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ANB March 2018 Guest Editor

Three Poems by Samuel J Fox

Bubble-Wrap Boy

 

I fall in love with every girl I float by next to on the street. I was born to die, and, though everyone is, God must hate me. My skin is made of the thinnest material. It resembles bubble-wrap. I’m bumpy: a translucent boy opaque, cloudy, with lust. I’ve been punctured before. All my hot air, all my inner workings, pour out like confessions. I’m absurd and yet I want what everyone else wants. I had a date the other night with a girl with eyes like needles. She probed my life and found nothing but wrinkles. She hasn’t called. If I ever feel the pressure of a pair of lips, the fingers dangerous along my malleable spine, the soft, rose quiet of pleasure and the death at its end, I think I might die anyway. I can’t hold scissors and run. I can’t hold anything too beautiful for too long because I know, if I trace its edges, I can die; then again, I feel this should be a common thing. People might consider the way it changes us, if more people were murdered by the sharpness of beauty.

Continue reading “Three Poems by Samuel J Fox” →

The Transformation by Emma McKervey

When I track the narrow paths which hide behind fences

where elder and trolleys and abandoned bins live

I know that this is cusp, this is a finding of a way for life

to rise from old potato peelings and discarded toys which gather there,

anticipate their transformation into something more,

but never quite catch the moment, though sometimes I glimpse

the heaving of a sigh beneath their own broken weight.

If a stag were to lose himself here he would turn golden,

summon me, and I would follow until he and I were one,

the hunter and the prey, follow where there are no fixed paths

through death, through grief.  I reminded my father of a time

a stag bounded in front of his car at dusk, but he wasn’t sure

if that had been my dream or if it had belonged to him.

 

Continue reading “The Transformation by Emma McKervey” →

Stealing Sleipnir by Alison Lock

In Nordic mythology Sleipnir is Odin’s steed, the foal of Loki and Svaðilfari

 

I am fastened to the skim-race of a sly night.

Shadows fall, tin pots clank, slab-roofs trill.

My eyelids stutter. A silhouette before me – equine-like,

up-folded wings, serrations of fine spine-feathers.

A shadow-foal, a rider with a ghost-drawn face, lines

ploughed by a brazen sun or a blistering frost.

 

There’s the fit-fickle thunder-hiss of a merciless wind: all clinker,

the slag of irradiated soil, metal shards, eyelets, pinions,

grease, the multifarious detritus of battle. Odin seeks his revenge.

 

I run from the ankle-snatch of tumbleweed. Weightless. Slipping

through a crack of light, I cross the threshold

in a screech, as if all nesting owls have been released.

Continue reading “Stealing Sleipnir by Alison Lock” →

Two Poems by Kate Garrett

When you converted to vampirism

 

you took me with you like a schoolgirl crush

and renamed me in her image. You carried your

 

halo well—a wisp of cloudlight through the pub

window when you told me I belong in the chapel

 

of bones, that making a pilgrimage to the town

built on death would suit my medieval fixations.

 

But with ink held under our tongues like cyanide

– Camus, Pessoa – we hadn’t grown up. Your voice

 

was a needle skip around a pistol grip, while I cider-

drenched wraiths only I could see. We based ourselves

 

on bloodstains, never let on we’d sunbleached them to dust;

we never let on these winding sheets were lifted

 

from a well-mannered airing cupboard, the emperor’s

new shrouds – hiding inside them with hearts that still beat.

  Continue reading “Two Poems by Kate Garrett” →

Invitation To Move On by Jonathan Humble

I am small in the sea, pushed around

by waves that care not for any grain of sand

or stuff that floats in old men’s heads.

 

Arms held wide and high, that reach and cling

like a child to a parent when things get rough,

when routines fail and muscles waste.

 

I hesitate, recoil, cower; skin so thin

these cold water blades could spill these guts

for waiting gulls and wash away this name.

