History
Editor's Comments
Thank you to the many poets who submitted to this issue. It was good to see familiar names and also to welcome new writers to Allegro. The quantity and quality of the submissions means that Issue 25 is slightly longer than usual. I hope you enjoy reading the final selection.
Sally Long
Poems
Old Vienna
The street musician’s violin
is even older than his veined hands;
his hat on the ground
holds coins tarnishing there
for so many years
their Franz Joseph heads
have turned brown,
brown as the old shop behind him,
a chaotic rummage of bookcases
where spies whisper from
the corners of their mouths.
The referendum that brings in the tanks
is yet to come, his melancholy waltz
whirls the men in uniforms,
women in white ball gowns,
faster and faster
until it all falls apart under the guns.
‘A typical street musician’
the tour guide says. Selfies are taken.
The musician smiles.
Ruth Aylett
Loose ends
Penelope
Would I have waited through those
long sad years,
drawn out neat threads to weave
day after day
only to patiently unravel them
each night
before the dawn light leaked from
a pale sky
so that the promised shroud was
never finished?
Odysseus was the warp on which
your life and faithfulness were
strung
in sturdy, sinuous threads to
carry
the changing colours of a weft
that every day
covered this firm foundation,
then was swept away.
Alwyn Marriage
Dark Ghosts
Some were packed head to
tail to maximize
the shipper’s profit. Some
died, cargo jettisoned,
Their seaweed hair floats
in the waves,
veils the phosphorescence
in their eyes.
In storms their voices echo
in the wind,
threaded thick with
lightning bolts. Traders unloaded others,
auctioned them, sent them
to chop cane, pick cotton. Some bore white babies
branded with their owners’
faces. Most didn’t make old bones.
They haunt the soil and
sea. One night they cluster in dark water
by the dock to give a
fellow ghost the welcome he deserves. Headfirst, he sails through air,
sinks below the waves. Around him trails a cloak, kick-dented bronze,
covered in paint dyed
scarlet as their blood.
He cannot meet their eyes.
The old slaver tried in vain
to wash his hands, exorcise
dark ghosts with charity,
good works. The sea, the
air reverberate
with ghostly thunder,
growing louder.
Susan Castillo Street
Pasiphaë’s Confession
Forgive me Father,
Eros kicked in my door as I slept.
I dreamt of flanks gleaming
like wet stone,
the suede nap of nose.
Father. I ran to Daedalus.
He used oak, mahogany,
built a wooden cow
hollow as the heart without love,
bade me clamber into it
so the ox would think I were one of its own.
A sailor brought the rope –
looped it through the bull's nose ring
pulled him to me.
I was fragrant with vanilla oils.
As if it mattered to it how I smelt.
All night the violins are played
to drown out the sounds.
Father, the wood still stands firm,
and in the bed he built,
I swell like a pomegranate.
One day Daedalus will construct a maze
in which to entrap my hoofed son.
But first he brings the wooden beast
for me to enter into
as if lust itself meant
hunkering in the emptiness
of an animal’s heart.
Anna Saunders
The elegant history of the paper
clip
To hold the words together
scribes made two short cuts
in the folding corner
threaded ribbon through them
binding
skins of parchment
or
a dozen cotton papers.
Although
permanently damaged,
deeds laid
down the law
for ever.
Later slender iron rods
were
stretched and sharpened
into pins
whose smaller piercings
stained
and rusted
reams
of acid wood-pulp.
After 1899
a three-way
loop
of stainless steel
with two cut ends
concealed
A feat of design genius
three
gentle bends and a snip*.
*Peter
Rohles, industrial designer
Kathy Gee
Clearance Bernary, Outer Hebrides.
I hear whispers sough through
this clachan now
buried in marram-tangled dunes.
Their stale breaths ebbed to Canada,
long-exhaled fears dispersed
on the wind's wings.
Alone this home hangs roofless
above the light-scoured bay.
Quicksilver pretends
to be water.
Water pretends to be empty.
Tucked in this lichened parcel
of stones I glimpse a grate, salt white.
Up close, other inhabitants are revealed.
Sheep's ribs gleam, stripped
cold in the sun.
Gulls scavenge tide pools.
Finola Scott
Time Games
Later I will have this shelter
painted every shade
of picturesque.
The holding hands
by the harbour,
a thermos of tea.
Pictures on the front
of long-dead donkeys.
I’m filtering. The sea
jerks like old newsreel.
Cut to one day earlier.
Bath. A girl.
