeonholed as high- or low-brow or as ‘slam’ or a ‘book’ poet, he collects words and ideas from where ever he finds them. Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate complimented the poems “for their density, thoughtfulness and cleverly pausing rhythms. [They] manage to make the urban city-scape resonate like a pastoral one.” Bruges pokes around the empty holes and edges and teases away at the meaning of landscape: the discarded, the unloved, the luminous. Published in The Interpreter’s House, The Banyan Review, Write Under the Moon and forthcoming in The Creaking Kettle. @benbruges  

Lorraine Carey’s poems appear in Magma, Orbis, Prole, Poetry Ireland Review, Abridged, The High Window, One, The Cormorant, Ink Sweat &Tears and others. A recipient of an Arts Council Agility Award, she’s working on a second collection.

Sylvia Cohen writes “I am a retired psychotherapist, have been writing poetry now for about six years. I have had a couple of poems published in small anthologies, was sort-listed last year for the Bridport and won the Fiction Factory first prize for 2024. I love writing poetry anyway….”

Rachael Clyne retired psychotherapist from Glastonbury, is widely published in journals. Her pamphlet, Girl Golem (4Word Press) explores her Jewish, migrant background. Her new collection, You’ll Never BeAnyone Else, expands on themes of identity and otherness, including LGBTQ and relationships.   https://www.serenbooks.com    https://rachaelclyne.blogspot.com/

Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Analog SF, Cardinal Sins, and New Plains Review, and her published books include Music Theory for Dummies and Music Composition for Dummies. She currently teaches classes at The Loft Literary Center in Minnesota, Hugo House in Washington, and The Muse Writers Center in Virginia

Helen Evans runs two poetry projects: Inner Room and Poems for the Path Ahead. Her pamphlet is ‘Only by Flying’ (HappenStance Press); her poems have appeared in The Rialto, Magma, The North, and Wild Court; one was a joint winner of the Manchester Cathedral 600 prize.

Kay Feneley has been writing in London for two decades, mostly as a civil servant but also poetry on life as a disabled, neurodiverse woman working on matters of war and peace.  Her pamphlet I did this to you was longlisted in the 2023 Frosted Fire First competition.  

David Flynn’s literary publications total more than 260.  His background includes reporter for a daily newspaper, editor of a commercial magazine, and teacher.  He currently lives in Nashville, TN

Linda Ford is a poet based in Derbyshire whose work has appeared in The High Window, The Alchemy Spoon, Orbis and elsewhere.  Her first collection, Lucent, was published with erbacce-press (2022).

Lee Fraser lives in ?tautahi, New Zealand. She trained and worked as a linguist in Papua New Guinea and Kenya in her 20s, collided with domesticity in ?tautahi during her 30s, and is now rediscovering health through poetry.

Katherine Gallagher is a London poet whose 8^th collection Can the Dandelions Be Trusted? is due from Arc Publications (UK) later this year..

Kerry Gray was awarded first prize at the Maria Edgeworth competition, (2022), and one of her short stories was shortlisted by the Irish Times, ‘This means War’ competition. After a childhood spent in Colombia and long periods of time in Spain, England and Italy she now lives in Belfast. After completing an OU Creative Writing course she began writing poetry, inspired by the Italian and Spanish poets she studied as an undergraduate at Queens University Belfast, during the eighties.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Lost Pilots. Latest books, Between Two Fires, Covert and  Memory Outside The Head are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in California Quarterly, Seventh Quarry, La Presa and Doubly Mad.

Jake Wild Hall is a poet, performer, publisher and bookseller based in Nottingham and born in London. He is the artistic director of Bad Betty Press and work as a senior bookseller at Waterstones in Nottingham. He’s published two poetry pamphlets, Solomon’s World and Blank, both of which toured across the UK. He has been published in bath magg, Bi+ Lines, Anthropocene and elsewhere, performed on BBC Radio, and co-edited anthologies including The Dizziness of Freedom and Field Notes on Survival (Bad Betty), and the forthcoming Off the Chest Anthology. 