 

I am caught like the sun, falling

and hoping to rise again, the horizon watched

from a base of arched feet, soft soles and toes

 

exposed to the hidden sharpness of shadows.

And though these whispered sea breezes,

with caresses would show the way,

 

for that bastard time waits not for me,

until I learn to surrender, immerse this body,

allow these legs to float and lay back this head,

 

could I ever take in the whole of the sky?

 

Continue reading “Invitation To Move On by Jonathan Humble” →

How to Tell Men Apart by Breslin White

If it’s a backflip, then it’s Star

Wars. If it’s a front flip, then

it’s swimming. The exception is

when Luke pulls out his green light

saber from nowhere. If the only

swimmer you know is Michael Phelps,

then you may be guilty of watching

the morning news, as well as

breaking your swimmer’s diet on

Thanksgiving. “Only a few days

left until New Years resolutions,”

you say. But I need a tell, a

safety valve. A promise to keep

the athlete fit. When we can’t tell,

then I feel constrained, lost. My

gills subside in these shallow waters.

 

Continue reading “How to Tell Men Apart by Breslin White” →

What Else Can I Do? by Rob True

Working while the madness allows. On and off. As little as possible, to tell the truth. It’s fuckin killing me. Shattered image of me in desolate dream mirror and somewhere outside me, floating. Holding it together and holding it down, best as I can. Opioid void of nowhere droid.

Tramadol, Morphine, Temgesic relief. Stolen from medicine cupboards and begged off anyone with a bad back, or broken bones. Prescribed for shoulder injury, used for cracked mind. Takes the edge off. Keeps the shadows from closing in. Stops the terrible doom feeling it’s all going to come crashing down around me. Everything I’ve tried hard to create as a better life. An illusion of peace and sanity. All removed by madness. Deleted. Love too? Without the love, I’d disappear. Dissolve into background of blue blur fuzz. Leave only eyeballs floating in air against blue backdrop. Continue reading “What Else Can I Do? by Rob True” →

Forgotten Astronaut by Spangle McQueen

Even if you were not born yet

the matter from which you were made

is in this picture

 

and I cannot decide if this means

that nothing really matters or that

everything matters.

 

Sunday morning silence.

 

Self-imposed solitude

contemplating an unaccompanied cosmonaut.

 

Left in lunar orbit

to keep the systems running

while Armstrong and Aldrin are Moon-bound, Glory-bound

Collins loses all communication with the Earth

and takes a snapshot.

 

No earthly loneliness could match such isolation

and yet

sometimes I feel like the sole survivor of a mission that failed

and I never even got the chance to walk on the Moon.

 

Continue reading “Forgotten Astronaut by Spangle McQueen” →

Three Poems by Ivan de Monbrison

Another Journey

 

It’s still early

you’re through with work now

you go home and the streets are crowded with passers-by

there is like the deafening sound of a song in the headphones over your ears that isolates you more or less from the others

so you take off the headphones

but it is not you that I see in the street

but a stranger

and I don’t know if I am dreaming or not

as you have deserted me

so I don’t care anymore about anything

and I walk back home like a ghost Continue reading “Three Poems by Ivan de Monbrison” →

Solitaire by Attracta Fahy

‘I don’t know what to feel, she said,

now you know the truth,

How can this cloak of shame

that shawls my body,

scrape the bad feeling from my skin?’

 

Where are the sisters, brothers, 

in psyche to reassure? 

 

What is it when we reveal scars

that make us who we are?

Through windows, basin eyes

stare at mine, precious

manuscript blobbed in stains.

 

And who can tell if pain has learned

to smile? Easier to blame ourselves,

to break the occult code

on your soul. Head in arms,

muscled over piercing ears.

Hearing either wounds,

or heals the listener.

 

There are no accolades for

this epic journey,

bare labyrinthine thorns,

a broken bird lived – in faith

that love would come,

sea silk full with arduous baggage,

holding the key.

 

Across fields, buttercups

carpet grass, tiny cauldrons

filled with sun.

