Two Poems by Les Merton

Echoes

 

There are echoes

in the countryside

between branches among leaves

and within the petals of flowers.

 

Perhaps it's the whispers of ancient ones

with secrets of above and below ground.

 

Perhaps it's music from days long past

floating around nature’s colours.

 

In the countryside;

            there are echoes

that belong in this sanctuary of peace.

 

They have been caught by time

and given back to us.

 

 

 

Life in the Shell

 

Hungry Barn Owl chicks wait in the wings

of the shell of a theatre, never rebuilt

after a cluster of fire bombs played havoc

on the stage, the flames danced

through the stalls and balcony,

as the final curtain fell in the theatre

the biggest audience of its life

watched the act of mindless destruction.

 

Barn Owl parents in sophistic flight return

alula and legs extended, braking to land

under the roof that laughter tried to raise.

Prey hanging from curved beaks

ready to feed white heart-faced chicks

that look as ghostly as Hamlet's father

spotlighted by the rays from the moon.

 

 

 

 

Les Merton is Cornish and proud of it. He earned his living in a variety of ways:  grocery shop manager, coalman, bus conductor, factory worker, canvasser, film extra, fortune teller, entertainment agent, and after failing as a comedian, the other jobs are best forgotten.

He’s dabbled at writing on and off from the age of 16, however it was in 1996 he decided to give it a go properly. In 2002, he founded Poetry Cornwall/ Bardhonyeth Kernow and as been its editor ever since. In 2004, his endeavours were recognised when he was made a Bard of Gorsedh Kernow for services to Cornish Literature. His Bardic name is Map Hallow (Son of the Moors).

Les has also appear on: ITV’s That Sunday Night Show, BBC TV Spotlight News, and the following Radio Stations: BBC Radio Bristol, Duchy Hospital Radio, BBC Radio Cornwall, BBC Radio 4, Pirate FM, BBC Radio Five Live, ABC Radio Canberra Australia. He enjoys performing  and has given readings all over the UK and in Ndola Zambia.

 

A Poem by A.g. Synclair

Penang

Asian flowers-Hypanthia and Fern-
mindful of coiled rain

of Mothers milk,

suckling fallow greens and blues
satiated by ancient hands-leavened spirits-
giver and taker of lives,

of heart and will,

bereft of everlasting shi,
the bereaved-lost and alone-
borne of fruit, and gum trees, and pearl.

A.g. Synclair is an unapologetic pessimist, rule breaker, and rebel without a clue. When he isn't editing The Montucky Review and serving on the editorial staff of The Bookends Review, he is drinking from glasses that are perpetually half empty and hiding from the sun, which is clearly trying to kill him. Despite being extensively published around the globe, he flies under the radar. Deftly.

 

Three Poems by Ann Egan

Forget-me-not in June

Midsummer has passed,
I search the tangle of
grass, flowers and shrubs
for that solitary glimmer.

Blue lasted all these weeks,
months now, dearest son.
For one more day
I find the forget-me-not.

Late in season, a single bloom
flowers hope beyond time.



Ripples

That stone is a rabbit
crouched in the stream,
paws grapple the depths,
eyes maze in the light.

Ripples tackle his back,
flow sideways by his ears,
snout trembles at scents
locked in grey memory.



Soldier Leaves

Golden lights play on leaves,
transforms them to soldiers,

their burnished buttons glow
as they fasten their jackets

and close in beating hearts.
They mount their horses

while sulphur musts the air,
hooves pound tales to stone.

Little boys soft in mothers’ arms,
snuggle into shawls as flashes

blue their eyes with dreams,
their fingers curl fragrances,

their toes wriggle with life.
Solid ground grips their feet,

chilly air reds their faces,
marches them to canon’s clasp.

Buttons glow harsh forms,
steel chills peaceful hold,

lurks in sun’s lull on leaves.

Ann Egan is a poet and historian from the borders of counties Laois and Offaly, now living in Kildare, Ireland.  Her poetry collections are Landing the Sea (Bradshaw Books) and The Wren Women (Black Mountain Press) and Telling Time, (Bradshaw Books, 2012). A novel, Brigid of Kildare was published in 2001.

