Edited by Beth McDonough
Old World
The old world welcomes Carol’s Jamie,
he of the jitters and difficult jotters.
Here all his selves could reassemble,
from toddler tumbles,
through uniformed stumbles,
to shuffling in mufti
through workaday nowhere
and anywhere-open inebriation.
The old world calls him
through sweetened blinter,
frost on cobbles,
smashed-glass warehouse,
russet turf and the boarded shell
of a now near-skeletal hospital –
the old world that turned its tools
as the New World called her back.
By Roy Moller
Speaking the Language of Lost Babies
She was cycling through my peripheral vision
on a glazed tongue of tarmac, her face angled to catch
the virgin warmth of late winter sun. I had stopped
at a bend in the track. I watched puzzled ducks;
ornamental, on the frozen flow. Ice-crackle hieroglyphs
describe winter to their webbed feet
Approaching head-on now, the tracks mapped on her face
change direction with her smile
my angles meet hers, our tracks converge.
sun-warmed words tumble over me;
her spark ignites my smile. The language is alien,
her meaning unmistakeable; she celebrates the day.
We two, are alive, in a frost-dipped world,
loving the blue, breathing the green and
sharing the splintered light of winter diamonds.
She brings what she can to meet me. Speckles of language
paint the space with understanding. Between us,
we conjure art, religion, divorce and dead babies.
Her shadow walks with me sometimes. I knew she was a girl.
Me too, she said. Loss plays with my mind, I don’t like
emptiness inside my head, old films squeeze in……….I know
By Janet Philo
Andros
Lying side by side,
the two of us in bed, mother and daughter.
Unshowered, our fingertips laced
with the smell of fish meze.
“The sea is our mother”, we cry.
You switch sides,
the sheet spilled over you like a wave.
By Zoe Karathanasi
Adrift
Cold light on cotton-white, I should move on,
To cross the growing chasm, I must move on.
Stripping bare differences between us,
Love’s core ground to dust, I should just move on.
Eyes stalling on pictured bliss,
Slow-gorged by mourning, I will move on.
Unwrapping blame, we passed it between us,
No solace given, we must move on.
Burning white-hot that haunting still-life,
Arm-wrapped, my boy found he must move on.
I salted his still chest with mother tears,
All that’s left is empty. How can I move on?
By Lesley J. Holmes
Grey Gardens
Maybe we’ll live in a crumbling
…………………………I said a lot in the younger
house, run to cats and dogs
………………………….years, things I didn’t mean.
a lifeline of memories
………………………….If we could go back
scattered across one lonely
………………………….I’d probably say them again
room. I’ll call out, often
………………………but this time
…………………………………………….you’d know
and you’ll answer, always
………………………………..daughter.
By Erica Kirk
The Fat Damsel 