CONTENTS
# 'Portrait of an Alter Ego' & '21st Century Panacea' by Vikki C
# 'Camera Glare', 'Gnostic' & 'Growing Without Movement' by Osahon Oka
# 'Boreal Twilight' & 'Currents' by Martin Breul
# 'Too Warm to be Lucid, Too Cold to be Delirious' by Savhanha Small Nguyen
# 'Arithmetic Word Problem: On Turning Fifty', 'The Birds Know Why' & 'When Travelling
Makes You Feel Like a Time Traveller' by Bob King
# 'Three photographs', 'Cold' & 'June's Air' by Andy Perrin
# 'Statewide Lockdown, Day Thirty' & 'But What Would the Neighbors Think' by Ace Boggess
# 'A Song of Broken Bones' & 'A Song of a Shot from Downtown' by David Harrison Horton
# 'I'm Sure It's Been Done Before' & 'Every Night Now The Woods Are Gone' by
# 'Morning, New Years Day', 'Wintering' & 'My Global Position' by Bill Verble
# 'About Love' & 'Sweet Night' by Yuu Ikeda
# 'Sally Ann Band' by Henry Hudson
​
Letter From The Editor
Dear Readers,
​
This Volume of the Magazine has surprised me at every turn, not only did our first round of submissions for the Volume yield an entire magazine's worth of material causing us to jump straight into Volume 6 subs the following month(!!!), but Volume 5 has been built exclusively using poetry and just 3 beautiful photographs.
​
By its very nature Spare Parts Literary is the beautiful sum of its parts, and the submissions we receive dictate the entire shape and feel of each Volume. Like the treasures brought in on a wave, an unexpected bounty, a collection of found things, each with its own private history, journey, meaning... yet somehow, held all together in the same cupped hands, they belong - each worn soft by their travels, each lost and now found, each wanting for a home.
​
With the sudden rise of the use of AI programs, the lit community are facing a bizarre threat to the sanctity and integrity of our craft. It strikes me as such a crazy situation - something I would delightedly read in a little SciFi pub and remark to friends "wow wouldn't that be nuts?" In fact I am tempted to open subs up in the summer to exclusively Anti-AI submissions (what d'you think? Let me know if you'd be up for something like this on our twitter page).
​
Humanity is on full display in Volume 5, the works in this collection explore our flesh, our souls and our spirits. Each writer challenges the ineffable, fully human experience of being, of living and hurting, loving, connecting, losing, listening, processing and seeking our place.
​
Spare Parts Literary is and always will be a place for these kinds of expression, for human to human contact, a safe place for the spirit.
So, it is with great gratitude and joy that I welcome you to read the beautiful, bruising & curative Spare Parts Lit Volume 5.
​
Oak Ayling
Oak Ayling
(Editor in Chief)
Vol 5.
PORTRAIT OF AN ALTER EGO
BY VIKKI C.
It is easy accepting you in a cracked mirror
and almost surreal how your features are not distorted
when an artist looks at themself, this is an everyday image
a face supposedly split by a fracture, which only beautifies.
I wouldn't trust the mirror or the light but
without calling on clichés of broken things,
life's portrait is most real when askew and tainted.
It must be from that time our expectations collided.
You often carried stones in your pocket and I made good attempts
at sinking my troubles in that Richmond river,
letting the trains run late in my head so I could blame the season for my languor,
your side of the bed darkens, even as amber translates my pale mourning body into pseudo-lilies.
Even when I think sadness has left and satori possibly exists, you sling a heavy object to remind us about the dynamics. Habitual damage before sitting like a deathwish at that illegal bistro, savouring overpriced oysters with Pinot Noir.
The mirror's bronze paisley frame keeps it together but weaknesses are showing.
When the faultline deepens and your torso is split open, you'd find no heart left. And I would not be surprised. But we'd call it artistry or something abstract and move on to the next wall. Wishing for a slight break. An almost feeling. The image of a raven.
