Month: January 2023
Shelf Life, by Stephen McNulty
Stephen scribbles things whenever he is not forcing a member of the public into a CT scanner. His poems have appeared in Boyne Berries, Drawn to the Light, ROPES, Spilling Cocoa Over Martin Amis, Strukturriss and Vox Galvia.
Mr. Same, by Eoin Cassidy
Eoin Cassidy is a second year Creative Writing student in University of Galway. He is a 21 year old male with a great love for writing. He is from Killybegs, County Donegal, Ireland. His poems seek to explore his dialect and the place that surrounds him.
Carluccio’s, Ealing, Before Christmas, by John Lanyon
CARLUCCIO’S, EALING, BEFORE CHRISTMAS
Antonio,
big smiling man with the puffball hair
it’s almost like we’re on first name terms
you rich old mushroom hunter
how I might adoro your pomodoro
you master of corporate rusticity.
Your customers worked all week for this
if they want to sit down
they’re going to have to stand up
eat in
eat out
it’s all been worked out
black shirts
white shirts
it’s so cold tonight
your red and gold wrappings and trappings
your vibrantly green beans
your snowy mozzarella
your tanned, smiling staff melt my cynicism
100g at a time.
You dug up a good one.
Sooner or later
we’ll bore of your flavours
all the window dressing
your one-stop Italy-to-go
but somewhere
as long as there are forests
there will be mushrooms.
John Lanyon lives in the Cotswolds. He works as an organic gardener, linguist, musician, and writer. Having failed his English Literature O Level, he came to love literature through reading it in French and German. He writes about art, the body, childhood, society, nature, the spirit of places, the secret lives of words.
The Archivist of Cathedral Hill, by Casey Jarrin
Casey Jarrin is a poet, painter, and educator whose writing appears in Irish, UK, and US journals (Banshee, Abridged, Washington Square Review, Belfield Literary Review, Banyan Review, Buzzwords, Grand Journal). She’s received the York, Goldsmith, and Fingal Poetry Prizes, been on the Bridport shortlist, and performed as a featured poet at Lime Square and the Nuyorican Poets Café. A Jewish-Catholic atheist raised in New York who’s since lived in Dublin and Minneapolis, she received her PhD in modern literature/film, taught at Macalester College for several years, and is founder-director of Live Mind Learning. She’s now completing her debut collection, The Naked Dinner. Website: www.caseyjarrin.com
Oranje, by Huw Gwynn-Jones
Retired and living in Orkney, Huw comes from a line of poets in the Welsh bardic tradition, though he denies ever having worn a druidic robe. His work has appeared in ‘Acumen’ and ‘Tears in the Fence’, and his debut pamphlet, ‘The Art of Counting Stars’, was published in 2021.
Get Over it, by Tonnie Richmond
Tonnie Richmond is a retired local government officer who has spent the last couple of decades as a volunteer archaeologist, working on digs in Cheshire and on Orkney. Many of her poems reflect her archaeological experiences and love of Orkney. She has had poems published by Yaffle, Dragon/Yaffle, Driech, Leeds Trinity University and others. She is currently working on her first collection.
Sort, by Sarah J. Bryson
Sort
What sort are you?
Tea or coffee?
Victoria Sponge,
or a rich fruit cake?
Dark chocolate Bounty,
or a Milky Bar kid?
Would you choose
a bag of lemon drops,
or a sherbet dip?
Would you prefer
a large gobstopper,
or an Extra Strong Mint?
Milk Tray or Green & Blacks?
Are you a suck it and see type,
or a gobble and go individual?
Do you think birds of a feather
flock together, or rather that
opposites attract?
Maybe you are
a Foxes Glacier Mint?
Me? I’m a Licorice Allsort
Sarah is interested in words, words for well being, people and nature and the connections between these elements. She has poems in print journals, anthologies and on line.
Coventry, by David Court
Coventry
Invented;
bicycles,
jet engines,
black cabs,
roads shaped like rings.
A brief annotation;
a sad association -
Women putting cats into bins.
David is a novelist, freelance writer for Slash Film, and radio presenter. David lives in Coventry with his wife, Aslan the cat and a beard. David’s wife once asked him if he’d write about how great she was, and David said he would because he specialized in short fiction. Despite that, they’re still married.
Starless, by Patrick Chapman
Starless
Set to amuse an empress of India, diamonds are
not even fruit – but flush with satsumas
alone, try getting someone to love you for
money. Made in the whirl of a stellar
ballet, tangelos yield to the cut of my Japanese
blade. The crush of my hand makes me wonder
how diamond and orange are brought to our shores –
and what old blood we spill into new Mason jars.
PATRICK CHAPMAN has published nine poetry collections since 1991. Other books include a novel, three volumes of stories, and a guide to the work of David Cronenberg. His next poetry collection, The Following Year, appears from Salmon in 2023. He lives in Dublin.