A few steps more,
one minute and she’ll faint
all over their disapproval.
Do they think it’s drugs?
Probably. There she is again
where the rain
makes shadows
on the abbey walls.
A bus moves into gear,
the woman by the window
turns her head to smile
at the girl she’s with.
Carolyn Oulton
Dolmen
Small corner of my little world
where moors roll, slow-tectonic
screwed,
the next just like the one before
except for megalith here pitched.
Not stone circle, henge or ditch,
but dolmen for some passing rich
in wisdom, leadership and wind,
more stolid than the wrapping
clouds.
And here it stands, rock resting
nest,
a granite witness for the land,
chronos
and Kairos hand in hand,
suggestive how we model plans.
Stephen Kingsnorth
Fragments
A punt on the Cherwell
moored under willows
cool wine in the shallows.
Chinese food, an Elvis movie
climb into Christ Church
Sunday morning dew on the Meadows.
A stroll in the Fellows’ garden
planted in diamonds of blue and
silver
dinner by candle-light.
Fire alarm late at night
tumble down the stairs,
half-asleep
a woman in silk kimono, jewelled
slippers.
Summertown Bed and Breakfast
the single bed so worn
it had a hollow in the middle.
A paper at Green College,
dinner overlooking the Observatory
the last memory of my love.
Clair Chilvers
Saints of the Nineteenth Century
Could
saints be put to the rigorous test of the
modern
laboratory, would we have so many? D. Vancoon
The nun,
St. Clelia [sic], died in 1870 aged 23.
Exactly
one year after her death the sisters
Tasted
Paradise:
As rapt
harmonics swept their choir,
Heaven-tongued,
suffused with ecstasy,
Many
fainted to the floor.
St. John
Vianney, curé d'Ars,
Possessed
the gift of reading hearts:
His
people named it miracle,
His
confidence impeccable,
Divining
guilty sins sunk deep,
Like
rotten fish, he pulled them up.
St. Gemma
Galgani loved to suffer:
The
thrill of the hard-flogged naked Jesus
Coming
alive off the cross for her,
Transported
her soul. She kissed his wounds
And
groaned as if from Roman scourge
As welts
erupted purple on her skin.
Saint
Paul of Moll, visiting Antwerp, 1887:
A servant
girl, Theresa, began to witness
Impossible
birds: tapping windows, they sang rhapsodies
And
swelled such hope in those brave, fragile, breasts, listeners wept.
He told
her they were sentinels,
Exotic
guests from realms beyond.
Prodigious
were those conjurations of the canonized:
Their
levitations, healings, incorruptible corpses,
Sympathetic
replicas of Christ's torture and yet more...
But, ah!
Those birds! In glamoured plumage
– Blue,
green, ochre, white; melodic, perfumed, boldly striped:
Now that is
a neat and saintly trick!
Clive Donovan
Hilda
614
– 680
Displaced too often in her youth
By death as well as war,
She answered Aidan’s call to learn
What else God had in store.
Northumbria, where she was raised,
Became her home again,
And she was soon made abbess of
Not only nuns but men.
Promoting Christianity,
She served these people well,
Plus others yet to be released
From paganism’s spell.
In managing the produce of
The monastery’s land,
She earned a reputation for
Vast wisdom gained firsthand.
This saintly woman was revered
By princes, even kings,
And in her honor to this day
Some sea birds tip their wings.
Jane Blanchard
The
End of the World
Like the orb of the earth
- from sheer neglect-
our skylight dome shattered
around our heads -
traces of blood on our hands.
The Revenge of Nature
The starving birds gather
avenging, menacing
wheeling, descending
on the glass telephone box -
there’s blood on her face.
Skating on Thin Ice
The hungry bear pauses
cubs behind her
as she crosses the tundra’s
melting ice
the journey is longer
the snow microplastic
cracks under her
she flounders and falls -
blood on her paws
Space Race
The Moon dust drifts, ghostly and
grey
on the lost and eternal
Tranquility Bay
and its million dollars of
man-made trash
gold, the sunlight
70 unmanned crash-landed missions
96 packets of shite and wet wipes
2 golf balls, stark-white
buggies and rakes and stages and
landers
rovers and modules and
life-support pads
1 bible, bright red
geologist Shoemakers’s
well-packaged ashes
Oh - and Bereshete’s 1000
tardigrade maggots,
and Johnson’s moon-crash Brexit
date
1 blue Earth
Marion Baraitser
Mistress of Columbus
Columbus took her first
at the field’s bronze edge,
a simple orphan girl
on a heap of straw.