21ST CENTURY PANACEA
History sleeps in half lit corners
the wells of my sad mascaraed eyes turning to the Cornish coast
the decaying orchard that swallows old light
homes we occupied as wildlings
cities that harbour the colours of morning afters
with laughter and promises in our bellies
the graffitied walls we denied vandalising with a Plath poem
the obsession of summer and your cologne
the affair, the marriage, the babies
the romance of decline, destruction, bad debts, gaslighting
the dose of pills to erase the trauma
the ones we take in excess for all the worlds we were not born into
we don't count years anymore, just wars that come through the window
chain your limbs to insomnia, relive that impact, of metal on flesh
(or your warm body perhaps, when things were good)
the divorce, the therapy, the isolation regardless of lockdown,
the hospital screens, the horizon – flatlining,
the ending, the aftermath – the poetry
when I am long gone, tell them I was an outcast and a bibliophile
who read and wrote many things,
but true revolution, the history of a woman – is not born in books.
Vikki C. is a British-born writer and poet from London whose work features vivid imagery inspired by existentialism, science, nature and surrealism. Her poetry appears (or is forthcoming) in both print anthologies and online journals. These include Black Bough Poetry, Kobayaashi Studios, Acropolis Journal, Loft Books, Literary Revelations and Ice Floe Press.
In December 2022, Vikki released her debut chapbook 'The Art of Glass Houses' - a collection of aesthetic poetry and prose on intersecting themes of life, existentialism and art.
Whilst London is home, Vikki has also lived and worked in cities across Asia, attributing her artistic perspectives to such cross-cultural influences. She is an avid pianist and musician who composes with a focus on "cinematic style" accompaniments for spoken poetry and prose. Her voice and poetry have been featured in various spoken word and audio collaborations. Twitter
CAMERA GLARE
By Osahon Oka
The distant image of Christ
is a blood clot in the cornea
of the wounded. You can't
see his feet drip down from your crooked
neck, swinging to time, measuring
& measuring the mean & median,
the revolution of a door around its beam.
You can't hear his voice fall soft & palmed
on the head of the body fading beside him,
nameless. You're named in camera
glare, in the remorseless
scar of faces peeling off the cheap picnic
trip. & everyone is falling over to see
you, to take a part of you into themselves,
sacrament. But the saviour hangs
lower than a flag at half mast, knees
sagged with the weightlessness
of pain. You can't hear his ribs
creak like drowned ships rising
into wave & tow, pale as
peeled flesh & bone, grinding
through the straits, beached whales.
You don't hear your mother gently
pat where you first existed as
hope & how everything has flattened
into a silted stream. Christ
breathes, a rasp of wings returning
to roost & from among those removing
their eyes back to their clenched
fists, you dance leafless as a tree
in winter, shrieking curtains ripping
away, photographs in puzzle pieces.
Your head rests on the soft
shoulder of moonlight; aureole.
GNOSTIC
What if you're expunged from grace;
gnostic gospel & all the worlds written
inside you blacked out like state secrets,
Whatever you're growing towards
pulled from the earth's soft mouth,
harvested like organs & you're a lie
of existence, fiction? What if the wind
rubs callused palms against your epitaph
& you're made faint, unclogging
a sinking scream, lowering yourself
into rusty glow of harmattan but
your body is tactile, its heft shifting
the Earth's crust, the earth fueling
itself with absence, each shift of matter
cranking the engine room, motioning
the planet towards collision? Darling,
which millennium is buried
in your absence?
GROWING WITHOUT MOVEMENT
We are space, opened scab,
a wormhole filled with intent.
We do not know why but as mass
we determine. We decide.
Therefore we say progress, motion,
development. It is the thought
that counts, the idea, the wish
for things greater than where can I be?
or not. That is the question, isn't it?
That stills your heart, makes the world
tremble before your eyelids.
& It cracks, the seams running
with liquid mirror. Everything pools
at your feet & mostly, you go
without movement. We grow.
