Gambit


I don't remember talk of finger nail clippings
clinging to the sofa patterns. Of your face crowning
through the door,

red queen snapping: could I shove my limbs
behind the cushions
with the one penny pieces and June's mini-milk sticks,

where you'd put half an hour in with
loose change for moments like these - when your high
heels are on backwards, a taxi on the meter and

you're trying not to mention
that red wine stain. I've got it covered

with my sock, a furniture tombola, with your hair up in rollers
and you will be late, trailing breadcrumbs, but you kiss me:

check mate, and I check, all thumbs hitched
on a chewing-gum wrapper
rummaging around for some borrowed time.


* Jen Campbell was first published at the age of 11 and is now writing her first novel. You can catch her performing at spoken word events in London and on BBC Radio. She is the winner of the Penguin Orange Readers' Group Prize 2009. Jen's spoken word CD Trapped in a Bottle is now available to order by her website www.jen-campbell.blogspot.com

I Have These Echoes


Just as that honeybee
goes through his day
busy, as they say
collecting his nectar
He has no idea
that his real purpose
is spreading the pollination
of an entire world.

This then is how you are
going through your day
busy, as they say
Running your errands
having no idea
the effect you are having
on people like me.

I should have been a motorcycle man
you know,
full time.

And I could have had a motorcycle woman
you know,
hard tail.

And she and I could have blazed a trail
you know,
meteor.

Instead I have these echoes.

And I see you still
from this great distance
standing in just that way
There, as they say
And my still fresh mind
now of spun glass sparkling
and hard charging in the sun
resumes target acquisition until

click

this mental photograph taken.

This then is how I am
going through my day
dreams like sand drifting
slowly, as they say
through my fingers
And there along the roadside
single memories remain
crying out unattended.

I should have been a vagabond
you know,
roaming.

And I could have had a merry band
you know,
fellows.

And we could have blazed a trail
you know,
meteor.

Instead I have these echoes.


* Clifford DeHaven currently lives in Texas and is an amateur photographer, musician, artist, poet. www.myspace.com/sunmoonmonkey

Off The Road

The road leads me home

as it always has

it was young when I was

I was born just a few blocks away

from the road that connects

Wilmington, North Carolina

to Barstow, California

 

The road almost killed me

in 1988

no, that’s not right

it’s people that kill people

not roads

the deaths and even murder

belong to us

not the road

 

The road parallels

the mother road

the road killed the mother road

the icon

of Steinbeck and Kerouac

but few poets have felt the vibrations

of Ike’s masterpiece

nor waxed poetic about concrete dividers

but then again

it takes involvement

 

I was 15 when I was talked into running away from home

we were going to see The Rolling Stones

hitching down I-40 to I-75

we got halfway to Atlanta

before the tickets turned into lies

and I turned us around

two barmaids from Detroit

brought us all the way home

and made sure we were fed

talk about connections

 

I’ve often wondered if there were cages in that bar

with slow dancers with long flowing hair

What were the odds?

Roger made one last ditch attempt

to talk me into going to Detroit

and becoming a hit man

still I wonder…

 

The road crosses the Cumberland Plateau

and crosses the trail

that the People walked

the People of the Nation

the People who gave the great state of Tennessee its name

the People who trusted those who

gave their word

the People who trusted leaders

on both sides

who maybe weren’t so great

I think of the People and their tears

as I drive into the sun

 

I think of all the people

as I climb into my time machine

and drive east into the Smoky Mountains

the car is filled with

mom and dad

wife and kids

grandparents

brother and sisters

especially with fall in the air

I am glad for their company

guess I’ll never drive this road alone

but I see some of the stretches that I walked

near Ashville on that long and lonely night

when I was crazy

and she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen

she lead me madder

and further astray

but I walked it out

from Norfolk to Knoxville

a little ways down that road

 

I could get on the road today

and go off chasing rainbows

return to California

land of gold

and wine

and surf and sun

or I could see what beauty lies

on the other side of Ashville

and drive that flat low road

down to the sea

 

I feel destiny’s pull

but the worries fade away

because this road

has always led me home

 

* Mike Carson wrote his first poems in 1975, they were four haiku written as a class assignment. His teacher then filled his head with the absurd notion that he had some kind of calling for this sort of thing. Thirty four years later, Mike still doubts the truth of that and wonders why he is talking about himself in third person. Mike has two collections of poetry published by Publish America – Higher or Lower and Life on the High Seas. http://profile.myspace.com/mcarson3

 

Hot-dip galvanization
 
Diana's breasts had lost their spangle, scuffed and chipped down to bare iron, then oxidized from the constant fall of her tears.