Jan Hadfield writes “I live in Christchurch in the South Island of New Zealand  I have always had a great love of words and poetry and enjoy the pleasure of playing my piano. I have a strong empathy with people  

Lydia Harris has made her home in the Orkney island of Westray. Her second collection Henrietta’s Library of the Whole Wide World is out now with Blue Diode

Janet Hatherley is a London poet.  Her debut pamphlet, What Rita Tells Me, was published May 2022 by Dempsey & Windle.  She has had poems in several magazines including The Interpreter’s House, Under the Radar, Stand, Brittle Star, and London Grip.  She was highly commended and commended in South Downs competition, 2023.

Sarah James/Leavesley is a prize-winning poet, fiction writer, journalist and photographer. Her latest collection Blood Sugar, Sex, Magic (Verve Poetry Press, 2022) won the CP Aware Award Prize for Poetry 2021 and was highly commended in the Forward Prizes 2022. Sarah’s website is at www.sarah-james.co.uk and she also runs V. Press, publishing poetry and flash fiction.

Pam Job lives on the Colne Estuary in Essex surrounded by poets and artists. The imperative to write poetry came with the move from London. Over the past 15 years she has won awards in poetry competitions – which she prefers to enter because of all-important deadlines – is published in anthologies and has co-edited 5 anthologies. She revises more than she writes!

Tess Jolly‘s first full collection, Breakfast at the Origami Café, is published by Blue Diode Press. She lives with her family on the south coast of the UK, where she runs her freelance editing business: www.poemsandproofs.co.uk.

 Marian Kilcoyne is an Irish writer. She has been widely published in Ireland, UK, USA and Europe. She has read her work on National Radio, RTE Lyric FM. Her poetry collection, The Heart Uncut, was published in 2020 by Wordsonthestreet publishers Galway. She lives in Belfast and Co. Mayo

Prue King’s published in various poetry and short fiction anthologies and she’s written stage plays and a book for new dads. A former journalist, she lives in the luxuriant far north of New Zealand with a head full of words. 

Lancashire born in 1932, Angela Kirby now lives in London. Her widely published poems have won prizes and commendations in many major competitions. Shoestring Press published her 6 collections

Mimi Kunz lives in Brussels, Belgium. Her poems appeared in Ink, Sweat & Tears, Hedgerow, Ellipsis, MoonPark Review, All Becomes Art (Speculative Books) and have been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her first collection is forthcoming (Kyoudai Press). More on https://mimikunz.com/

Emma Lee’s publications include The Significance of a Dress (Arachne, 2020) and Ghosts in the Desert (IDP, 2015). She co-edited Over Land, Over Sea (Five Leaves, 2015), reviews for magazines and blogs at https://emmalee1.wordpress.com.

Clifford Liles lives in Hereford but has travelled, lived and worked in several countries throughout Europe and in Australia. His poems have been published in Acumen, Orbis, Poetry Salzburg Review, London Grip, Obsessed with Pipework, South, and Dream Catcher. His collection of poems The Thin Veneer was published by Dempsey & Windle in July 2022.

Hannah Linden won the Cafe Writers Poetry Competition in 2021, and was highly commended in the Wales Poetry Award 2021. Her debut pamphlet, The Beautiful Open Sky (V. Press), was shortlisted for the Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet 2023. X (formally Twitter): @hannahl1n     

 London & Greek island based poet Konstandinos Mahoney, won publication of his collection, The Great Comet Of 1996 Foretells in the 2021 Live Canon collection competition. His first collection, Tutti Frutti, was a winner of the Sentinel Poetry Book Competition 2017. He is also winner of the Poetry Society’s 2017 Stanza Competition

Kathleen McPhilemy grew up in Belfast but now lives in Oxford. She has published four collections of poetry, the most recent being Back Country, Littoral Press, 2022.  She also hosts a poetry podcast magazine, Poetry Worth Hearing  https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kathleen-mcphilemy .

Jenny Mitchell has three collections – Her Lost Language, Map Of A Plantation, which is on the syllabus at Manchester Metropolitan University, and Resurrection Of A Black Man, which contains three prize-winning poems. She has won numerous competitions, and is currently Poet-in-residence at Sussex University.

