ELEGY TO MY GRANDMOTHER

Grandmother’s gone
     She of the auburn red hair, braided into buns
     over her ears–

She can no longer advise me,
     she who gave me space
     as I grew into adulthood
     on that summer day when I was young.

She saw me as an adult
     the way no one else had.
     She made no judgments
     on my ways.
     She supported my moods
     however they showed.

She can no longer polish her
     hardwood floors.
     Her Swede-killer brush has gone
     and there is no one to wield it.
     Nor are there any floors
     to polish anymore–

Gone too are the windows I gazed from–
     into the soft summer nights
     when my heart was torn
     by desire and loss.

The windows where I saw the faint outlines
     and red tail lights of the car
     belonging to my heart’s first
     love and my body’s desire.

She is gone, who gave me a melancholy book
     to match my mood.
     She had been in that place–
     She knew what I needed–

She stood by me.

I miss her.

© Peggy Carter

TO ALL THE PARAKEETS & CANARIES OF THIS NATION

With all your chirping,
a peaceful sonnet, a Mozart’s opera,
jumping from twig to sprig,
making this world a lot lighter to carry,
making our shoulders lightly unstressed,
with all your fluttering and nervous flying,
wings in psychedelically
summer- and spring tinges,
showing loops and landing backwards,
in the hope to receive some juicy seed,
washing yourselves in a hugeness bath,
five millimetre by five,
and pairing only for the truly love
instead of making some meaningless fuss,
and when we are approaching,
heaven shines into your eyes
by thinking we will open the door
of the tropical aviary, by thinking
our hands will lift you up
to the common freedom...

© Bart Sonck

HAPPIEST YEARS AND YEARS

a thousand    this is the number of times you’ve watched this
portion of land explode    this microcosm of limbs and dreams
    which dry on this skin    thrown passionately aside…

try to forget your home    and this is the only way you’re able to
rebuild your skeleton    this butchered clump of veins and
ligaments    these memories which are of hands stirring tea and coffee…

atop the last of it    some other beautiful scrap of language
meaning    bodies and buildings    he sees    across some radiant
red shadow    which shatters the sun into train tracks cliffs and
graffiti    and for a moment    we all smile for the same reason…

© Daniel Dissinger

STORY FROM A CAGE

An out reached arm clasped mine then
settled a damaged heart in my hand.

All you possessed, you trusted it
and entrusted it to me. I held it delicate
as a bird with broken limb.

Your eyes peered with muted beauty,
(eros-untapped) as I wept into
a handful of pencil shavings.

Instinct kept our gaze, hoping.
For what? Neither of us knew, but we
were awake. In each other we could sense

a hiding place, from our decorated lives.
So we hid inside each other, safe.

I a shivering body come out from the sea,
She a warm towel wrapped herself around me.

Now days and years go by with dappled
rhythm and a pile of leaves gathers
on the linoleum floor of my kitchenette.

© K. J. Nolan

ROTTINGDEAN

In a jigsaw of flint,
of unlocking and interlocking
walls and gates, last year
still in flower.

New Year and the sun
making mercury and mirrors
in the pond in the village
in a dean-tuck in the Downs.

In the church of Saint Margaret
that heady-homely smell
of someone’s home
I can’t remember.

And who’s that man,
walking a gale-tight wire
between hill and sky
above the hunkered hawthorns?

Climbing up I find
not him but a swift exfoliation,
a superficial lessening
of me by the wind

and the windmill,
steel-re-skeletoned,
sail-stiff and black-aloof,

questioning its name.

© Phil Callaghan