Within, a door stayed open.

The cow who listened, benevolent

eyes cushioned youth, flaying on

a makeshift swing.

But never mind those things

for now,

You are here, and

I am listening. 

 

Continue reading “Solitaire by Attracta Fahy” →

A Bacon Sandwich by Jim Gibson

I leave the house in my jogging bottoms and hoody. It’s the not so early morning in spring and I’m headed up to the corner shop for a loaf of bread and bacon, you know the stuff that says with added water on the packet like it’s something to be proud of, because it’s Saturday and when you live on your own, you’ve got to give yourself little rewards for making it to another weekend. Couples get to lie in together with hangovers but, when you’re on your own, the bed just doesn’t stay warm and a bacon sandwich on buttered white bread is a home remedy that feels like it’s been unconsciously passed down through the ages. Continue reading “A Bacon Sandwich by Jim Gibson” →

Two Poems by Annette Skade

Glass

 

The mirror in this rented room is fixed

exactly to reflect my pillowed face,

the first thing I set eyes on when I wake.

 

Most nights I hang a hasty covering

to save me from the sight of cheeks caved,

bags under eyes, mottled age.

 

Or is it in case my other self steals

out from behind thin silver, feels

its way across the gulf to enter me,

 

so I start to do everything backwards,

miss my mouth, turn notebook sideways,

my words always edgeways.

 

Or if for fear I die before night passes,

and that other world traps my soul fast.

I am forever pinned under glass.

 

Continue reading “Two Poems by Annette Skade” →

L’Idole by Laura Izabela

Oblivious,

you pray for the cure at dawn whilst the light melts off your skin.

Icarus, hopeless bird-child,

you put a knife in your back, twist,

fall off a bridge to vex the sun, tranquil.

It is meaningless

whatever you decide to do.

Shame clouds your judgement now, it consumes you as

you feed on your soul, always: search for the heart.

Thoughts destroy structure —

on a moonless night, with two dark stars,

they are the makers of the world.

Continue reading “L’Idole by Laura Izabela” →

Night Photos of Newstead Village & a Poem by Sophie Pitchford

Pitchford _Tungsten 2

 

 

Tungsten

 

the light is

tungsten

tungsten

my incandescent affiliation

street lights emit orange

tungsten lights, bless

anoint the streets with orange haze, creates vignette

turns street in to theatre

under street light is under spotlight

glow from window illuminates intricate net-curtain-call

There is life inside, electricity

rows and rows of windows glow,

currents of electricity form circuit board called estate, village

street light snoot renders unsuspecting object still-life masterpiece

catchlight from car roof becomes moon-lit-fjord

until sun rise

garish day-time, floods night-time majesty

over-exposed

until sun set Continue reading “Night Photos of Newstead Village & a Poem by Sophie Pitchford” →

Plastic Eggs by C.B. Auder

Our parents were

not perfect but they qualified.

Unwrapped an egg every third June

and found a fresh baby the following spring.

For the rest, Mother relied on The Joy of

Cooking, Similac and Dr. Spock. Dad’s double-

starched dress greens. Precise and crisply

calibrated rules. Yellow JELL-O our standard

bone-and-hide treat. Annual portions

of Betty Crocker meted from any birthday

hopes we could pour neatly into a nine-inch pan.

 

A home that ran on time and solid logic, not some wild

moment’s unexpected demands. Nine rooms, all safe.

All quiet. Childhood without a care. Funny,

that I once believed we somehow shared

a superior brand of family

rites. I ate it up head-first, the hollow

bunny who gave its only chocolate life

to sweeten our spic-and-span Easter feast.

(And weren’t they healthful, those boiled

carrots? Weren’t they dependable, those

finely-grated feelings and well-peppered fears?)

 

Forty years later, Mother still tries.

