• Archive of all Poetry Space showcases
Photograph – Chris Sims
Editor- Susan Jane Sims
Tough cookie
(For Dot)
I’ve got dementia, she says
with a certain pride. Tell them,
she urges her husband. Tell them
what’s wrong with me. He does,
at length. She’s not a well woman.
It’s not all bad. I picked up a man
in the hospital waiting room!
She smiles in triumph. True,
I stroked a stranger’s arm, mistaking
him for my husband. I did, didn’t I?
She makes light of things, her
frequent falls, her memory lapses,
her tiredness. She’s still pretty,
dresses well, smokes the odd
crafty cigarette. This fragile lady
is one tough cookie, wears pride
like bright pink dancing shoes.
Moira Andrew
“Not a nail in it”
It stood four-square under the kitchen window
its surface the colour of short-crust pastry,
mottled and freckled and veined like her hands.
It had been loved into existence
with every mortise true to its tenon;
it had known the generations in the family Bible
and was shown to guests with quiet pride.
When suddenly my grandmother wasn’t there
the table was put outside and disappeared.
If ever there was a nail in it… I never knew.
Brian Young
Aslan in CS Lewis Square
Aslan towers over the wind swept square.
His hair ragged and proud, black and rigid,
framed by telephone wires and the noise of the city.
A small figure climbs up to greet him
to enter his world of ice and dream.
to explore his world of love and power.,
to walk with Lucy and Peter in the land
of story and discovery, to wonder and to fear,
to escape and to ask impossible questions.
Does Aslan have the answers?
Judy Dinnen
“Too much snow on Monday—”
A tribute to the usually intrepid US Postal Service
the mailman proffered his excuse.
“I’m sorry if the bluejays,
cardinals, or crossbills
crossed in the mail with your letters
or even opened them with clever beaks
in hopes of some jewel waiting—
a token for their mates, their nests in spring.”
“Too much snow on Monday,”
the mailman murmured, red-faced.
“When I came back on Tuesday and still
couldn’t plow the driveway to your house
because my blade was busted by the blizzard,
I found the tattered mail had been retrieved,
tied in strands of rusty yarn
so you might see it in your holly tree
when you went cutting boughs
for winter wreaths to hang
upon the door I cannot reach,
or on your mailbox
by the snow-banked street.
Yup—just
too much snow on Tuesday.”
Lizzie Ballagher
Reading Patterns
Somewhere in the middle of a celestial bulge
of stars, where the lanes are ridden by dust, the brambles
grow a special kind of fruit that is sweet and sour;
the market place in which they are displayed stands
on planks of wood where guillotine and bartering
are identical sides of an exchangeable coin. The ethos
of shadow work on a person designs his produce,
whether fresh or softened yet edible, a rank below
mouldy, but elevated enough to be part of a feast on a table;
the plants reflecting in his irises like staid decorum in vases,
unlike bowing freesias preferring the loyalty of one
stem, not quite wild like tulips growing in the snow
but befitting in the right way, neither missing nor
mixing, yet mingling as part of a dominant chain
on the Solaris axis of survival. Somewhere in this
sphere of the second between suppress and sneeze,
his physical frame converts into a cosmic chakra;
he remembers being the coil of a spiral; pits in fruits
meant for those having known patience of chewing;
a tender wound so bare, its stems like musk-beacons,
shadow-fragments, wood-petals; the memory of his
garden where the river precipitated into starry molecules.
Sheika A.
If you look hard enough
peer beneath the dark side of the moon
you can find your grandmother x 3.
Go back to the older times –
just put aside
the techno-clocks,
the selfie sticks,
the twitter-speaks.
Forget designer babies
and go out into
that other interior universe
where odder creatures lurk –
pink dragons
the flying dog
black doves
(running through the blood,
they’re already part of us),
raise arms high into the depths of reminiscence,
take a deep breath, a morning stretch.
Find & pick them up,
turn them over in that older mind
& watch the reflection of her gnarling face
contort in the infinite regressing mirror.
Follow the mitoflash, the call
to the parallel worlds –
where others row into your field of vision,
before they disappear again beyond the rim
into the sea
of Tranquillity.
Julie Sampson
Last Bend Into Rye
Rabbit on the Military Road
last bend into Rye is gone.
Not myxomatosis
nor viral haemorrhagic disease
but taken by a pantechnicon
or metallic SUV or speeding fastback
in early hours this morning
when full beams engaged
will have caught him in the eyes
sat rigid to the spot, closer and closer
then caught. Executed
by rubber tyres of nefarious deep treads
huge weight on his torso
with neck broken, decapitated
small bones splattered on asphalt
intestines squelched to a pulp
stains across the southbound
until today’s sharp showers
due by midday claim reports.
