Cascading Snowflakes, by Ivor Steven

Cascading Snowflakes
by Ivor Steven

A morning blizzard of hailstones
Smothers my old frozen bones
Polarized, I am shivering head to spine
Chilling my chasms of hard lines

Daily coldness unwrapping
Mid-morning thawing, eventually happening
Melting, my eternal iceberg breaks
Into an avalanche of cascading snowflakes

Covering me in a white blanket of crystal firestones
Gradually warming my lonesome bones
Turning my purple blood into glowing red
Clearing heavy fogginess from my head.

Ivor Steven was formerly an Industrial Chemist, then a Plumber, and has been writing poetry for 19 years. His book, Tullawalla, was recently published. He has had numerous poems published in anthologies, and on-line magazines. He is an active member of the Geelong Writers Inc.(Australia), and is a team member/barista with the on-line magazine, Go Dog Go Cafe (America).

Time Strolls, by Ivor Steven

Time Strolls
by Ivor Steven

I am no sleepy koala
Nor a pretty brolga
I am stoic and ancient, like Mount Olga
An old scribe from Tullawalla

You cannot feel my heart
Nor can you see my star chart
I am an astronaut without a spacecraft
An old pilot from the lost Ark

I am not flying alone in the dark
Nor will I swim among the hungry sharks
I am a dreamer fishing for humanities restart
An old disciple waiting to disembark

Ivor Steven was formerly an Industrial Chemist, then a Plumber, and has been writing poetry for 19 years. His book, Tullawalla, was recently published. He has had numerous poems published in anthologies, and on-line magazines. He is an active member of the Geelong Writers Inc.(Australia), and is a team member/barista with the on-line magazine, Go Dog Go Cafe (America).

Sometimes Distance Is Never Far Enough, by Misky Braendeholm

Sometimes Distance Is Never Far Enough
by Misky Braendeholm

What’s distance look like to you?
Is it measured like arm’s length,
or is it as abstract as the word.
Is your distance blurred like mine,

and does sex remind you that you
are mortal, that one day warmth
will leave your body behind.
Undoubtedly, that is distance.

And once when my heart was young,
I was on the edge of being loved.
But no. Unrequited. Is that what
distance feels like. Abandoned
faith, like an empty church.

I’m coming out of my hidey-hole.
Me, like a sheered sheep, old mutton.
My endless summers are vanishing.
I feel age, and I feel its distance.

Process Notes:
As the Lockdown in the UK slowly lifts, we are re-assessing what distance means. No one seems exactly sure what’s what – an arm’s length; a broom handle; an umbrella.

Misky Braendeholm’s work is regularly published in monthly issues of Waterways in the Mainstream – Ten Penny Players, Visual Verse, and Right Hand Pointing.

Waiting for the Plague to Pass Over, by Jane Newberry

Waiting for the Plague to Pass Over
by Jane Newberry

Do not let fear seep beneath the door.
Swaddled by the golden warmth of love
we need not paint the blood on thresholds any more

or kneel to kiss the earth upon the floor,
protection paid for with a pair of doves,
do not let fear seep beneath the door.

Ancient rituals steeped in visceral gore
have all been superseded from above,
we need not paint the blood on thresholds any more,

yet creeping plague infects both rich and poor –
new rituals, priests with visors, gowns and gloves;
do not let fear seep beneath the door,

and no escape to distant hill or moor
to sanctuaries where tortured souls seek salve;
we need not paint the blood on thresholds any more.

Fearful waiting for the jug to pour
blest unction making us immune and tough,
do not let fear seep beneath the door –
we need not paint the blood on thresholds any more.

Jane Newberry is a children’s writer yearning to be a grown-up poet. Retirement three years ago brought more time for trying new literary genres. When not restricted by cancer treatment and Lockdown she enjoys a wide range of musical and arts activities and shares her husband’s passion for historic buildings and Celtic Cornwall.

