|
Contributors in this issue:
- Paul Murphy
Richard Vallance
Pete Watson
Pavol Janik
David R. Morgan
Matt Duggan
Ian Lowery
Dolores Guglielmo
Andrew Smith
Alexander Williamson
Joe Cushnan
Brian Hardie
Nicholas Monks
Ggarrett
Vivienne Romilly-Weightman
Elise
Eleanor Clare
Paul Curtis
Andy Botterill
Michaela Sefler
Pauline Charlton
Jon Stocks
Val Binney
Teri Louise
Louise Wilford
Mike Gwynne
Sally Walker
Samatar Elmi
Christopher Twose
Caroline Tuten
Moira Andrew
Jerome Brooke
Noel Williams
Sharran Windwalker
Pat Farrington
Marie Marshall
Siva Monsieur
Sally Plumb
Mary Ann Sullivan
John J. Cunningham
Natalie Williams
Tendai Mwanaka
James McInerney
Bob Campbell
Joe Dillon
Carlos Nogueirus
Henry Blake
Adam Tod Leverton
Christopher Barnes
Sherry Lochan
M F Bopape
Anthony Ward
Austin McCarron
Alex Chornyj
Charles Frederickson
Matt Roberts
Elizabeth Alexander
Arhan Virdi
Jackie Fellague
John O'Malley
Lorraine Chlond
Robert D. Morritt
P. J. Hancock
Ben Macnair
|
Latest Decanto Issue.
Welcome to the February issue of Decanto!
Thank you all for taking the time to send
us your poems - I have enjoyed reading
through them. We would like to say thank
you to all the contributors listed on the
left, and some of them have extracts of
their work displayed on this page. Click
on a name in italics, and you will see an
example of their work.
I would also like to thank Brian Hardie
for taking the spotlight in this
edition’s Centre Stage poet
section.
I would like to say a huge thank you to
Alexander Mergold, for the very kind use
of one of his outstanding hand made
puppets featured on this edition's cover.
If you would like to see more of his work
please go to: www.freewebs.com/amcreatures
and blog amcreatures.livejournal.com
The current issue of Decanto is available
for £3.99 inc p&p. Please refer to
the Contact
Us page for details of how to
order, or order below using PayPal.
|
For poets ordering from OUTSIDE the
EU
If you wish to pay via paypal
please click this button. The price
via paypal including P&P is
£4.49p - If you wish to
purchase a particular issue please
enter it into the text entry. If
not, we will send the current
issue.
|
|
|
For poets ordering from WITHIN the
EU
If you wish to pay via paypal
please click this button. The price
via paypal including P&P is
£3.99p - If you wish to
purchase a particular issue please
enter it into the text entry. If
not, we will send the current
issue.
|
|
OF YOU
We are well aware that we know
your possessions will never be needed
but we keep them in an ottoman
because we cannot let them go.
Sometimes we kneel in ceremony
handling the fabrics, trying to
recall
the last time you wore a hat, a
scarf,
trying to see your shape, your arm, your
knee.
We slide hands into gloves and
sleeves
trying to resurrect your form
hesitate in the hopelessness of it
all,
scavengers, no better than thieves.
We picture the colours of you,
the meadows of imagination,
we maintain a sense of connection,
feel your red, your yellow, your
blue.
© Joe Cushnan
back to
top
MUD HOUSE
Rarely, my coffee is paid for here, whether
or not I print pages of
domestic pledge or derivative landscape, or
another thought
answering “yes” to it amongst.
The hand of my soul weather
breaks the train, stretching out to yearn,
the behaviour beside experience
is given. I hear the need exaggerate the
hesitation of
tackling Holy Land roads back to a
cocktail. Long floor boards
fade and leak into the eyes and walls,
fluttering attempts to return,
balding the stress head, the swelling of
wedding fingers, void
experiments longing for faith formulating a
terror turn. A symbol
imagines epiphany, wandering her danger
maze. Populated self talk
conceives red sheets around the stick of
white skin. Itching tight
with knees we are down onto pleading
demands, cleaning out the
consistent talent to freelance and
frustrate. Narrator block
vanishes, appearing sick before me and lays
frightened for days.
Quick churns, bellies gastro-inject from
product preaching the
port. Speechless, castrated intense
traumatic. Quietly lush with life
I hibernate until dawn, early chills of
October came, pine needles
blown away from the hay stack charm,
dangling espresso beneath again.
© Brian Hardie
back to
top
ONE DAY IN FEBRUARY
Some days
I go whole spaces of time
not thinking about it;
I bar the way with rods grown
cobalt,
rust-sawn in salt-struck air.
I sandbag the doors.
These days don’t involve
London.
They are active excisions of the
place,
attempts to forget bookshops
that mean the world and everything
I wanted,
All that I wanted and the world.
Then I remember the actuality of it,
its real-time qualities.
There you were, and there she was,
soft lights and sepia-spun because you had
never met her
(fictive but also unimaginable,
somehow)
There was coffee with foam, laced like
butterflies
and interruption in the form of
customisation
– vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, and
chocolate –
the appalling undertone of the detergent
they use there.
Then a decision, there was a chance to
cover tracks,
an opportunity taken, and there were
eyes
eyes bigger than saucers, and not even
averted.
I did not buy you that book
so that you could convince her of it,
measure out its merits between
you.
What did I do that day,
The day that happened I can’t
remember
Because nobody told me about it.
What did I feel anxious about, or
was I fine, did I slip into lidless
sleep
thinking I knew the important
things,
wanting ways out and quietude that was
non-medical
a pill you recommended
because I was inscrutable,
and you were lying.
How to ensure the linear reach of
time,
how to deny days circularity
perform complete erasure
and not resent its necessity.
Find new pace, doors without
latches,
new books unformed, unread,
unsold;
books unsullied
and no word of February,
the lull of empty signifiers.
© Eleanor Clare
back to
top
THE LAST SUPPER
Today you will not talk, no matter
how
I bruit and rattle the house to let you
know
I am there, you will only have your
book.
Despite the knot in my lungs, I love
your
concentration, the lines above the
bridge
of your nose, which tell me you know I
am
watching; and you remember how the
bed
scrambled and bowed yesterday, the
only
onlookers two unmatched glasses
dregged
by a faint cheapness of wine. No, our
love
was never engineered, machined to a
thou;
it was master-painted, perfect on a dry
wall,
in the surety that it would fade and
flake
from the first day. And, oh God, it
remains
a blasphemous wonder in its own
right.
© Marie Marshall
back to
top
|