Journey to the Depth of the Deep-freeze
You’re on the driver’s seat.
I’m only your passenger.
On either side of us fields
of sunflowers caress in a breeze.
You’re wearing your purple shirt
with jeans and jagged eyebrows.
It is quarter to three in the afternoon
on an autumn Sunday; we’re returning
from lunch, wine and chat with friends.
The break in our silence comes
to tell me you want to call it a day.
I watched the sunflowers caress,
mute and childless.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Three Days Before the Train
A doll stares at 80s artex.
Her eyes fixed wide open
like she is looking at
a winning lottery ticket
or she has just been told
her mother is cured of cancer.
She is waiting for you to enter her
bed and wrap your arms around her.
* When we first encountered Will Collins, he was reading creative writing at Winchester Uni. He's now graduated and become a lecturer at the Basingstoke College of Technology but plans to take a Masters in the near future.
|
||||
|
Recent Comments
Recent Articles
Search
RSS Newsfeeds
Main Page RSS
Written Word: Prose & Poetry RSS
Login
Month Archive
Links
Make a donation by PayPal
Amazon Ads
 |
Wednesday, December 31
Will Collins is pondering relationships
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 31 Dec 2008 09:53 AM GMT
Tuesday, December 30
Flash fiction: Terry McKee can't sing but...
by
Charles Christian
on Tue 30 Dec 2008 10:31 AM GMT
I Can’t Sing but That Doesn’t Mean I Don’t Love You
I’m driving down the road, on my way to the market to get something for dinner, singing along with a love song on the radio, even though I know I can’t sing, still that doesn’t stop me from singing. I want to sing in the worst way, always have. Fortunately for the guy in the next lane, my windows are up. “Life isn’t fair,” my mother always said. She was so right! My sisters sing beautifully. “Angels”, she called them. They sound like Leona Lewis, with such incredible range. And they know to dance like her too, as if they’re making love with the wall. Another thing I’d really like to do well, but I’m the queen of klutz. That saying about walking and chewing gum fits me to a T and just forget doing it in stilettos, like Leona. An untied sneaker is my equivalent to running with scissors. It’s incredible when someone opens their mouth and sound so spectacular comes out, especially if she has less than mediocre speaking voice. Looks become unimportant as well, a person can forget all about the face when the singer’s languishing between the music and lyrics, fully entrenched in its meaning, but oh my, if they are pretty. The combination is breath-taking, a sure fire hit. Tone deaf and un-coordinated, I can’t do anything of the things I want to do. Somehow I missed out on the dancing and singing genes and now that’s all I want to do, sing. Love songs, hate songs, rock and roll, folk ballets, any song, just as long as I can sing it. I’ll do anything that proves I have some special talent. Then you touch my arm and laugh, “You can really belt it out.” “It’s for you,” I say, “sorry it’s not very good.” Then I realize I don’t have to be good and just because I can’t sing doesn’t mean I can’t get what I want. You’re still sitting next to me, besides singing is fun. “That doesn’t matter, you’re still my angel,” you tell me and kiss my hand as if I’m royalty. With my best flirty eyes, I ask, “So what do you want for dinner?” * Terry McKee lives in southern Florida, with her husband, three dogs, two horses, numerous lizards and six dragon flies. Monday, December 29
Helen Pletts is remembering her grandfather
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 29 Dec 2008 04:52 PM GMT
In the morning
In the morning, i taste your funeral. Even the radiators' anthem appears unchanged. (Theirs the only music until the first psalm). Downstairs, someone grapples the compartments of breakfast cutlery; we fall between the forks. In the moments prior to your departure the dark coats fold on us; a clouded navy blue, a sentried black. And all the dawns come rushing through the milk spout on the cereal. * Helen Pletts is a regular IS&T contributor and has a new collection coming out in 2009. Friday, December 26
Kate Pottinger is walking the woods
by
Charles Christian
on Fri 26 Dec 2008 11:04 AM GMT
Deep Woodlanders
I do not see the ancient men I feel their eyes upon me in the undergrowth where foxes bark at night behind the trunks of trees half blackened by the rain. The birds are silent here but hidden in the canopy they watch the fusion of the present and the past. Sensing movement I turn round to see the tangled ropes which gently swing in glutinous, grey light where bodies thin as air and dry as dust have nudged them passing through and I would like to know if they see flesh and bone and footprints on the muddy track and in another thousand years from now, if I, as thin as air and dry as dust, will peer from undergrowth where foxes bark at night, and watch the flesh and bone and footprints on the ancient, muddy track. * Kate Pottinger is one of the co-founders of an arts cafe set up by one of IS&T's regular contributors Mandy Pannett and says this poem "rather came out of nowhere one damp afternoon in November when I was walking my dog in the woods." She adds "I have been working on a novel for the last ten plus years and finished the final draft earlier this year amidst great celebrations and sighs of relief from those who had seen me through the very lengthy labour to the birth! Now the question is, what do I do with it?" Wednesday, December 24
Sonia Jarema has one last present to unwrap
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 24 Dec 2008 05:17 PM GMT
The Last Present
Before he died He bought and wrapped This present It sits in my cupboard The snowmen have Waved many summers Away now And still I can not Bring myself To unwrap This last present. She told me this And I did not laugh Did not entice Her to unwrap But wished that I too had A last present To cherish And not unwrap Two decades later I reached into The cupboard That holds Only memories And found Eighteen years Left unwrapped And started To peep Till two years dropped And now I pull At the paper Of the sixteen. And wonder If one day I wish I hadn’t. * Sonia Jarema says "I am an allotmenteer living on the edge of London, finally letting the air get to my writing." Tuesday, December 23
Andrea Porter's been reading Whitman
