Helgafell There is a quarry in my heart. The lovely lanes divide. One humps from Upperwood to Uppertown and Ember Lane, and Ember Farm (my family’s farm, which has not been our farm for fifty years). At Bonsall’s market cross the clot of stone sends tassels out towards the Barley Mow, the moor, and down … Continue reading ‘Helgafell’ by Tony Williams
Tag: Nine Arches Press
Two poems by Maria Taylor
The Landfills of Heaven are clean as icebergs. There are Everests of wedding rings and silver bedsteads that sing like tuning forks. There are green, translucent hills made of empty champagne bottles and crystal flutes waiting for the blue lips of ghosts. There’s a hum marking the perimeter, the low, sustained notes of cello strings, … Continue reading Two poems by Maria Taylor
Two poems by Daniel Sluman
Two poems from the terrible (Nine Arches Press) feeding the bed we haggle & haul each piece of furniture into the house throwing the songs from our past into the fire they crack like potassium at the foot of the bed with the fake lashes & … Continue reading Two poems by Daniel Sluman
Two poems by Rebecca Gethin
Renny - 1961 Even then, I knew my performance as a primrose wouldn’t impress. But as soon as the bell clanged we played wild animals. We’d be at it on the floor, some crawling on all fours, others writhing, all of us snarling or growling. I guessed he’d notice my sabre-tooth-tiger impression: I knew how … Continue reading Two poems by Rebecca Gethin
Two poems by Natalie Shaw
How to tell your son he has no friends You will get the first bit wrong: he won’t be able to meet your eye. In the dark, you can hold his hand and stroke his hair. Forget the things you said this morning. Forget the things you said this morning. Take him to the pool … Continue reading Two poems by Natalie Shaw
‘Clearing Out Mum’ by Julia Webb
Clearing Out Mum It’s like unreeling yards and yards of tangled wire, or finding mice in an attic you never even knew you had. It’s like the wash-off, run-through, bleed-right hours of sorting. It’s like squirreling backwards, or finding yourself back in the town that you spent years getting out of. It’s like a thousand … Continue reading ‘Clearing Out Mum’ by Julia Webb
Two poems by Jo Bell
Kith A word made scant by frequent use. I like it for its urgency and spit, for its necessity. I like it for its oldness, for its slingshot certainty. I like it for its plainness; for belonging to the Northern tongue behind my teeth. I like it for its fighting talk. The known. The tribe. … Continue reading Two poems by Jo Bell
Three poems by Maria Taylor
Tracing Orion You were already fully grown and frolicking with lovers under the stars, around the time when I used my rough book to trace constellations at night. I’d recite names like magic spells: Alnitak, Alnilam, Mintaka. The hunter’s body in space impossible to touch. You in the middle of nowhere fumbling with straps in … Continue reading Three poems by Maria Taylor
Two poems by Richie McCaffery
Legend The cricket club is a cow-field away from our house, yet local lore says a cricket ball knocked so far for six in the 1950s smashed one of our bay windows. I can’t say if the ball was returned, if it even crossed the players’ minds that evening in the pub, of someone … Continue reading Two poems by Richie McCaffery
Two poems by Jane Commane
Seven Horse Secrets The horse’s heart is a grand mansion of piston-firing chambers. A horse sees a world blurred in the two-tone flourish of the photo finish. Look into the amber planet of a horse’s eye and a refracted universe forms there. Horses turn the turf of an ever-moving, never-quite-touched earth beneath their hooves. … Continue reading Two poems by Jane Commane
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