By Esme Bell
On a train, it is easy
To feel smooth and tubular
As glass or fake air
That has never breathed
Freely; but it only takes
The sun to crack
The rim of clouds and weep
Orange tears – like Turner’s
Eyes are bleeding and paradise
Is lost after all – before you’re
Crying too, unmoored, and rollerskate
Into the ending of a day.
By Vadim Goss
Photo credit – artsy.net: Larry Preston, Three Pears, 2022
By Daniel Ali
for Her.
I hate to be the poet that professes an
undying love for a beautiful soul.
By declaring her smile would undoubtedly
brighten the earth more than a summers
day in May.
Who discusses the extravagantly detailed
pools of mahogany which surround her
pupils.
Who encourages conversations of topics
she loves just to hear the sounds she makes
when joining letters to form words.
I hate to have someone read this poetry as a cliche,
In contrary belief to millennial ideologies of cringe,
If I,
a self acclaimed poet,
in attempts to profess an undying love,
Collected every single word from every
single language, and every
ancient runic
symbol or Egyptian hieroglyphic,
and comprehended them all!
in all of their complexities!
Words would still fail me, and my feeble attempt to truly voice
my undying love
for Her.
By Eve Messervy
Manus, enclosed in her mind and
four walls,
staring out at the sky slowly
changing shades as the world rests without her.
Mano, enclosed in his mind
In four walls of packed people like sardines
In foreign waters, drinking like fish,
A fellow stranger
And the monotonous routine of Manus commenced
grip tight on the bus home, a fellow stranger
who is not a stranger.
To that a smile snatched her
so fleeting, she remembered
the transient Manus in Mano
and it rained, he loved the rain.
Manus, in, Mano, Manus in Mano again
On a steep alley in a bar,
Gushing water mollified Manus
Smoking like chimneys, of
a home with a balcony
and she caught a glimpse of herself
in the mirror.
She liked the rain too,
but there was a line drawing of that balcony
on her chest
in harsh charcoal that bled,
it was high in the heavens that she couldn’t quite reach so
she folded the drawing nicely, and
put it under her pillow.
Art. It was art, it was poetry that kissed her
head
it was holy water for a priest
but remember, he liked the rain, so
Manus
Mano
Once again,
For their fate was hapless from the start.
By Ludwig Hemel
Ludwig Hemel is a poet and musician. Find him on Spotify under his artist name, IXMES.
Sand
Holy sights have been buried beneath it.
Still digging to find relics of the past,
Trying to understand what was intended, what is behind it.
Only blood dries for centuries on it, but cannot be covered,
It changes colour and cannot be seen,
But once you walk upon it; it is what you feel.
The relics of the past suddenly become real,
Although we all thought, it is a fear of the past.
Up in heaven, it is divinely green
Pastures of body, old olive trees
Down in the South, it is grey and dark
Eagerly hopes, for the sand to bury all marks
By E. R Fletcher
My empty ribs and sallow, sunk
Eyes dart around my frescoed
mind, and there you are. Dear,
Confess! Just to hold your gentle face.
My soul rejoices at your visage, do
Look with favour, your lowly servant
Supine at your shrine- Oh,
Much Less! Kiss my curled temple.
I’ve loved you since I met you-
Maria- every day the same, and
Growing- I scarcely sleep, my thoughts
undressed- I’ve made such an awful hames.
Look beyond my eyes, I beg-
God! Bless, my perfect shame.
Image Credit: PJW Photography
By Emma Large
For my grandfather
There was a ship on the starline
Where the water met its flank, up
And out and up like a quiet breath.
A day, he had dared Day-Lewis,
On its starboard bank; his arrogance brined
With spirits, the curdled wine from the engine
Tank. A day to beat you at your craft. The cleft
In him ran through it, as it did his life,
To fill that floating place: the eccentricity of
His kindness, his fluency for endless speech
That flew without taking shape. I don’t know
How his poem read (the things
I’ll never know) – but he went, gleeful, to the poet’s room
As the sky was laced with morning. Look!
Your craft is mine; smugly, like a new-born;
Standing out on starboard side, yawning in the sun.
I am never too far away from here: this
Is where I am from. The ramblings of a try-hard poet,
On a boat with Day-Lewis at dawn.
By Jake Roberts
An old statuette demands supremacy
From the safety of the mantelpiece.
Yours, up for good this time, you smile,
This time we promised. Flecks of paint,
Faint from here, returned to taunt
The drab shallows of newer portraits
With their clammy, photographic sheen.
Not she, all gloss and grin, crafted,
Polished, matchless bride
To interior pining. You dance
Your way around the sun, hours snap by,
Night washes in, I elope backwards.
Morning comes early. I race its breaking
But find a glib dawn at the window,
Your skin pooling like wax, hot pain
Like the tearing of ligaments, a smile
Still – not that which I had seen before.
The crackle of denial from a smirk
Scratches my nostrils like spilt perfume
Or varnish; my breath is repossessed.
I am lifted by a mocking thunder,
A palimpsest of grief smeared
On every bone; pinched, dragged
Before a howling jury, I miss the verdict.
They send me whence you came,
The backs of my legs bruising
As they smack against attic stairs.
Alone, my fingers claw a final word.
By Sara Zubaidi
These familiar syllables that did frame
The feeling of perversion in my throat
For naught the bilabial nasal sound
That echoes a child’s sleepy melody,
A fleeting sprite in invention’s reverie
Felt in the birthing cries of her labour
Nor because it vibrates as the soft hum
In chambers close, untold tales softly thrum
Like notes lost in the void’s quiet breath
To hymns where willing spirits intertwine
Instead, repeated syllables throb keenly
Posing as the vivid evocation
Of how my mother preaches about her
Mama, as if she is speaking of God
By Eve Messervy
You are the face I saw in rain
So fragile; melted sapphire seeps,
Crying gushes rivers, sleep
Through flooded webs of long – lost lust,
Windows healing, questions burnt
Of widows leaving stone and dirt,
Howling prayers that wilt away and
Dissipate to nuanced day,
Another unjust pneuma utters
Words so empty, ink that stutters,
Gutters flood from monsters grief,
They’re broken heroes
Alone they weep,
But we squint our eyes,
In attempt to see, the lines of lies that
Will make us free, rain
That drips like melted sapphire seeps
Cold as stone; as silent as sleep
Yet all in all a stone alone
A face that fades, a face it formed
Through unfelt fingers and
Eyes blurred stiff I sit by the steps
And list ‘what ifs’