Beneath jet hair
her neck was pale,
under coarse skirts
her thighs were pearl.
He breathed in spice:
sweet cloves on her skin,
cinnamon and ginger,
soft hair in the wind.
She bore his second son,
bastard to his heir,
raising two scorpions
with equal care.
The captain took to sea
by the sunset’s ruddy fire,
guided west by a white star
and his cold desire.
His caravel caught
in the ocean’s black swell,
in a dark sea of storm,
drifted and tossed.
He remembered her
breasts white as tusk,
her nipples peppers
from Malabar.
Blown to the world’s end,
he remembered a bronze field,
green eyes, dry wind,
scent and soft tears.
Note: The grand mariner Christopher Columbus never married Beatriz
Enriquez de Arana. But he left his fortune to her, which she never
claimed.
Dan MacIsaac
Christina of Denmark
In the space of three swift hours
while she swayed, wooed by courtiers,
the artist drew a calendar
girl for his lord and master.
Her pure skin Holbein flattered
against dark velvet robes,
stroking desire into the pose--
those pale, shapely fingers
gripping tanned gloves, the ring
boldly red as her parted lips,
the bow loosely tied like a gift
to be unlaced by a king.
Henry VIII, with pinup tastes,
took the jigged bait,
and ordered a full-length portrait,
casting his shadow in the paint.
A hot poker was the King’s caress,
and the twisting rack his mattress.
The fall of a well-honed blade
would take all colour from her face.
Dan MacIsaac
The
Last Blacksmith
for
Florence O'Sullivan, Castlemaine, Co. Kerry
He’s the
last. Fourth generation.
In
Boolteens by the busy road.
In fire -
at his station –
Where
hammer and anvil explode.
‘Tired?
Never!’ he says.
Open
door. Modus operandi.
‘While
I’m able, these days,
I’m going
to take it handy.’
Handy.
Easy does it.
‘I fell
in here,’ he says. ‘I’m here since.’
70 years
at the fire pit –
Heat
don’t make him wince.
But, what
when the hammer drops?
What
while the cars wheel by?
What when
the anvil’s chorus stops?
What when
the fires die?
Know he’s
the last. Fourth generation.
In
Boolteens by the busy road.
Still in
fire - at his station –
Where
hammer and anvil explode.
Steven Jackson
Ringing the Changes
The last
note, intoned by the tenor bell
Falls
from the belfry, and finds morning
With the
lark’s song. In the high chamber
The
bell-ringers, a tighter circle of men
Listen
close, for the one who is missing
For their
completed peal, rung for the dead man.
Their
promise, fulfilled in that dying note –
The pact
made, years back, when he’d asked them to ring
A round
for him, for when his time was up –
Girds
them like a steel, works its pull on their
Perimeter
and holds them together.
None knew
why it was he who’d asked first:
The
request they had each wanted to make
Of the
others. But then, none had seen him
Those
years back, make that climb to the chamber
When his
feet kept finding home in the worn
Ruts of
the stone steps. An alarming fit.
Thought
how he’d never noticed that before
Never
felt time, tangible as hard rock,
Or known
his years to be lost in the footprints
Made by
generations of old, dead men –
Never
imagined time to be falling away
From him,
as if sweeping back down steps
Over
marks he’d made, his every climb, before.
And so,
he’d asked. Asked them all in the round
That day,
in the high chamber, to ring for him
For when
his time was up. And the circle
Alacritous,
had played a turn of awkward
Nods,
then fallen to distraction, to their own bells
To their harmony,
and the practice in time.
Steven Jackson
The Working Men’s Club
A lad
half my age drifts past our table drinks in hand and I wonder:
do I look
the same to him as ‘men’ did to me when I was younger?
I recall
hearty laughs, the thick scent of Old Spice
- heavy
on your throat and eyes - and inappropriate jokes, like lies,
designed to emasculate the victim.
I
remember ciggies and smoke - even heavier on your throat and
eyes, fettered to your skin and hair for days -
booming
sing-a-long music and incessant shouting;
not
aggressive like-a-punch-was-about-to-be-thrown shouting,
more
like
someone asking the unknown at that moment, no Google to
step in as arbitrator,
the quiz
master having to shout and shout to be heard. And no one
listening.
And on it
goes in my head like a tape recorder: constant table
tapping, sticky seats, all leather, greasy;
nut
shells, pork scratchings, drinks spilled - dirty looks given;
darts and pool, players prowling like dogs ready to snatch
up
the bone cue;
open
shirts, hairy chests, wrist watches and polished shoes, ticking
down the seconds to the first scuff,
the
chance of the barmaid’s attention long gone.