No cortege of black clad mourners
or close family of flecked tan
standing in deference heads bowed, solemn.
Not a supermarket bouquet in bloom
left by the privet hedge or white gate.
No obituary, no paid notice
observed by the Rye & Battle
or exposé on Kent FM radio
after Garry & Laura’s shift is over.
Just one less rabbit on the High Weald;
the end of a line. Taken by traffic
pernicious disease of mankind.
Alun Robert
Crossroads
We’re flung forward by the brake.
Another feral dog, heat-drowsed, slow,
missed by a whisker? No –
Snake! Six-foot snake!
Out of deference we let her pass,
powered by lightning, side-winding
over shimmering tarmac, gliding
like mercury over glass.
Earth-mother like Shakti the consort of Shiva,
on her headlong errand she ignores
us totally; out of reverence we leave her
to reach her distant, ever-secret lair.
Our universe halts right there,
all movement, all progress paused.
We do not even think “We spared
your life”. Her fissured features, if aware
of such hubris, would spit back “I gave you yours!”
Four seconds, then men and women bearing burdens
among grinding trucks and cycles glittering in the heat
trudge again along the dust-blown street
past walls enclosing watered hotel gardens.
We weave between them to the Holiday Inn,
where a motionless lizard, tail curled,
head tilted, curious, uncertain,
forms an intricate impression of another world.
Brian Young
Turning the pages
My father’s surpliced backside
polishes the hard wooden bench
as he reaches left and right for the stops:
Choir. Great. Swell.
Mystified by pages of sparrows on wires
I’m nudged at each one’s end
by his resigned hiss: “Next!”.
Vox angelica. Double diapason.
Heavy black shoes below his cassock
tap-dance salvoes of basso profundo
which shudder through holy stone.
Bourdon. Choralbass. Bombardon.
At service’s end he improvises
seamlessly and interminably
while my stomach gurgles for its dinner.
Piccolo. Tuba harmonica. Chimney flute.
Like all fathers he wanted me
to complete his unfinished recital
but offspring must play a different tune:
Vox humana. Kazoo and spoons.
Brian Young
Bookends
As my clear thought slackens off,
excess hours wait stimulus,
inhibitors desert their post,
and concentration loses route
the sport of letters, play on words –
treble score, scrabble musical –
becomes my Ludo, freedom game.
The treasured island I oversee:
a case of books whose upper tier,
of my mother tongue by rites,
contains the working management.
Their cover, blurb of selling talk,
make-up artist, focus eyes upon the best,
publicity drive, protection racket;
so watch your back, a hardened case,
spineless unless we challenge it?
I crave etymologies,
tap roots to reveal history;
who writes the record of idea,
predominates in language rights.
Eroteme conclusion best brought to book;
if revelation completes the work,
mine discovered, not theirs to state.
Those closing terms enclosed
brings the bookend, held in place
by weighty words, interrogatives?
Stephen Kingsnorth
Editor’s notes
Tough Cookie
A poignant poem about the effects of dementia written with a light touch and humour. I particularly like the delicious simile at the end ‘wears pride/ like bright pink dancing shoes.
Not a nail in it
Another poignant poem with some lovely phrases. I love the metaphor at the beginning wit the table described as being ‘the colour of shortcrust pastry’. It offers a glimpses into an early age where useful household objects are dearly valued and the bible was the place to record generations of a family.
Aslan in CSLewis Square
The sculpture of Aslan is acutely observed in this quirky poem. I love the ending.
Another quirky poem and a great tribute to intrepid postman like the one featured. I love the detail in the postman’s explanation.
“Too Much Snow on Monday”
Another quirky poem and a great tribute to intrepid postman like the one featured. I love the detail in the postman’s explanation.
Reading Patterns
I love this very original and complex poem where the poet begins with the universe and them zooms in on a small point in time and past memories, the hint of past lives.
If you look hard enough
This poem follows on beautifully from the last one. In this one we are asked to imagine a simpler time before technology where we might look up and peer at the moon and imagine figures and magical creatures, maybe parallel worlds.
Last Bend into Rye
A very graphic poem written with compassion, comparing the aftermath of death for a small animal and contrasting it with the pomp and ceremony of a human funeral,
Crossroads
The beginning suggests that the accident is the usual type of roadkill, a feral dog, so the snake is a surprise and adds a lot of depth to the poem, with the poet bringing in mythological and biblical references. The scene setting and tension are captured with an economy of words.
Turning the pages
A sombre portrait of a father. I love the sustained metaphor.
Bookends
A moment of boredom leads to a philosophical reflection about the roots of language and a considered indictment on an industry that seeks to sell books with covers that make false promises, perhaps?