We amass, expand, deflate,
contract into tiny holes,
seeking for universes that will take
only us, only our names on
the blackboard, on the echo
of waterfalls & ancient caves.
Osahon Oka is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominated poet. He is the winner of the Brigitte Poirson Poetry Contest June, 2017 and a winner of the Visual Verse Autumn Writing Prize 2022. His poems has appeared or forthcoming on TaAdesa, WildPine, Icefloe Press, Crowstep and elsewhere. He lives and works in Benin City, Nigeria. Twitter
BOREAL TWILIGHT
BY MARTIN BREUL
Bronze undergrowth clings
to birch bark stems
like a congregation of acolytes
enveloping the marble shimmering columns
reflecting heavenly light in prayer.
In the clearing, a single rooted spike keeps apart
his frosted needles shiver with envy,
while the murky water whispers
crooked words to the outcast.
CURRENTS
Clouds are memories sublimating
then falling. Dropping into language
word by word, streaming in sentences
through a letter ocean congregating in
personal tales, holding out until
grammar is lost dispersion
syllables emulsify
and become
shapeless; legible still
only through
foam patterns
forming vortices
on top of the sea
like the network
of calloused rifts carved into a palm
by age
unable to find words
for what
is
etched in skin
Martin Breul lives and writes in Montréal. His works of poetry and flash fiction have appeared in print and online with Acta Victoriana, Wet Grain, Variety Pack, Speculative Books, and others. He was nominated for BOTN 2023 and was awarded the Mona Elaine Adilman Prize for his eco-poetry by McGill University in 2021. Twitter
TOO WARM TO BE LUCID, TOO COLD TO BE DELIRIOUS
BY SAVHANHA SMALL Nguyen
We're about six degrees short of a fever dream,
of people perforating under streetlights
those everyday spotlights
warm your way into my heart
we need an excuse to justify
pleas of alimony
subject to subterfuge
help me to testify.
You're fucking ruthless.
I'll lose myself to you
my own self sacrificial lamb
feel you like a dying fire
desperation
thirst for first
I'm scared.
Hold my hand and help yourself,
I'm all yours.
Call me a nihilist, I only believe in myself.
This world rests on a bed of nails,
unsubstantiated claims of moralism.
Do-gooders, we all know better.
So do better
Do better than yourself.
I call that, progression.
To get anywhere, you have to surpass yourself.
That's the difference, see:
Between going nowhere and somewhere -
Take a step forward and drag that heap of blood, skin, and cells along for the ride.
​
You get lighter,
what with all the shit you leave behind.
Savhanha Small Nguyen is an upcoming poet and writer from Birmingham, UK; her interests are poetry, people, and the sheer magnitude of storytelling through word games and the manipulation of language. Savhanha is currently experimenting with a range of artistic forms, attempting to redefine what it means to ‘perform’. In line with her cultural heritage, Savhanha is trying to reconnect with her Jamaican and Vietnamese lineage through her work whilst navigating the disconnect that these cultures have with her identity. As a poet, Savhanha explores trauma, memories, and moments of grief and joy that mark momentous occasions in her life. Twitter
ARITHMETIC WORD PROBLEM:
ON TURNING FIFTY
By Bob King
We’re creeping up on 120 billion
people who have ever lived, with
about 15% of those, alive now. We
think that’s a lot, but if each of us
is a grain of sand, that’s only enough
sand to fill a swimming pool that’s
44 feet long & 22 feet wide & 4.5
feet deep. Yeah, I did the math.
I did the math because we’re always
thinking that if we can measure it,
we can give it meaning. Mass &
volume & time. Carbon & helium &
hydrogen & nitrogen & silica & oxygen.
And yet, we’d never call ourselves sand.
Instead, we tend to think we’re the shell
stuck in that sand, the shell that’s half-
in-half-out, emerging not retreating,
pearlescent & brilliantly painted by
nature & standing like a monument—
like a tree, as much visible as invisible,
waiting for a sunrise beachcomber
as the waves ebb on that island that
we can’t get back to soon enough.