She’s
giving the eye to the other guy until closing time, the guy
with the golden chains and golden rings,
a wad of
oily twenties stuffed in his back trouser pocket.
But I
just don’t see how I can be like that to a lad half my age,
I’m not
my old man or his mates and this isn’t then, this is now.
Alan Kissane
Apples
"I've fallen. Gather me." It was a trick.
Eve's fig and Paris' orange lost
their place. One bad apple fermented war,
thus love revealed its bitter core.
Then Tell shot an apple off Adam's head.
The evil Queen gave Eve a bite.
Judas kissed her, and she was born again.
The plump disciples danced for joy -
twelve men were bound to walk upon the moon,
for Newton from his distant tree
deduced that fallen apples broke no rules.
Though "apple" means so many things,
unpeel or peel them, they're still full of sin -
a single law describes them all.
Tim Love
At the Window
Eye-catching posters telling of
concerts, stand-ups,
an hour or two of quiet
meditation;
an open book in the sill,
flowers in a jar falling
prettily.
Annotated sheet music nicely
untidy on the piano,
calligraphy scrolled out over
serious men in gowns.
Ballet shoes flattened under
glass hang alongside
sit-ins, gap-years, graduations,
high jinx
and reasonable art:
an idyll, a still-life, something
geometric.
Through to the kitchen (looking
out on a walled garden),
and a pair of eggs perhaps, a
cold kiss,
the burying of last night’s
barked humiliation;
a distracted study of blue tits
clinging to mortar, to feeders,
to the aubrieta
that was never more beautiful.
Robert Dunsdon
Quake [L’Aquila, Italy, 6 April 2009]
The town has crashed, scars erupting
from its seams, mashed by the dry heaves
of tectonic plates colliding. A fallen
buttress lies in a street, smashed
like a sugar cube – gothic arches tilt,
like drunken bishops, in gap-toothed walls.
People talk in whispers, weighing
the sounds they make as if a breath
could blow their chimneys down,
a teardrop too heavy on fragile stone.
Their thoughts are eyes not finding hooks,
knots that slither open, will not anchor their dreams
in the red earth, which still spins, though it spills
its clay through jagged cracks, half-healed
and alien, like skin deformed by fire.
Louise Wilford
Funeral of a friend’s husband
He’s gone to the funeral of a man he barely knew -
met once at his wedding, shared a bad joke or two,
watched dance an awkward jig to the live salsa band;
said a word to his mum, wished him well, shook his hand.
Every Christmas, a card and a bottle of wine:
‘Love from us both’, which she’d scribble, he’d sign.
To his wife, they were simply two names on a list.
But, for him, the man’s wife was the first girl he kissed.
They’d met years ago but he wasted his sighs
(O, that Meg Ryan hair – O, those Kate Winslet eyes!),
as she wanted a friend, not a lover, she said;
he could take her to Tescos, but not to his bed.
He’d been there when she learned of her mum’s suicide;
when the first man she lived with had hit her and lied;
there to carry her stuff when she moved out of town;
there to brighten her mood and to not let her down.
When she finally married the man of her dreams –
though by now these were coming apart at the seams –
he’d been happy to see them, well-suited and heading
towards a ‘good life’, as they said at the wedding.
But a part of him ached, as he sat with his wife,
for a different outcome, a different life.
He knew she’d picked well and not on a whim,
but he couldn’t help thinking it should have been him.
Five years later, her husband was told he was ill.
Six months later he died. They’d been happy, but still,
after all she’d been through, she deserved some more years
to enjoy married life and to put away tears.
So he’s gone to the wake of a man he half-knew.
He’s played the best friend, for what else could he do?
And each time he hugs her, he feels like a snake
in the grass, like a fool, an incompetent fake.
As the eulogies come to an end, his wife rises;
she touches his arm, and he now realises,
the woman he’s loved all these years is a ghost,
and here is the woman he now loves the most.
Louise Wilford
Foundlings
Here in a new box, old coins
we spill them onto the carpet
and small fingers pick out treasures.
A farthing, worn smooth
once the price of a meal
Indian rupees, Iraqi drachma
souvenirs of imperial service.
I think of my Grampee
young and splendid in uniform.
My sons make pirate cries
fight over this treasure.
Kim Whysall-Hammond
It was there
when I wandered on the great green,
an arrowhead appearing like a
confession,
thin as a china teacup.
