Stand in the Light Stand in the light. Allow the wild things to creep out of the shadows. Welcome them all, the wet bedraggled things, the ones all spit and claws, the one who weeps and hangs its head, the one who stares, and says ‘Make me.’ Stand in the light. They are yours, washed and unwashed alike. Stand in the light, and sing. Raise … Continue reading ‘Stand in the Light’ by Elizabeth Rimmer
Blame Dr Beeching Trains no longer ran on the branch line at the end of our road, and the station had burned down years before. So your threat to throw yourself off the footbridge was a gin-inspired gesture even I saw through. It was true, that after months of trying, I had given up on you that night, started chatting up your best friend in … Continue reading Two poems by Colin Will
The Water-Carrier I want to be the worst of this profession, the one who makes it home half-empty, tipping more air than water from the ringing pot, and so late back the town’s already dark; Oh no, they’ll say, that’s not the way of it, and I’ll know their heaven’s brimful and undrunk, their lips parched. What do they … Continue reading Two poems by Niall Campbell
Degas’ The Tub for Vicki Feaver It’s the way she lies abandoned, Jezebel, to her liquid bronze bath; hair dripping over the lip of the tub, as if recovering from a marathon or from giving birth. Like the post-natal bath I had in the shock-white hospital – blood streaking the water, even the gleaming metal taps. Her slim body bathes … Continue reading Three poems by Marion McCready
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 far off, bent with brush and pan at the frayed … Continue reading Two poems by Richie McCaffery
Ballad of the Cast-Off Cards Binned now, we lie beyond your slumber, beyond the fishbowl prospect afforded by your spy hole. We fell before the shrill hinge and heavy spring were wedged free open on to solemn stairs scaled by the stuffed sacks on scrawny backs, and white hands pushed into your privacy beneath the tartan nameplate. We are the ghosts of Christmas Present, … Continue reading A poem by Roy Moller
Gable Long gone, those derelict tenements, half-demolished, a row of parlour walls stacked up like sample cards for someone’s granny’s wallpaper. Their slivers, flapping in the wind, goodbyes. Unlaid, their fires all died, burned shadow black into the grates that stamped each wall with absence, empty as some broken jug which stood once – held the milk, some flowers, loose change for the meter, … Continue reading Two poems by Brian Johnstone
Plotkin’s cat The neighbour’s cat gave birth under our bed. As good a place as any, we thought, in the old empty suitcase father brought home after the war. Four black-and-white smudged kittens wriggled blindly in a smell of birth. We wanted to pet them, my brother and I, and I remember a hand, his or mine – it doesn’t matter – pulled back sharply … Continue reading ‘Plotkin’s cat’ by Colin Will
The Commonplace The jar will long retain the fragrance of what it was steeped in when new. Horace They’re there in every shipwreck, every trench, stacked in serried ranks or shattered by some trauma in the past that whispers in the ear, the way the thumb prints round the rim speak volumes lost but surely close at hand; like accident, ill fortune, clumsiness all … Continue reading A poem by Brian Johnstone
George Aiken’s Map, 1846 As if these paper islands were crumpled in a ball and crushed and hurled into backlit rain and rolled before a filthy wind – she wrings the sheet and smoothes it with strong palms, as if next she’d iron these wet and whalebacked hills – as if a capsized gale ripped up wet paper and melted it to rags, the … Continue reading ‘George Aiken’s Map, 1846’ by Jean Atkin
