• Archive of all Poetry Space showcases
Editor: Susan Jane Sims
Photograph: Offa’s Dyke Path by Chris Sims
I had an amazing number of poems to choose from, for this edition. Themes included, Lockdown, climate crisis, loss, relationships and prejudice. I chose the following poems because they each spoke to me in some way.
The Beech
My roots grip,
grasping
remains
of the wall
where you’d
worshipped
a god who’d failed
to save you,
only,
trace my claws,
delve down into
the microcosm
from which I grew
and you may find
an image of a god
who may so
deliver you.
M. Anne Alexander
This beech tree stands at the altar at Bayham Abbey, Kent, ruined since the Dissolution.
Dreaming
A dream that is hazy like most others, Where I can almost see
pure shafts of gold piercing through prisms of crystallized aqua waves, Where I can almost hear
triumphant calls of seabirds with wings
full and unbound and free in an endless eternity, Where I can almost feel
the sharp clarity that only
untouched breezes can inflict in my throat,
The dream is limited like most others,
and I wake up and see the world for what it truly is: Smoking skies, choking plastic, gasping breaths
But if I squint and look hard enough, tilt my head and pierce through the haze,
I could almost be dreaming again.
Claire Zhu
Purgatory is a warm gun
Way below the dusty plain
Where only the devil knows you name
There is a man called Bastard Jack
A mean motherfucker with a shotgun smack
Waiting for a woman who isn’t coming back
Every morning at the crack of dawn
Jack goes down to the railroad track
Looking for a plume of smoke
Which he thinks is a sigh of hope
And every day’s the same
But his patience never wanes
Far away on a rocky hill
There’s a gal called hardnosed Jill
She left a man who loved her right
For a man who beat her up until
She filled that fucker full of lead
Then hardnosed Jill had fled
All day she thinks of the man called Jack
Who drank and whored and beat her black
She smiles coz she’d sent him down to hell
But what her musings cannot tell
Is that heaven and hell are not the same to every given name
Way below the dusty plain
Jack’s still waiting for the train
While higher up upon the hill
Sits Jill still thinking of her kill
She doesn’t see the bullet hole
Where Jack had fired his 44
Or know they’ll spend eternity
On the opposite side of the same
Waiting for that train
Darren Frostick
Going home
Together on the number 11 bus
I with my bag, she with hers.
I asked to sit beside her,
She moved her bag, I sat, thanked her,
Said hello. I do this often.
Some respond, some don’t
She gave a flicker of a smile.
Good, I thought.
She moved, restless.
I looked at her, adjusting myself,
“When are you going home?
She asked suddenly.
“On my way” I said, pointing forward.
She was quiet for a second, then
“No No” she said, “I meant, home, home”
Shrugging one shoulder backward.
I understood.
“You mean where I came from originally?” I asked
“Huh”, she muttered.
“India”, I said, “I go from time to time, but it’s here where I live now.”
A pause.
“What about you, when are you going home?” I asked.
She looked startled
“I belong here” she said, almost indignant.
“What about your ancestors?” I asked
just as the bus stopped.
She didn’t answer as I got out.
It was the day after Brexit.
Leela Gautam
November 17, 2016
after Pat Boran’s ‘A man is only as good’
A woman is only as brave or angry or wise
as when they hammer on her door at 5 am
and she stumbles downstairs in her nightie
to hear them tell her to move her car.
She doesn’t give a monkey’s when they say,
‘Yes or no? Will you move your car!’ —
that’s guarding a quiet tree by her road.
A woman is only as brave
as when she turns her back on the men,
pulls her joggers and coat over her nightie,
sticks her bare feet in her Crocs
and goes outside, only as brave as when
she plants her feet where her car was parked
before they hauled it away.
Can a woman do more
than stand under a quiet tree
in the few minutes left
before a man in high viz
dismembers it?
Jenny Hockey
Black lace
Winter trees,
their naked branches
writing poems
like promises
on the skyline.
Each word,
every rhyme
part of the pattern
in the intricate tracery
of pure black lace.
They hide
the new green
of spring deep
as a curtsey, a promise
in petticoats.
So we look up,
strain to read
the lines of poetry
in bare branches
lacing the horizon.
Not yet, not yet,
the poems chide,
A promise given
is a promise kept
and the branches
two-step in the breeze.