I knelt, drunk on the smell of the
wet earth,
poked with a fingernail at this
thing,
a finding all my own.
It had known life, this arrowhead,
awoken in wood-urged flame,
a primitive bullet.
It had known life, the slow essence
of blood
had soaked itself into the metal,
insinuating colour.
I was wary; this thing of power
drew around itself fairy circles
of stony hills.
The sky was afire with greed,
the thick rain clouds massing and
humming
as I knelt by this relic.
Francesca Weekes
Front page
On the major eruption's 40th anniversary (5/18/80)
Mount St. Helen's had erupted in death
a coast away,
and the front page layout sheet sat there
like an open crater.
The editor wanted more than AP offered.
He wanted shock.
He wanted Pennsylvania Dutchies to feel
the ground shake.
Words wouldn't do it. They had to see
the brimstone,
and it was up to me to find it blind
with a telephone
calling every newspaper within 500 miles
of the Cascades.
It had to be something no one here
had seen,
even me who had to negotiate its use,
once found,
based on another editor's description
a continent away.
So, I listened to every nameless voice
in black and white
sketch a view of horror that could explode
by deadline.
A forest strewn like match sticks across
a mountain,
gray with ash, a mammoth, seismic,
funeral pyre.
Eric Chiles
A Page from the History of
Biological Warfare
The Siege of Caffa.
Crimea, 1346
The
stench of these latest victims
flies
far beyond the power of words
but
soon they will be gone. Even now
you
can hear the catapults straining,
the
taut ropes twanging ever tighter
as
the corpses are loaded for shooting,
arms
and legs locked in twisted dances
and
now – there! – they sail right over the walls
like
leaping fairground dolls then land
with
drumbeats of thumping finality
somewhere
among the stubborn enemy
and
silent disease begins its work.
The
ones outside have eaten mud for months
and
now this coal-black plague harvests them like wheat.
Raw
winter has made its own demands,
its
icy hand dragging the failing sun
a
little lower every day and hunger
squeezes
till your bones stick out like broken sticks.
The
ones inside could end this with a word
but
they prefer to hear death’s steady roar
made
hoarse and dull from over-use,
so
let them taste the bitter pestilence.
Stuart Flynn
Evinrude
I have in the boat with me
my ten year old self.
Our balky little outboard
is a time machine
and on this familiar lake
the shore has not changed,
and rocks remain as they were.
We motor along,
Myself and me.
Exhaust bubbles up,
familiar and so oily.
Always remembered.
The Evinrude is aged
and troublesome,
but since it is now running
the years slide away
and on a summer morning
my ten year old self
and the old man he is now
make good company.
Phil Huffy
Vindolanda
A soldier serving at Vindolanda
expressed
a love of literature in a
recently found letter.
Dear
unknown lover of literature
who
lived at Roman Vindolanda,
distant outpost of empire
established to
defend the wall, did you enjoy the Georgics?
Did they remind you of warmer
climes;
of different Mediterranean times?
Was reading Virgil’s The Aeneid
a thrill
or was Horace more to your taste?
Were the hexameters and iambics of
Scribe
Questorius’ politically correct
satires and
odes eulogising the principate more
appealing?
Or, like the illustrious Bard, did
you most enjoy Ovid?
Did his psychological insight help
you
through those long, northern winter
nights?
Jeremy Gadd
I Love Your Tiger Feet
School Dance. 1974. Young
teachers.
Released from jackets and ties,
we rushed out onto the dance
floor
in our boutique slipovers and
flares.
The kids said: ‘You look just
like us’,
Left forward, right over, left
back, right back,
that’s neat, that’s neat, that’s
neat, that’s neat.
One of pop music’s strangest
forks in the road:
long haired men in glitter or
drape jackets,
Mud, Sweet, Showaddywaddy, Bolan,
Bowie,
brickies in make up and always
one guy
in women’s clothes with dangling
earrings.
Left forward, right over, left
back, right back,
that’s right, that’s right,
that’s right, that’s right.
Who knew what tiger feet were or
a tiger light?
Later we got strange phone calls
to our homes
and a letter from a TV show
saying someone
had put us forward for a talent
competition.
The police found out it was two
teenage schoolgirls.
Left forward, right over, left
back, right back,
that’s neat, that’s neat, that’s
neat, that’s neat.
We didn’t know where to draw the
line.
They told us not to get too close
to the kids,
but we had high ideals and
platform shoes.
In retrospect, the older tweedy
staff were right.