She scrubbed them with a wire brush, grazing off flakes and uncovering cracks, and she began to cry again.


~ ~ ~ ~ ~


shoes
 
Every morning before work Ivy would walk along the beach on the waterfront, looking for shoes. She woke slowly, which was why she would walk before work. She liked to feel the salt air dry her face. She woke early to start at the hotel, and at the time of day Ivy was on the beach there were very few people around town.

The best mornings for shoes were Saturdays and Sundays, when there might be a high-heeled shoe or a flip-flop, sometimes a child's Wellington or sandal. And when she found a shoe she would hold it by the heel a while and close her eyes, then she would put it away in her handbag and finish her walk and go to work.

At home when she'd finished, some time in the afternoon, she would open up her handbag on the little table of her living room and take out the shoe. She would hold it again at the heel and close her eyes, then she would feed it through her fingers slowly, stopping every now and then, sometimes for fifteen minutes at a time, until she reached the toe. She would press her thumbs into the shoe at the toe, close her eyes tighter, and then at last she would exhale a deep breath and open them again. She would toss the shoe onto the pile of shoes she kept in an old log basket in her living room. She would toss the shoe in the basket and she would write about it in her notebook. Then she would bathe and she would be ready for appointments. This was just something she did.
 
 
 * Luke Thompson says "I've had a few stories and reviews published in magazines. 'shoes' is one of a cycle of flash fictions I'm trying to put together. 'Hot-dip galvanization' is a bit of a one-off."

Illinois Farmers

 
Illinois writer in the land of Lincoln
new harvest without words
plenty of sugar pie plum, peach cobbler pie,
buried in grandma sugar;
factory sweets and low flowing river nearby-
transports of soy bean, corn, and cattle feed
into the wide bass mouth of the Kishwakee River.
It is the moment of reunion,
when friends and economy come together-
hotdogs, marshmallows, tents scattered,
playing kick ball with that black farm dog.
 
It’s a simple act, a farmer gone blind with the night pink sky,
desolate farmer, simple flat land, DeKalb, Illinois.
 
Betsy and Phil invite us all to the camp and fireside.
 
But Phil is still in the field, pushing sunset to dusk.
He is raking dry the farm soil of salvation, moisture has its own religious quirks,
dead seed from weed hurls up to the metal lips of the cultivator pitting.
 
The full moon is undressing, pink fluorescent hints of blue, pajamas, turned
inward near midnight sky against the moon now fully naked and embarrassed.
 
Hayrides for strangers go down dark squared-off roads with lights hanging, dangling,
children humming school tunes, long farmhouse lights lost in the near distance.
 
Humming till dawn, Christian songs repeat over God’s earth.
Dead go the sounds of the tractor, with the twist of a switch off,
down to the dusk and off the road’s edge.
 
 It is the moment of reunion.


* Michael Lee Johnson is a poet and freelance writer from Itasca, Illinois. His new, illustrated poetry chapbook – From Which Place the Morning Rises – and his new photo version of The Lost American: from Exile to Freedom are available at http://stores.lulu.com/promomanusa

These two poems are about wartime pillboxes – they are still scattered across the East Anglian countryside – the first poem was selected to accompany the paintings of Mark Williams at the newly opened Belfry Arts Centre at Overstrand...

            Pill Boxes

            We felt safe here
            all right-angled in,
            our world square-shrunken.
            Only the cleverest or most frightened bird
            would dash through these wind’s eyes
            from field to field.
            Like anything dangerous left lying round
            too long
these pill boxes look ludicrous today,
so squat, so firm against dangers
that have passed.
Light is sole occupier now,
the permanent tenant
in quiet residence.
No one admits to having entered them
in any language,
as if embarrassed
to have won these empty years.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~     

                       Stubborn

                       Four-square, five-square,
                       the concrete blocks arrived.
                       (Once they were new, trim grey,
                       sparkling with safety.)    
                       Stacked here at the road's fork
                       this stolid cabin watched all sides.

                       Lost now, that sense of panic,
                       those weary men, shift after shift,
                       mocked now as Dad's Army.
                       And now the bus slides past
                       those stubborn stubs of grey -
                       we clutch our shopping bags,
                       ignore these small slums
                       and even the driver looks away.


