The squealing weekend is over

A long uninterrupted
puddle of time

as you journey home
past sprouting allotments

to the meticulous swaying
of the train.

Dandelion clocks
skim the station platforms

where gaudy teenagers
circle each other.

Here at last

the delirious
early morning sun

and an abundance
of green.


* Joanna Ezekiel says "I've been publishing poems in small press magazines for ten years. My second pamphlet Safe Passage is available from White Leaf Press. One of my poems was shortlisted for the 2009 Bridport Prize.

Time for another catch-up of news and events...

* Congratulations to regular IS&T contributor Pat Jourdan who has one the latest Carillon magazine competition www.carillonmag.org.uk

* Writer, poet, journalist & editor Nancy Campbell has a new website to promote her editorial and proofreading services at www.campbellcopy.co.uk – Nancy is shortly heading off to the 'most northerly museum in the world' to take up a residencyfor the winter and spring at Upernavik Museum in Greenland, which is a tiny Arctic island with about 200 inhabitants. She adds "I will be occupying my time teaching writing workshops to Inuit children (drawing words with imported maple syrup in the snow) and I'm planning to work on a series of poems about snow and ice..."

* Cafe Writers have sent out a reminder that the closing date for their Open Poetry Competition 2009 (top prize this year is £1000) is fast approaching – the closing date is 30th November. Competition details, entry form and instructions for entry by email can all be found on the Competition page of the website www.cafewriters.org.uk

* Regular IS&T contributor Jeff Winke has been in touch to say his new collection of flash fiction and haibun – I'll Tell You So – has just been published. Click on the attachment for full details.

cultural sat-nav
pre-plans many journeys
can I unplug it?
 
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Born with a road map
at junctions Destiny waits.
Can we surprise her?


* Duncan Jones says he has been harbouring writing ambitions for years and only recently doing much about it. Check out www.molethepoet.com for more stuff.

Relax, it's not that 'c' word – it's the Christmas 'c' word – and here's a photo Patsy took this time last year near Kelso in the Scottish Borders country...




JINGLE BELLS
 
I cannot, will not,
use the "C" word.
Not when it's still November.
 
I switch channels
when the jingles start,
time enough for that.
 
I sound as though I hate it,
but I love it,
right time, right place.
 
Little faces,
lots of laughter,
fat cats and dogs.


* Patsy Goodsir is a regular IS&T contributor who warns "Never sleep with an elephant. he might roll over". www.patsygoodsir.com

III - Us

There have been 18,800 days

of me and

7,035 days of us.

When I say goodbye to you,

I say goodbye to us and

most of me.

 

It was late on a Thursday evening,

early November and I was down at

the gas station helping Sara with her

paperwork and you dropped by to say hello.

You were getting impatient with me by then;

your transfer had gone through and we had already

danced and kissed and you made sure I

had the chance to run my hand down

your leg and it would have happened

that Saturday night if Sara had not got drunk

and picked a fight that Bud had to finish and

we all ended up at the jail half the night,

but with another fun story to tell, but

I never told this one,

did I?

 

I asked you where you were going as

you started to wander off and you

replied that you were going to

the Holiday Inn to drink schnapps and beer and

I recalled what you had said about

what that leads to on the night I saw

you tie a knot in a cherry stem with your tongue.

I looked at Sara and calmly asked her

what I should do.

Sara, who besides having a Psych degree,

was in San Fran in the summer of ’67 and

on a farm in upstate New York in the summer of ’69.

From the moment I hired her,

we started teaching each other.

We certainly both got each other immediately.

Sara looked at me and uttered the immortal words;

“Shit or get off the pot.”

I ran into your arms and

all of our tomorrows.

We got schnapps and beer and took it

to my place and sat on the floor and starting watching

LA Law and

never made it anywhere near the

end.

* Mike Carson lives in Tennessee. This is the third part of a much longer poem – called Goodbye – that he plans to close out his upcoming collection Sunset Memories. (And yes he is currently looking for the best publishing options.) You can find out more about Mike's work here www.myspace.com/mcarson2

Dorothy


When I hear your name,
I see a girl in red shoes.
Then, a wilted body
in a net of plastic tubes,
arms a patchwork of bruises:
blue like your summer dress,
purple like the stains on my fingers
after picking blackberries in your back yard.


* Joe Wyatt is a third year creative writing student at Norwich University College of the Arts. He co-edited and contributed to NUCA's Veto #4 magazine.

Tar, Gin
 

It was night,
the pubs were closed
 
he got me at the bus stop,
said I better give him his bus fare
 
said he’d heard the slummy
rattling in my pocket
 
and if I didn’t give him it
he’d deck me one good and proper
 
so me,
I punched myself
right in the face
really fucking hard
 
harder than I meant to
 
and he stood there
in the dark rain
lost,
 
let me walk on.
 
In the morning
I’d lost a filling,
my jaw had come up
and I had a puddle
of gin sick
drying on my face
 
but that £2.42
was still in my jeans.
 
I tried looking at them
for pride’s sake
but all those rusty little silhouettes
of the rusty little queen
made me queasy.   


* Tanner says... "Congealed Anfield, 84 ... currently festering within the shadows of society, taking verbal photos of the subsequent horror ... i am always always watching you ..." Tanner's new chapbook Alright, Squire? is out now from Last Chance Before Bath-time Publications

Quick mention here for poet, writer and journalist Carole Baldock who has now taken over the UK's old Competitions Bulletin magazine and relaunched it as Kudos. Published six times a year, this is the definitive guide to current UK (plus many overseas) poetry and short story competitions. It also covers novels, anthologies, plays and non-fiction. Definitely worth the cost of £3 per issue (£18 for 6 issues – overseas €25 or $35 pa) – not least as it carries lots of flyers & entry forms you'd otherwise have to send away for with SAEs etc. The November issue is out now, the next one is scheduled for January 2010. For details write to (or send a sterling cheque – payable to Carole Baldock) 17 Greenhow Avenue, West Kirby, Wirral CH48 5EL or visit www.kudoswritingcompetitions.com

                       “He Was No Good At Making Bread”

                                               

                            ...BBC Radio 4,  8:30am Sunday 8 November 2009

 

 

                        Right there in the middle of carnage –

                        because that’s what it was, regulated

                        and occasionally sanctified by vigils for the dead,

                        he tried to make bread.

                        Nothing would go right, it would not rise,

                        yeast malfunctioned, flour did not respond.

                        He tried again, whenever off duty,

                        produced flour-bricks

                        for buildings no one saw.

                        Week after week he began again,

                        the same recipe not working

                        and at his vigil a comrade mentioned

                        “how he was no good at making bread.”

                        Now he is yeast to the war, proved at last,

                        but what food costs so much,

                        what discarded scraps are strewn about

                        and who washes up the mess in this dirty kitchen?

                        At home, his widow stares

                        at unused recipe books.

* 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

* Pamela A. Babusci is an award winning haiku, tanka, poet and haiga artist. Some of her most recent awards include: Museum of Haiku Literature Award and 1st place in the Saigyo Awards for Tanka 2009. Pamela has illustrated several books, including Full Moon Tide: The Best of Tanka Splendor Awards, Taboo Haiku, Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka 2008, the haiku chapbook Chasing the Sun and her first tanka collection A Thousand Reasons 2009. You can visit her solo exhibit listed under archives at www.threelightsgallery.com She was also the sponsor and judge for the First International Erotic Tanka Contest in 2008. This haiga first appeared in Haiga-on-line.