dawn light in a tightrope across the landing she walks it from East to West without failing toe tip on the far side rises on pointe as her notes hit the sky …
Diana Webb
prose poem
Nt
gleam to gleam two cars in motionless pas de deux through wield on wield of two polishing cloths one red one blue as a pair of owners gesture and flourish in open of boot and bonnet caress on the kerbside stage of a never to be repeated saturday morning performance viewed from the box of a room on the second floor of a suburban maisonette . Encore encore yes each to his own
Diana Webb
Postcard
The postcard of the market square has a grey figure in hat and long coat at bottom right, caught in mid-dash, blurred by movement, striding towards the frame, out of the picture. Look out: the same figure is glimpsed in the street corners of other postcards, always hurrying somewhere else.
Mark Valentine
THE GENTLEMAN FARMER
If I were to plow/plough my own fields, I’d plow it to get work done. The plow with its cultivator teeth of uppercase W’s. But I’d plough for the sheer joy of it, as an expression or lifestyle. The market would no doubt respond more favourably to the plow. But what of the plough? Well it would win over gourmets and those who live to eat. It would be met with approval if brought up over cream tea. As all ploughing would be done to the soundtrack of Pachelbel’s “Canon in D”. It is the ploughman who wells with a fullness of being who can say, “for today I have ploughed.”
Joseph Salvatore Aversano
Risqué Business
Loveliness. Simply. Squarely. Inscribed in a square. Whirling. Wobbling. Come. And fallen off. Into. Loveliness. Which because it is its own self. Does what pleases it most. Spanning and climbing and sliding. The. Loveliness. Terrain. So that moving. Twisting. Lifting. It. Is. Lovely. All face. But not facile at all. And not beyond. Most definitely not beyond. As if. The comma. Between the here. Passing. And the there. Waiting to pass. Which waits. And, then. Waits for itself. Waiting. So that there is never space. For anything. But loveliness.
Vishal Prabhu
Woolly Hat
detachable black bobble be a dark rabbit at the fancy dress so how much headgear flakeman weight of snow try yarn round a needle butter fingers drop the stitches big black holes just swallow this tail and you’re gone no prize no bell of passing
Diana Webb
The Question of the Magnification Factor
I raise the shutters… the morning is that of individual sounds… in a sea… in an empty glass… my intention was… my intention is… I believe… it’s Friday… February… l’exil de soi… construction workers on the property across the street… deliberately… the things I have to do today… African elephants live in the savannah and forage for food 17 hours a day… I sit down beside myself at eye level… leave it to chance to build a bridge… perhaps a paper straw… T.S. Eliot writes paratactically… the motif on the mug almost completely faded… except for the outline of the cat’s eyes… don’t tell me that people’s actions… make sense… when searching for literature about literature… proof of a degree is required… lukewarm coffee… in the depths of a calyx… a long night… l can fix them… headaches… the sky above the city… remains… only that… the taste of butter in comparison to no butter… matter… for whom…
Kati Mohr
Tales of Love
Twenties
Alcohol poured on double grief. Delirium Tremens. Three faces (not Pound’s petals) on a clothes horse, at night, menacing, nodding, we know, we know! A well-wrought poem quelled atavistic fears, silenced the chattering voices. A gothic novel beside the fire, the taste of foam from large bottles of stout, bracing, belief in something more, maybe a love affair. Not a great aspect from the front room – a suicide burial ground at the crossroads. Ballybough (reclaimed from the sea) Boy Does Well! Through the arch of Trinity College. Academic silence. Editor of Icarus, long established literary magazine, affording some importance, in demand among poets in pubs. Companions, oblique-minded; one found dead, stone cold at a leaking gas fire in College rooms. Another, rolling cigarettes with claw-like nicotine-stained fingers. Habitué of the psychiatric wards. Sheltered accommodation at last. Was love not at all possible for them? More like honourable obsessions. Intimacy opening a fault line, turbulent waters rising within. Again, a persisting poem, tugging at the sleeve, righting a listing mind.
Thirties
From where did she come when my breathing was shallow? Not the girl next door. For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer. Vows abandoned. A drunk’s dried-out dinner in the oven. No, not of this world. A plume of lilac blossoms for the bare formica table. A glistening orange when I was sick. A picnic on a park bench in spring. I was reaching, breathlessly. She placed three kisses on my cheek, took a broken vase and repaired it with gold, to hold flowers. Lilies the colours of ice. A dark crimson rose, fire still burning there. She planned to gather irises in the local park, but I never saw her again. Persephone abducted by Hades? Body of young woman found in Fairview Park.
Forties
Curious shire horses buffeted me in the short-cut field. In the car between the hedgerows, her skirt snagged on my haversack and lifted. Was the intense attraction we felt, evidence of a death imprint? Both survivors, witnesses of death too young. Could love erase the numbing mark? Indelible? Introduce our chilled selves to blue skies? Eat strawberries from her garden? A light kiss that last night on the writers’ retreat. Love had been seeping in all week. Taste of toothpaste. A longer kiss leaving in the morning. An empty train station. Trains spawning distance. A wish that they would collide. So broken, a collision, an attempt at intimacy. Letters, keepsakes crossing the Irish Sea. Walking a tightrope, slacking. The subterfuge was killing her. First to the post in the morning. ‘Trollop!’. ‘Home wrecker!’ The death imprint was deep within us. Feel nothing so that death can be redundant, not repeated? In dreams, hands holding the pain of our survival. Truer, sadder lives to live, even at a distance..
Fifties
Through the ornate metal archway of the old park, to a wooden bench in the shade, a bower, away from joggers, walkers, racing dogs and children playing. The furtive nature of our meetings. Holding hands only at night, kissing down a side street. Was there a boyfriend, a husband? I didn’t question the secrecy too closely. Smitten. Old couple following the sun from bench to bench. ‘He’s ninety, you know!’ Suddenly, her tongue inside my mouth, doing somersaults, knocking off my trilby hat. In bed, facing each other, kissing, cherishing. In some kind of love. Her other love began to appear, furtively, behind a tree, in a cafe. Persistent. Riding shotgun at her flat, enabling her bulimia? Frail, shoulder blades sharp. I asked, ‘how is she?’ His reply, I like your hat.’
Gerry McDonnell
Drop-out
Ice on the tooth brush, freezing bed sheets, everything as fuel, old shoes, lino. Fear of school, corporal punishment, six-of-the-best on each hand. Hands reddened, burning. Fear of the confessional – Bless me Father for I have sinned. A dance too soon with death. Windowless slavery of five-year apprenticeship, a printer’s devil, lead-stained fingers, forty-year pension. Escape from prescribed monotony. Pubs replacing churches. Revolutionaries. Marxists, Nihilists, like-minds, a book in the pocket, Turgenev, Camus, Sartre, Kafka, lost souls, smell of weed, incense, posh girls, artists flinging colours, Bach heightening. Gigs and reels. A dance with life, my face against her fall of hair, bodies closing in on curves.
Gerry McDonell
On Ombromanie
Recently I was sitting on the toilet waiting patiently for nature to takes its course when I realized that I was making hand shadows on the floor. I forgot about nature and studied the brightness and placement of the lights. I recalled that I used to do this as a child. When I abandoned hand shadow puppetry, and for what, I can’t remember. Subsequently, I’ve learned that lighting, properly exploited, can enhance many things.
Bob Lucky
the other bunny 