That beach we think about as we
caress the hollows & points of our
trophy shells that now sit in the
crystal bowl in the living room.
Collecting dust. Those shells aren’t
toys but are daydreams & memories.
Sorry to tell you, but we’re not that
heirloom shell, either. We’re never
the lettered olive, lightning whelk,
or banded tulip we think we are.
We’re not even the cascading mix
of sand & surf who offered up that
gorgeous husk. We’re only the sand’s
dust, motes spinning through this
weird universe on our round rock
that for all purposes shouldn’t
even exist. Fluke explosion. Rock
among other rocks. Orb circling
other orbs at incomprehensible
miles per hour. Poof. Proof of
something-anything is all we
ask for…. Alright fine. All right,
how about this? How about the fact
that our rock is the only one with
wine. And art. And poetry. And
running & lush gardens & warm
rain & black basalt cobblestone streets
& tiramisu & hugs & a wife’s electric
laughter & daughters laugh-crying
into each other’s shoulders. And
love. God, there’s just so much
& so little at the same time. And so,
I think about all the people who
didn’t get to fifty, the tinkling tide
pulling them back to the depths
far too soon. I think of all those
grains of sand & beaches I’ve
dipped my toes into & shells I’ve
passed by or picked up or connected
with or caught a lustrous glint of
as another breathtaking sunrise
greeted me. Gosh, any day we see
the sunrise is a good day. And I’m
grateful. I’m just so terribly grateful.
THE BIRDS KNOW WHY
The birds know why my wife sleep-talk-
mumbled when I got into bed an hour
after her, & apparently only the birds
know why. The birds don’t know why
the English call their women birds, but
apparently Mary the Virgin was called
a burde with a U & an E & as the spelling
changed, it stuck & the birds know
why. Or perhaps they’re jailbirds,
caged & singing, as when we do bird,
slang for doing time, & only the birds
know why & it’s not too different
from Americans & chicks & yeah yeah,
can you dig it, you jazz saxophonist,
you Charlie Parker migrating your
notes all over Manhattan where &
when even the birds on the wires were
calling out our names like counted crows
& entertained & improvised & no longer
empty-staffed empty-noted sheet music.
Longing is both the cause & effect of
belonging. My wife whose rump is sandstone
& flax / whose rump is the back of a swan
& the spring / my wife with the sex
of an iris / a mine and a platypus
& call enough women birds & soon
enough, you become the migrator,
you become the lonely traveler,
as lonely as a traveler in the American
West in a Cormac McCarthy novel,
which isn’t too different from loneliness
in a Hopper painting, which isn’t too
different from the French & their love
of alienation & existentialism, which isn’t
too different from both the myth itself
& the destruction of the myth of
the American Dream, family unit,
masculinity or loneliness itself in
Willy’s death in Death of a Salesman or
disintegration in a Sam Shepard play.
Like a Northern Cardinal sitting alone
in a berry-barren crabapple tree during
mid-December’s first snowstorm. Do
the birds know why there’s burnt toast
& corn husks all over the stage? Are
those same birds picky about the hybrid
crops they eat, particularly in the loneliness
of the season’s first snowstorm? Why some
birds can understand each other’s
separate language, while others can’t.
I’d love to speak French or Hindi, but
I’m a sadly single-tooled westerner.
Why some birds build & use multipart
tools & Homo sapiens can’t until our
5th birthday. Why migration, why brood
parasites or infanticide. Pebble exchange
& nests from fishing line & cigarette
butts. Why with that brain as big as
a grain of rice they can recognize human
faces, grasp self, act like Machiavelli,
display their façade memory like humans
& like humans give taxonomy to species’
feces, roll with monogamy or promiscuity
or corkscrew-shaped genitalia, & sort
those elaborate New Guinean jungle
courtship rituals, dressed in their most
glitzy & bedazzled Broadway costumes.