It wasn’t educational and it certainly
wasn’t rock’n’roll.
Left forward, right over, left
back, right back
that’s right, that’s right,
that’s right, that’s right.
Norton Hodges
Pictures by
condemned children
(Theresienstadt
1942)
that there might have been
a Raphael or
Braque among them
is beside the
point
every mark they
made
that unlike them
survived
is sacred
some drew houses with chimney smoke
parents and
siblings
perhaps a dog
others painted
dense fog
you’d walk into
and couldn’t
breathe
Tony Beyer
Unborn
for Anne Boleyn
Another serpent slips from me,
swims in water,
melts into the red.
I have a belly
full,
writhing inside me.
Too small for arms and legs;
they are all face, all head.
Gill Lambert
Arrival
Hampton Court Palace, 1555
April, and time for my lying-in.
The cot waits at my bedside
and tapestries drape the windows.
There’s a pleat of pale light.
My belly strains against my shift.
I feel a nudge inside as I kneel
at the prie-dieu, take my paternoster
and slide fingertips from bead to bead.
I, too, have known God’s grace
and conceived in my womb.
I, too, am blessed among women,
carry the fruit of England and Spain.
The court marvelled at my news:
morning sickness and ripe breasts
mapped with deltas of blue veins.
Then, the November quickening.
Cardinal Pole returned from exile
and fell to his knees on Catholic soil.
I helped him rise and life rippled
in me like a fish through water.
Te Deums were sung and Philip
looked pleased in his quiet way.
My Chaplain composed a prayer
for my safe delivery, oh, I ache
to see my child and hold
a healthy Prince or Princess
as my mother did.
I dream her face. I’m not afraid.
Sheila Jacob
stone circles
The landscape came first,
something captured in shared imaginations
solidified in stone.
Why build here?
Someone found it beautiful
and proclaimed it holy.
The rest follow as naturally
as light falls across the soon-to-be-sacred stone
on mid-winter morning.
Warrick Wynne
Breviary
Norham
Castle
January
1473
Richard says compline before
retiring.
Intersection, arcs, shadows.
Most of the border fortress eschews
light, the Northumbrian stone
invisible
against the black Tweed slipping.
*
In the pre-dawn, half-waking, the
sky is
blue-purple like monk’s-hood,
then the blue on a mallard’s wing
shifting to indigo, amethyst.
Richard says lauds, his backbone
heavy.
Edwin Stockdale
Helmets
After visiting the Royal
Armouries Museum in Leeds
650 BC
Corinthian,
the mute one-piece
skull
jails the brain
the eyes are lotus petals
open on the inside.
*
1370
Basinet,
pig-faced head defence
the visor is a protruding snout pierced to breathe
slits for vision
only focus on foes.
*
1585
Sir John Smythe,
golden etched decorations on the
crest
hinged cheekpieces
silenced by the falling buffer
the engraved figures stand on a chariot striking a pose.
*
1511
A helmet named Max,
for tournament rather than battle, a fool’s face
with ram’s horns and gold-rimmed
glasses;
it grins at king Henry
a mask of fun.
*
1915
Brodie,
the dish pan tin hat
to stop shell splinters and
shrapnel,
the eyes and mouth are free
to see and speak but not to slip away.
*
2000
Intelligent
ballistic helmet with ergonomic shell geometry
lightweight made of Kevlar fibres and thermoset resins
available on the internet;
it reduces traumatic brain injuries and blast impact.
Carla Scarano D’Antonio
Animals of War
He had seen a horse die
Once.
It had broken its leg. Useless.
So his father had put a bullet
between
Its docile eyes, weeping in
silent remorse.
It was happening again across
The muddy fields. There were
horses,
Injured horses, dying.
There was a rising wind
Of huffing
And deep agonised moans. Somebody
Had to go out there and do what
his father
Had once done:
Put the creatures out of their
misery.
Place a gun between their eyes
and watch
As their lives galloped on ahead,
leaving
Their bodies behind.
Never look away from him,
Show him your pain, his
father had said.
An act of solidarity – watch them
die
As if they are your comrades,
because they are.
All forced into war by the same
People, for the same hazy
reasons.