Publications to date:
2008 – A Sackful of Songs (Cramer Music);
2012 – A Sackful of Christmas (Cramer Music);
2018 – poem in anthology, The Possibility of Living – (Poetryspace)
poem shortlisted for Bridport Poetry Prize;
2019 – Poem in anthology, Dragons of the Prime (The Emma Press);
2019 – Mi-shan shortlisted for Mslexia Novella Prize;
March 2020 – Big Green Crocodile (Otter-Barry Books).

Lines Below the Bridge, by Jane Newberry

Lines Below the Bridge
by Jane Newberry

Venturing out in Saltash –
Is this how they felt after Chernobyl?
Everything a little unreal,
certainty provided by the Co-op,
still turquoise, still shabby,
still there and, by the waters’s edge
where salt-laden gales wash
the benches, the man from the
Council is doing it again
and mowing the daisies,
the pretty end of town.

Daringly buying coffee, real cappuchino,
sandwiched between the vet and
the barber, time stands still
at Bella’s Coffy – gangsta pirates
of yesteryear still hanging,
unchanged by Covid.
Yet Saltash is still Saltash,
sleeping in pandemic coma,
still bathed in a glow of inconsequence
with nothing much to sell and
carpet-slippered old folk
shambling nowhere.

Jane Newberry is a children’s writer yearning to be a grown-up poet. Retirement three years ago brought more time for trying new literary genres. When not restricted by cancer treatment and Lockdown she enjoys a wide range of musical and arts activities and shares her husband’s passion for historic buildings and Celtic Cornwall.

Publications to date:
2008 – A Sackful of Songs (Cramer Music);
2012 – A Sackful of Christmas (Cramer Music);
2018 – poem in anthology, The Possibility of Living – (Poetryspace)
poem shortlisted for Bridport Poetry Prize;
2019 – Poem in anthology, Dragons of the Prime (The Emma Press);
2019 – Mi-shan shortlisted for Mslexia Novella Prize;
March 2020 – Big Green Crocodile (Otter-Barry Books).

Dream Miner, by Emil Sinclair

Dream Miner
by Emil Sinclair

“We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.”
—W. H. Auden

I am a miner of dreams,
at work in the deep dark
perilous shafts
of the Underworld;
searching for the gold
and silver,
and the uncut gems
of meaning
in the nightly
carnival of souls,
the parade of the dead,
the freakish side-shows
of strange, inexplicable
things and places
I cannot describe
by the light of reason.
Until one night,
I saw her standing there,
arms folded,
gently laughing at me
as I toiled away,
sweating profusely,
cursing the darkness,
swinging the pickaxe
of my sharp intellect
at my intransigent dreams.
Then suddenly,
in a flash,
I saw clear through
the great lie:
They are not mine;
I am theirs.
The meaning
of a dream
is in my end.

Emil Sinclair is the pseudonym of a sometime poet and longtime philosophy professor in New York City.

Jaguar Dreams, by Emil Sinclair

Jaguar Dreams
by Emil Sinclair

I think we’re having
a conversation;
when suddenly I realize
you’d left the room
years ago—
slammed the door
on your way out,
in fact—
to go and keep
promises
you’d already broken;
left me standing there
in a cold and empty
box;
thinking
wondering
hoping
you’d come back.
But you never did.
You’d send me telegrams,
from time to time;
bulletins and postcards
of your journeys
to conscience
and duty
While full of rage,
I tore up the syllabus
of our crash course
together,
and tossed out all
the souvenirs
of our brief safari
to the heartland:
wooden dolls
and painted boxes;
mementos of nothing.

Then one night
in a fitful sleep
I dreamt that you’d
come back.
“I never left,”
you whispered,
as you gently slipped
in my sleeping hand
a Jaguar’s tooth,
you said—
the hardest fang
of any cat,
a shaman’s talisman.
I could not move,
or open my eyes,
but felt your warm breath
brush against my ear.
When I awoke,
I searched the house,
so sure you’d really
been there.
Then I looked down
at my clenched fist,
and opened it to find
nothing—
except the impression
in my palm
of a crescent moon;
made by you,
before I was ever
born.

Emil Sinclair is the pseudonym of a sometime poet and longtime philosophy professor in New York City.