A Poem by J.lynn Sheridan

Bird-watching

Summer rain,
the flick of a gray titmouse tufted in a nest
of dried clover and moss,
one short trip to the feeder— lazy, needy,
mild and easy
in the light of thunder,
though,
you and I, we are
paralyzed
by rains of sorrow,
thirst-teased in our waking, our rising, 
bluffing behind our imposing need for lazy
feedings mild and easy.

Tell me if our weakness isn't really our strength,
tell me if our strength isn't really our weakness
and we have it all wrong, tell all the world
our summers need the thunder
and so do we
if we want to fly
against the driving rain.

 

 

 

J.lynn Sheridan writes in the Chain O’ Lakes of northern Illinois in a very ordinary house, but she’d rather live in an old hardware store for the aroma, ambiance, and possibilities. She has recently been published in Beyond the Dark Room and Storm Cycle  2012, Four and Twenty Literary Journal, The Plum Plum, Jellyfish Whispers, MouseTales Press, and Enhance. She is currently working on her first novel. Find her at writingonthesun.wordpress.com  and @J.lynnSheridan.

A Poem by Matthew Wylie

The Isle of Ulnegra

From this then

I call upon the flower peddler

            And the old man

Held by ambries,

 

Who stations himself

Between the sun and the sand

          So as to call upon the salt water

That it is ripe enough

          For your words.

 

Drawing on allusions of whole horses

Sperm whales,

And the trac-ed foot prints

of the monomaniacal Ocean,

      I wake up only once,

To behold the winter

Toeing the sand.

 

 

 

Matthew Wylie currently lives in Canada and teaches European Literature at a small private school in North York, Ontario.  Matthew’s works have been published in various scholarly / poetry journals, such as The Toronto Slavic Quarterly, Cinetext: Film and Philosophy, Temenos: Journal of Creative Writing, Ygdrasil: Journal of the Poetic Arts, International Zeitschrift, The Externalist:  A Journal of Perspectives,  and others.  He enjoys studying butterflies, entertaining the tigers that pace throughout the corridors of his home, photography, siestas, and sharks.   

Two Poems by Marianne Szlyk

Marigold

No one will ever say to me
“it was so
beautiful
it hurt.”

My red is not the red
of a carefully cultivated rose
against a white fence.

My orange is not the orange
of the lilies
crowding the base of a statue
of St. Francis of Assisi.

My petals are as stiff
as the plastic flowers
overflowing
in your mother’s closet.

My scent is musty,
from the days before
air conditioning.

Nonetheless,
I
am
a flower.


Black Locust after the Storm

The last black locust, half-dead,
totters at the edge of the cemetery;
its fellows’ branches and stacked wood
are scattered throughout.

This tree is the last living relative,
the last of the gangly old women
with clip-on earrings
or the last of the old men
with work-gnarled hands.

This tree is the last who remembers.

Marianne Szlyk is an associate professor of English at Montgomery College, Rockville as well as an associate editor at the Potomac Review.  Most recently, her poems have appeared in the Blue Hour Literary Anthology Volume Two, Jellyfish Whispers, and Aberration Labyrinth.

A Poem by Susan Dale

Southwest

Moccasin feet on jagged mountains

The mountains like giant lizards
changing colors with a sun’s whims.
Navajo sons lasso clouds of pipe smoke
drifting across vast deserts
of scrub brush and cacti.
and the sands moistened with the tears
of broken promises

The coyotes’ yowl; black bears growl

And mission bells peel

over sands of bobcats and tarantulas.

The clop-clop of a patient burro

plodding by mines of silver and copper
when night falls fast and cold
under wide sombrero skies. 

Susan Dale’s poems and fiction are on Eastown Fiction, Ken *Again, Penwood Review,  Yesteryear Fiction, Feathered Flounder, Hurricane Press, and Writing Disorder. In 2007, she won the grand prize for poetry from Oneswan.