Oli Gledhill
Contributors
Ruth Aylett teaches and researches computing in Edinburgh. She has published widely in magazines - including The North, Prole, Interpreter’s House, Agenda, Envoi, Southbank Poetry - and in a large number of anthologies, including Scotia Extremis and Umbrellas of Edinburgh. She jointly authored the 2016 pamphlet Handfast (Mother’s Milk) and her first single-author pamphlet, Pretty in Pink (4Word), is due out in 2021. For more see http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~ruth/writing.html
Marion Baraitser is a published short story writer (Five Leaves Publications, London,2008, ed. Jennifer Langer)/Loki, 2004 London, ed. Laura Phillips) and several literary magazines including metropolitan. She is an award-winning published, performed and commissioned playwright (Oberon Books, London, Routledge). She has a PhD from Roehampton University and taught English Literature for Birkbeck University, London, for several years.
Jane Blanchard divides her time between Augusta and Saint Simon’s Island, Georgia. Her fourth collection with Kelsay Books is In or Out of Season.
Tony Beyer writes in Taranaki, New Zealand. Recent work has appeared online in Hamilton Stone Review, Mudlark and Otoliths. Print titles include Anchor Stone (2017) and Friday Prayers (2019), both from Cold Hub Press.
Susan Castillo Street is Harriet Beecher Stowe
Professor Emerita, King’s College London. She has published four
collections, The Candlewoman's Trade (2003), Abiding Chemistry, (2015),
The Gun-Runner’s Daughter, ( 2018) Cloak (2020), and
a pamphlet, Constellations (2016). Her poetry has appeared in
leading journals and anthologies in Britain and the US.
Eric Chiles started teaching
writing and journalism at a number of colleges in eastern Pennsylvania after a
career in newspapers. Besides Allegro,
his poetry has appeared in American
Journal of Poetry, Blue Collar Review, Canary, Main Street Rag, Rattle,
Snakeskin, Tar River Poetry, Third Wednesday, and elsewhere. His chapbook, Caught in Between, is available from
Desert Willow Press.
Clair Chilvers was a cancer scientist, and latterly worked for
the UK National Health Service. She divides her time between writing and
running a mental health research charity. She lives in Gloucestershire, UK
and has had poems published in Ink Sweat
and Tears, Amaryllis, Atrium, Artemis
and Sarasvati. www.clairchilverspoetry.co.uk
Clive Donovan devotes himself full-time to poetry and has published in a
wide variety of magazines including The
Journal, Allegro, Acumen, Nine Muses, Poetry Salzburg Review, Prole, Stand
and The Transnational. He lives in
the creative atmosphere of Totnes in Devon, U.K. often walking along the River
Dart for inspiration. He is hoping to entice a publisher to print a first
collection.
Robert Dunsdon is poetry editor with Between These Shores Books.
His work has appeared in literary journals, anthologies and newspapers both
in the UK and in the US.
Stuart Flynn was born in Australia of Irish origin and now lives in Dublin. His first poetry pamphlet was published by Acumen Publications (UK) in 2001 and he has since then published various small press books of poetry. His poems have recently been published or will soon be published in Ireland in The Galway Review, The Blue Nib and Strukturriss.
Jeremy Gadd has previously contributed over 300 poems in literary magazines and periodicals in Australia, the USA, the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Germany, Belgium and India. He has MA Honours and PhD degrees from the University of New England and his writing has won several literary awards. He lives and writes in an old Federation era house overlooking Botany Bay, the birthplace of modern Australia. Further information can be found at: https://jeremygaddpoet.com.
Kathy Gee’s career was in
heritage. Her poetry collection was published by V. Press in 2016 http://vpresspoetry.blogspot.co.uk/p/book-of-bones.html
, the same year she wrote the spoken word elements for http://suiteforthefallensoldier.com/.
Her small collection of duologues – Checkout, set in a corner shop –
was published in March 2019. http://vpresspoetry.blogspot.com/p/bookshop.html
Oli Gledhill recently finished her
first year at the University of Manchester, where she studies English Literature
and Creative Writing: She received a first in his Creative Writing
portfolio and a 2:1 in English Literature. She recently finished her first
full-length novel, a horror/mystery titled Scraps.
Norton Hodges is a poet, editor and
translator. His work is widely published on the internet and in hard copy. He
is the author of ‘Bare Bones’ (The High Window Press, 2018). He lives in
Lincoln UK.
Phil Huffy
is a busy poet with dozens of placements over the past few years. Like many
writers, he did something else first. He has published two books of
his poems, Rhymal Therapy and Magic Words and recorded the latter
as an audiobook.
Steven Jackson is an English teacher living in Oxfordshire, a
prize-winning poet at the Brian Dempsey Memorial Competition 2019, and a highly
commended poet at both the The Ver Prize 2019, and Marsden the Poetry Village
Competition 2019. He has been a shortlisted poet for the Fish Anthology 2019,
published by Arachne Press, Meat For Tea, and featured in the Wolf Literary
Festival 2018. His poetry was shortlisted for the anthology prize in the
Overton Poetry Prize in 2018.