* Pat Jourdan's latest book is the novel Finding Out and she has appeared at the Polyverse Poetry festival (Loughborough) in July, the Sutton Hoo Poetry Festival in June and was included in the Voicing Visions Norwich Twenty Group Exhibition Spring 2009. Her website is www.patjourdan.co.uk

Love and Loss, Swedish Style


I met her in the marketplace:
Her name was ÅNGE,
And she came from TROMSÖ.

“Do you like this fabric?” she said,
“Would it go well in my bedroom?”
I said I’d have to see the room first.

In her NEXUS kitchen,
We ate meatballs and lingonberries on DINERA plates,
And drank wine out of IVRIG glasses.

On her KARLSTAD sofa,
We drank coffee from ÅLMHULT mugs,
Illuminated by a thousand tea-lights.

On her SULTAN mattress,
We made love. And in the morning
I said, “That fabric will do nicely.”

I thought it was forever,
We had so much in common.
But she had other designs.

She said I didn’t fit her theme,
So she found another lover.
His name was William,

But he called himself BILLY.


* Jonathan Pinnock is married with two children, several cats and a 1961 Ami Continental jukebox. He doesn't know a lot about poetry, but he seems to have had a few pieces published recently at places like this one and Every Day Poets – and he's even made it onto a couple of competition shortlists. His unimaginatively-titled yet moderately interesting website can be found at www.jonathanpinnock.com and you can follow him on Twitter as @jonpinnock

Wasp

The wasp is the bastard love child of the persistent blue bottle and the flippant bumble bee.  Somewhere in the lazy shade of a juniper tree drunk on fruity pollen these two stumbled in, forgot names and writhed and chirped in lusty harmony.  Before the dust could settle from this foray the blue bottle zipped up, zipped off and the bumble bee slovenly readjusted her wings and surreptitiously flew into the night.  Weeks later she’d weep in the funnel of a generous lily, ashamed of her expanding amber waistline.  The black smudges under her eyes would grow and grow and the hive would shun her shoddy work.  She never saw him after that but she’d hear snippets of conversation that would leave her wondering.  Maybe he’d return when it was time, leaning at the entrance head hung mysteriously low like he had that night.  He’d pepper her with dutiful kisses and flutter her fur, like he had that night.  Word had it that she was not the only one that night.  Now in her old age she would lift her weary head as one would flit by, but each time she knew that they weren’t one of hers.


* Katie McCullough is a screenwriter and playwright. Her website is over here www.katiemccullough.co.uk and here blog is over here http://katiemccullough.wordpress.com

Past Mid-life and Used


Some slight touch, grainy at the edge,
raspy, not to be repentant,
coursing throughout a mid-life
that sometime ago ended.
Used car parts
no more nor less vatic
in or out of junkyards, not to be dismissed
the incongruous disharmony.
The customary
stopped
         by gears,
hubcaps, shredded insulation.
Piqued, cut by insularity,
day's irreparable length,
each seque irrefutable.

Beat bare bottom down,
common, exact, spat upon,
devolved into speckled, spiney.
A spider at each corner,
chips of wood jumped over,
a chrysalis mounting guard,
white dragonflies monitor.


* Frank Praeger lives in Houghton, MI

THE NOISY COAT
 
She was something on the committee,
the woman who approached us at the interval.
Unfortunate though, the timing of her complaint
about my daughter’s jacket
rustling and whistling during the beautiful music.
 
I would not tolerate the second half,
and so we lingered out the winter afternoon
chilly among crocuses and swings
in Chapelfield Gardens,
waiting for visiting time.
 
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
 
WHERE’S MY TRIKE?
 
No use to say my legs had grown too long,
knees jamming against elbows.
Would I never know again
the joy of racing up our concrete path
with speedy independence?
I was not impressed with promises
of a Hercules two-wheeler
in some unimagined future.
 
No use at all that Lorraine Clarke,
who innocently gained the trike,
was not as lucky as I was
and had few toys, because her family
could not afford them.
In the way of villages
the right thing must be done.
I did not know or care about Lorraine,
a distant figure on the road.
 
Desperate at my near hysteria,
according to the wisdom of the time
my mother dished up brandy,
a medicine made solemn
by production of her best cut glass
from a sideboard wafting scents
of sherry and wax polish,
and drop by drop evaporating tears.


* Elizabeth Bracken lives in Suffolk and has run libraries for children and prisoners.  She is currently a receptionist with social services.