Mary Mulholland’s poems are published or forthcoming in Under the Radar, bath magg, Stand, Spelt, Ink Sweat & Tears and London Grip. She recently came 2nd in Indigo Dreams, was highly commended in Bridport and Buzzwords, and mentioned in several others. www.marymulholland.co.uk

Caleb Murdock was born in 1950 and lives in Rhode Island, U.S.A.  He spent most of his life as a word-processing operator for law firms.  He has written poetry since his twenties but didn’t lose his chronic writer’s block until his mid-sixties. He is now writing up a storm to make up for lost time.

Rosemary Norman lives in London and has worked mainly as a librarian. One poem, Lullaby, is much anthologised and her fourth collection, Solace, was published in October 2022 by Shoestring Press.In 2023 she and video artist Stuart Pound published Words & Pictures, a book of poems and stills with a link to the videos online

Sue Norton has had poems published in various anthologies and magazines

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.

Denise O’Hagan is a Sydney-based editor and poet. Her poetry collection Anamnesis (Recent Work Press) was a finalist in the Eric Hoffer Book Award (USA) and the Eyelands Book Award (Greece) and shortlisted in the Rubery Book Award (UK). https://denise-ohagan.com

Martine Padwell lives in London where she runs a poetry salon for colleagues. Her work has appeared in magazines including Pennine Platform and N-Zine, and on buses in Guernsey.  

Jane Simpson, a New Zealand poet, has two collections, A world without maps (2016) and Tuning Wordsworth’s Piano (2019). She won 2^nd prize in the NZ Poetry Society’s 2023 International Competition, Open Section. Her poems have appeared in Allegro, London Grip, Poetry Wales, Hamilton Stone Review, Meniscus and Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook.

Eva Skrande’s third book, The Boat that Brought Sadness into the World, is forthcoming in June from Finishing Line Press. Her publications include My Mother’s Cuba (River City Publishing Poetry Series) and Bone Argot (Spuyten Duyvil). Her poems have appeared in Agni, The Iowa Review, Smartish Pace, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, The Cortland Review, and elsewhere. From Houston, Texas, she currently works for Writers in the Schools and Houston Community College.

Thea Smiley’s poems have been shortlisted in the Live Canon Collection competition, longlisted in the Rialto Nature and Place competition, commended in Poets and Players and Ware Poets competitions, and published in The Alchemy Spoon, Finished Creatures, and Butcher’s Dog.

 Shadwell Smith is a school teacher who lives in Hemel Hempstead. His poems have appeared in Butcher’s Dog, Prole, The Ekphrastic Review and previous issues of London Grip.

 Elizabeth Smither’s latest collection of poems, My American Chair’was published by Auckland University Press in 2022 and will be published later this year by MadHat Poetry Press, USA. She has just completed a collection of novellas called Angel Train which will be published by Quentin Wilson in August.

 Julia Stothard lives in Shepperton and works at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her poems have appeared in various publications including London Grip, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Atrium, Pennine Platform, Orbis and Obsessed with Pipework.

Maria Taylor is a British Cypriot poet whose latest collection is Dressing for the Afterlife Nine Arches Press. She has been highly commended in the Forward Prize

Pam Thompson is a writer, educator and reviewer based in Leicester. She is a Hawthornden Fellow. Her works include include The Japan Quiz (Redbeck Press, 2009) and Show Date and Time, (Smith|Doorstop, 2006). Her collection, Strange Fashion, was published by Pindrop Press in 2017.  was winner of the 2023 Paper Swans Pamphlet Competition and her winning pamphlet, Sub/urban Legends, will be published sometime in 2024. She tweets as @fierydes.

Julia Webb is a neurodivergent writer and poetry tutor who lives in Norwich. She has three collections with NIne Arches Press: Bird Sisters (2016), Threat (2019) and Threat (2022).

Born in Ashton-under-Lyne in 1943, Rod Whitworth has done a number of jobs including teaching maths (for 33 years) and conducting traffic censuses (the job that kept him on the streets). He now lives in the Garden City (aka Oldham) and is still tyrannised by commas

Pam Zinnemann-Hope has two  full collections: On Cigarette Papers, 2012 (shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Prize & adapted by her as a play on Radio 4) and Foothold, 2017. She is also a children’s author