The kitchen calendar says MARCH

so she hustles to baptize the fresh baby

asparagus to mush. She forks a ham

before our childless eyes. Hacks

with knob-fingered vigor at its unnaturally-pink

cloved flesh. Half-blind, she still rises

to measure every oinking slice. She will die vying

for control of all the mashed notions of the perfect

adults she’s somehow gathered

we have become.

Continue reading “Plastic Eggs by C.B. Auder” →

Three Poems by Laura Potts

The Body Broken

 

Mass and Sunday mourning pass the chancel black

and chalice-back of I, spire-spined and last to part

my plumping bud to take the nocturne wine. Mine

 

the softly hills, mine the spill and steeple-swing

of fruiting breasts and bells, yes. We break the bread

and bless. Lady in the lancet holds the apple mocking red.

 

Dappled chant and dark, ahead the blood-bright night

and first-light glass of gasping Eve, winter’s heave

hangs always here with heads that bow before the vow

 

to never grieve the leaving eyes of youth. Truth

is lost and winterworn. Borne away on snarling winds,

the greening drop of spring falls from my hair. The cleric’s

 

cloak is a darkly thing. My deeper, deeper throat

receives the gloaming sermon there, heir of the berry

dreamt to burst in his hand. Damn the vestal

 

up-and-swung of lust that Woman loved, budblood

and the Garden singing skin and pink bouquets, but

turn the tongue beyond the Book and in the darkest

 

places hold the harvest fruit and look above and long

to lasting-touch the apple that is loathed so much.

Such is Sunday mass and curse of we, the curled

 

Madonnas kneeling with a screaming in our skirts.

The weakly bread we break and nurse. And vow and

kneel and slaughter one more godless book of verse.

Continue reading “Three Poems by Laura Potts” →

Charon’s Amusement Arcade by BR Williams

It really messed me up, it did. For months after my discharge, even the sound of my own farts would send me, you know, wherever it was I went. I would just freeze up. Go into a kind of dead-face trance. I was a big lad back then, and it was difficult for people to get me moving again once I’d stopped. So I’d end up staying there for a while like, in the street, wherever, just staring at the grey clouds on the horizon. At one stage, it got so bad that when I was offered a job at the local arcade – one of them bandit places – my counsellor practically begged me not to take it. She said the flashing lights and the noise of the coins dropping would be too much for me to handle. She made it sound like I’d end my shift fitting on the mucky carpet there, like some sort of fucking fish. But I had to give it a try. It was the only job offer I’d had since landing back on civvy street, and staying in the house all day with my parents tip-toeing nervously around me, well that was sending me another kind of crazy. I was starting to feel like one of them fucking bombs I was so Continue reading “Charon’s Amusement Arcade by BR Williams” →

Three Poems by Jared A. Carnie

Memory

 

The offices merge, and the

dinners and the nights out.

 

Even, embarrassingly, the aunts

and the children of friends.

 

But never the sunrises.

Each one mapped distinctly

across my veins

like a new and still-blossoming love.

Continue reading “Three Poems by Jared A. Carnie” →

gibbous moon waxing by Lewis Ellingham

gibbous moon waxing

Continue reading “gibbous moon waxing by Lewis Ellingham” →

After the 10th Date by Sam Frost

I’ll make jokes about death. Give names to the bunnies locked between coyote teeth as we walk through the forest with bare feet. Go to your apartment. Drop to the floor. Hide under blankets until the air is too warm. Stick heads out and kiss. Stand up, I’ll watch as the covers shift off, leave you naked. Grab a bottle from the counter. Come back. Take the first sip then pass it to me. I’ll crinkle my face and say no more. But that just means I want you to get a glass of water for me to sip after each pull. You’ll know that.

Play music. Dance with me. Wait till our eyes are clouded just a bit. I’ll look up at you. You’ll look down. The whole world between my nose and yours. Eyes lock. We’ll have to fill the gap. Lace your fingers through my hair. Sit on the ground. Grab the bottle. Continue reading “After the 10th Date by Sam Frost” →

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