Moira Andrew
I Miss
your sweet smile,
gentle replies calling
the carers darling
the way you wanted
to give a gift to visitors
you barely knew
the chats we had
over collaged books
of pets, flowers, birds
your voice humming
‘We Three Kings’
whatever the season
those moments when
the mother in you
asked after me
Sue Wallace- Shaddad
The house at no. 5
I have found peace here.
the slow amble of the sheep,
the tremble of the leaves,
the soundless swoop
of the swallow;
the unflinching grey
of the hearth, the slow
drip of the wax, the whisper
of the corner clock, the squeak
of the floorboards, distant
laughter of children;
the gentle blush of the poppy,
the solemn trinity of stone,
ancient landscape of hills,
mines, the permanence
of misty mounds.
Can I package this, bring it
away with me?
Judy Dinnen
Geordie Lass
(The ‘Yellow book’ mentioned in this poem refers to a medical record book that had to be completed daily)
Her bonny face was wet with tears as she got out of bed,
“Please don’t make me go to school.”
“No school today” I said
She’d sometimes sit and sway a bit, as I stroked her soft grey hair,
“Where are the girls? Must find the girls,
For they are out somewhere.”
The words all scrambled, tumbled out and then they ran away,
Must remember medicine, can’t go to school today.
Clothes in wardrobe,
Handbag, wardrobe floor,
Toothbrush and paste in bag
hanging on wardrobe door.
Must put clothes away
Tablets in the drawer
Cathryn’s number
Folding clothes
I can’t do this anymore.
Searching, seeking, rummaging,
Raking through my mind
Trying to hold on,
to whatever it is I find.
Please love me
Please love me
I’m falling through my mind
Everything falling down but me,
I’m falling up and up you see
I can see all I used to be.
I so want to sit quietly
And read
But the words won’t stay on the page
In fact, the troublesome words won’t do what they’re told
Because I am old
They disobey, won’t do what I say
They tumble and tumble and tumble away
They seem to forget what they mean
I try to remember yesterday, but it goes away
It will not stay.
Monday doctors
Tuesday someone comes
Gloves in cupboard in the hall
Strangers in the house
Don’t know them at all.
“Pete, the girls, the girls, must find the girls
I’ve lost the girls, must find the girls!”
The panic rising,
Out she goes,
Out into the rain
Wandering down the unknown years
frightened and in pain
Spectacles in case, on the windowsill
Yellow book on the shelf,
It is in the forgetting, that I find myself
I found my voice from long ago
A bonny lass wye aye,
We’re gannin’ along the Scotsward road
Laughin’ until we cry
In my forgetting, some things are remembered yet
Divvin’ drive m’ dreams away
Give us a cuddle pet
Laughin’, Love, betrayal, death
All things come to pass
Be assured, Joycey hinny
You’re a canny Geordie lass
Her bonny face was wet with tears as she got out of bed,
“Please don’t make me go to school.”
“No school today” I said
Cathryn M. Spiller
North-by-Southeast
I wake up
side-down on a Twisted mappamundi
Silk carpet, shaken undulating spineless Himalayan Road
carrying me North
towards
infinite elven-blue bays and
archipelagos
and lakes of Indochina
dream and
forgotten, well-known
long-lost
secret garden of
sequoia trees taller
than a million men
than a million of me
or me
smaller
than a millionth of
a sequoia tree all I know
it’s where
I’m trying
to be. So
I go.
I wake up-
Roy Duffield
Editor’s Notes
The Beech – An interesting poem about humankind’s failure and the triumph of nature/
Dreaming – A poem by a young poet aged 16, yearning for change and an end to the destruction we are inflicting upon this planet.
Purgatory is a warm gun -I love this country and western style story of a doomed relationship. It is written with a black humour.
Going Home – I like the factual style of this poem that left me dwelling on a troubling conversation.
November 17, 2016 – I love the ironic style of this poem narrating an incident that must have been scary. The repetition works well.
Black Lace – Beautifully worded, atmospheric and sensual, this poem is as much about the act of writing a poem as it is about what is being observed and felt.
I miss – Gorgeously understated, this poem brings the person missed very much to life. This resonated with me, having lost a parent to dementia.
The house at no. 5 -A lovely poem that sums of what a house can mean to its occupier and how the thought of leaving is so very hard.
Geordie Lass – A poignant poem, addressing dementia. Love the ending and the snippets of local dialect in the dialogue.
North by Southeast – Seemingly about a dream but really addressing how small we are in relation to nature.
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