by
Charles Christian
on Tue 23 Dec 2008 10:00 AM GMT
Transcutaneous Electric Nerve Stimulation
(On Reading Whitman’s I Sing the Body Electric) This TENS machine knows its job, electric impulses sent out at just the appropriate levels to sting and twitch the muscles in a rhythmic cadence. I am reading Whitman by accident or on purpose. I have all maybes locked into each beat of me that feeds this aching body-soul Whitman calls up, shaman to DNA before the helix, namer of parts. Each pulse glints in the body, a salmon thrashing up river, caught in the leap to join where it began. I recognize the sympathy of hand when feeling the naked meat of the body threaded with electric. I sense the sugar of shock licking at the walls, the thinness of each sweetness, pain, together, the wonder in the flow that engulfs the house. * Andrea Porter is a member of the poetry performance group Joy of Six, which has performed in Britain and New York. She has been published in a number of poetry magazines (both paper and online) in the UK, Canada, Australia and USA. Her narrative sequence of poems Bubble was adapted as a drama for Radio 4 as a drama by the RSC dramatist Fraser Grace. She writes a fairly successful blog We liked It But Not Quite Enough – www.welikeditbutnotquiteenough.blogspot.com – and promises the agent she will get the rewrites to the novel soon. She has a full collection A Season of Small Insanities coming out with Salt Publishing in April 2009. Monday, December 22
Feeling awkward - two poems by Bernardine Freud
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 22 Dec 2008 12:09 PM GMT
Awkward
eating, taken out to lunch by someone I meet for the first time, someone I know I’ll like, want to like me. Eating with my pudding spoon, chorizo, braised celery, and things I don’t look at long enough to recognise because I’m staring at him as if he can’t see me examining his nose and the exact fullness of lips. He looks back at me, napkin to mouth, behind which he chokes on a green bean. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Haiku Snap Dad, fag stuck to lip, green eyes, hard like bottle glass, surrounded by us. Mum, squinting against the sun, print dress and cardi, is feeling the cold. My younger sister squats, knees up and mouth open, unkissed frog princess. The sulky one, me, cross legged, camera shy, wills time to pass. * Bernardine Freud is a working gardener, strangely fond of mud and rain and has a poem in next Smiths Knoll. Friday, December 19
Roddy Williams is in the twilight zone
by
Charles Christian
on Fri 19 Dec 2008 09:24 AM GMT
November 2007
it’s like the night’s invaded afternoons these days, pushing back the border of dusk to the heartland of richard and judy. the front line of the war is approaching. they’ll soon be in occupied territory broadcasting their report on conditions with the curtains closed and the big light on and viewers phoning in to win a lamp. there’ll be a man with a fat black microphone reporting from somewhere in the twilight zone. richard will ask how the locals are coping and the man will say that spirits are high. judy will clutch her clipboard, look concerned and say something banal about dunkirk. * Roddy Williams lives, paints, writes and works in London. A radical atheist, his Haiku Diary of Common Sense can be found at http://hairybloke.blogspot.com/ Wednesday, December 17
Gwilym Williams has gone Christmas shopping - and he still has the scars
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 17 Dec 2008 04:36 PM GMT
Christmas Shopping
Again today it's a moving pizza parlour Xmas shopping spree; and I'm squeezed in the steamed-up 37 and the seasonal sneezing amid floppy wedges of undercooked white pastry and waxy cheese in round child-mouths; the stench is nauseating. But I must be tolerant. It's Xmas after all. There's a blind girl with a beautifully sad face like a soft moon to fall in love with. Unfortunately she gets off at the next stop. I get out my latest Duffy. A couple gets on. She, an old bear in mink's clothing with kid gloves sits vis-a-vis. He, in his trench-coat, stands swan-necking over my shoulder. Bored with his eyes in my book; I can almost feel his warm unpleasant breath on my nape, I snap The World's Wife shut. Now he's pushing up to the front; berating the driver; it's a real Xmas shopping brainstorm. They've missed the stop. * Gwilym Williams is a regular contributor to IS&T – this is a seasonal offering from his recent collection Genteel Messages Tuesday, December 16
John Grochalski knows he's not perfect
by
Charles Christian
on Tue 16 Dec 2008 07:54 AM GMT
world's perfect asshole
you come in from running errands you said that dale called you on the cell phone he's wandering manhattan he's upset and feeling overwhelmed so you invited him over to watch movies on our last day off. you come in from running errands and i am in my shorts with weak knees and a week-old beard sweat-soaked in forty-eight degrees all the windows open and the place a mess with cds and dirt all over the floor. you come in from running errands and i tell you like hell i'm entertaining anyone today i tell you like hell and i'm half-drunk on wine and my soul is a mess and everyone out there just looks ugly to me. you come and tell me that this is your place too and you can socialize with whomever you want like i'm some kind of barbaric keeper i tell you that while this is true the place is mine as well and we bicker like a couple of roommates over the last slice of bread. you come in from running errands you come at me and i come at you the two of us like freight trains on the same track, it's so damned scary that i wait for the impact you come at me and apologize i come at you, and throw you out. you come in from dale and the bar you come to me on the couch where i have been drinking wine for three hours alone and watching television you come to me, i'm the world's perfect asshole and we just know enough at this point to let it all pass until i'm myself again. * John Grochalski is an American writer whose poetry has appeared in a wide range of magazines. His short fiction has appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the forthcoming anthology Living Room Handjob. My His collection of poetry The Noose Doesn't Get Any Looser After You Punch Out is published by Six Gallery Press. |
Recent Photos
Who's there?
Google Ads
Twitter Updates 
|
||