Sheila Jacob was born and raised in
Birmingham and lives in North Wales with her husband. Her poems have been
published in a number of U.K. magazines. In 2019 she self-published a pamphlet
of poems dedicated to her Dad who died when she was almost fifteen.
Stephen Kingsnorth, retired to Wales from ministry in the Methodist Church,
has had over 100 pieces accepted by on-line poetry sites including Allegro;
and Gold Dust, The Seventh Quarry, The Dawntreader, Foxtrot
Uniform, A New Ulster Poetry Magazines, anthologies ‘Pain &
Renewal’ & ‘Identity’. https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com/
Alan Kissane teaches English in the East Midlands, UK. He has a doctorate in History and has published books and articles on medieval history. He is making his first forays into the world of poetry.
Gill Lambert is a teacher and prize-winning poet from W Yorkshire. She has been published widely online and in print and her collection, Tadaima was published last year by Yaffle.
Tim Love’s publications are a poetry pamphlet Moving Parts (HappenStance) and a story collection By all means (Nine Arches Press). He lives in Cambridge, UK. His poetry and prose have appeared in Stand, Rialto, Magma, Unthology, etc. He blogs at http://litrefs.blogspot.com/
Dan MacIsaac is a barrister. His poetry has appeared in many journals, including Stand, The Interpreter’s House, Orbis, and Ink, Sweat & Tears.
Alwyn Marriage's eleven books include poetry, fiction and non-fiction. She is widely published in magazines, anthologies and on-line, has won prizes for her work and gives frequent readings all over Britain and in many other countries. She is Managing Editor of Oversteps Books Ltd, and a research fellow at Surrey University. www.marriages.me.uk/alwyn
Carolyn Oulton is Professor of Victorian Literature and Director of the International Centre for Victorian Women Writers at Canterbury Christ Church University. She is the project lead for https://kent-maps.online/ in collaboration with JSTOR Labs. Her most recent collection is Accidental Fruit (Worple).
Anna Saunders is the author of Communion, (Wild Conversations Press), Struck, (Pindrop Press) Kissing the She Bear, (Wild Conversations Press), Burne Jones and the Fox (Indigo Dreams) and Ghosting for Beginners (Indigo Dreams). Anna is the CEO and founder of Cheltenham Poetry Festival. Anna’s forthcoming book is called Feverfew. (Due Indigo Dreams Summer 2020).
Carla Scarano D’Antonio lives in Surrey with her family. She obtained her Master of Arts in Creative Writing at Lancaster University and has published her creative work in various magazines and reviews. She is currently working on a PhD on Margaret Atwood’s work at the University of Reading. http://www.carlascaranod.co.uk/
Finola Scott is Makar of the Federation of Writers. Her poems are published on
postcards, tapestries, posters and magazines including New Writing Scotland, PB and Lighthouse.
Her poem was recently Pick of the Month at I,S&T. Red
Squirrel Press publish her pamphlet Much left Unsaid. More poems at fb
Finola Scott Poems.
Edwin Stockdale has an MA in Creative Writing with Distinction from the University of Birmingham. Two of his pamphlet collections have been published by Red Squirrel Press: Aventurine (2014) and The Glower of the Sun (2019). Currently, he is studying for a PhD in Creative Writing at Leeds Trinity University.
Francesca Weekes is a student of English at the University of Cambridge. She has previously been published in Notes and BAIT Magazine. One of her poems is soon to be published in the Cambridge Review of Books. She is usually to be found curled up with a book.
Kim Whysall-Hammond is a Londoner who now lives in rural Berkshire. She has been published by Ink, Sweat and Tears, Three Drops from a Cauldron, Amaryllis, London Grip, Eternal Haunted Summer and Crannóg amongst others. Kim shares poetry on her blog (https://thecheesesellerswife.wordpress.com/ ).
Louise Wilford, Yorkshirewoman, has had over 100 poems and short stories published and has won or been shortlisted for several competitions, most recently the £750 Arts Quarterly Prize. She is currently nearing the end of a Masters degree in Creative Writing, and working on a novel inspired by The Tempest.
Warrick Wynne is a poet and teacher based on the Mornington Peninsula, south of Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently The State of the Rivers and Streams, (Five Islands Press) His poetry home page is at http://warrickwynne.org