My wife whose hair is a brush fire
whose thoughts are summer lightning
my wife knows why Australian hawks
track brush fires & have even been known
to fly with lit sticks to drop & arson another
patch of scrub, shrubbery, undergrowth.
The birds know why. The birds know.
They know why curiosity—my wife’s
most noble characteristic. My wife with
eyes that are forests forever under the axe
my wife with eyes that are the equal
of water and air and earth and fire.
And the Bowerbird asks, Are the blue
decorations enough for you? Are my
cognitive abilities capable enough,
to the point where you’d mate
with me? You do know you’re the
architect of my neural networks &
artistic creations, beauty evolved from
your perception of beauty, my survival
always mostly a matter of mostly your
aesthetics. Mini delicious flying dinosaurs,
I think I’d rather fight 1 10-foot chicken
than 100 1-foot white domesticated fowl
beside the red wheelbarrow glazed
with rainwater. Orioles & Cardinals
& Blue Jays & Sesame Street’s giant
anthropomorphic bird who frequently
misunderstands the why of the why,
& it’s not an albatross if you go to
therapy to learn to see things differently,
which is one of the main differences
between adult & juvenile feather
patterns. The fact is, the birds know
why if/when I have trouble sleeping,
if/why my brain’s on fire & need to
reset my hair on fire, all I have to do
is press my bare chest, my birdcage,
my ribcage to the back of my wife’s
ribcage, beats synchronizing like
jazz, like the release of something
terrible, just by naming it, just by
saying it & singing it & maybe even
loving it & the birds know why.
+ Inspired by The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think by Jennifer Ackerman (2020), The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman (2015), “Free Union” by Andre Breton (1921), “Round Here” by Counting Crows (1993), “Ornithology” by Charlie Parker, The Road & The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy (2006 & 2022), Nighthawks by Edward Hopper (1942), Death of Salesman by Arthur Miller (1949), Buried Child & True West by Sam Shepard (1978 & 1980), & “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams (1923).
WHEN INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL MAKES YOU FEEL LIKE YOU'RE A TIME TRAVELLER
In part because you’re sipping espresso
or wine inside a deconsecrated church
with original frescos 6 hours ahead
of where you usually rest your head
& you pop onto a news website & see
there’s been another shooting targeting
the already-marginalized but you’ve not
been even a little marginalized because
of how you look, even if you don’t ciao ciao
like the rest of the patrons & because
of your too pink complexion & short
black trench coat you keep getting
confused for an Englishman & yes
the leather store proprietor confirms
that that’s better than being American
because they are so stuck in the Wild
West past thinking they’re battling to take
the land-culture from the indigenous kapow
kapow & isn’t it nice to roam the streets &
not feel like your rights or lives are about
to be—didn’t you all already fight that
battle? Why do you keep looking for more?
Bob King lives just outside Cleveland, Ohio, with his wife whose thoughts are summer lightning. He teaches at Kent State University at Stark. His recent poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Viridian Door, Ink Sweat & Tears, Alien Buddha Gets Rejected Anthology, Bullshit Lit, The Red Ogre Review, Unlikely Stories Mark V, The Dillydoun Review, Emergence Literary Journal, Narrative Magazine, Muleskinner, & Allium: a Journal of Poetry & Prose. Twitter
THREE PHOTOGRAPHS
BY ANDY PERRIN
COLD
By Andy Perrin
Cold is absence
emptiness
a void
an echoed crack in the night air
Cold removes
comfort and ease
a pain
a piece of news that buckles the knees
Cold envelops
in negation
an embrace
reached out for but ignored too long
Cold lingers
steadfast
a sorrow
until the day the red-winged blackbird returns
JUNE'S AIR
June’s air soft and lightly scented
drawn from the lungs then spoiled
wretched winds were all that were
left to inhale the news unimaginable shattering
all that has ever been known forever lost
Andy Perrin is a writer/photographer/cyclist/teacher from southern Rhode Island. Andy often explores the roads and trails near his home on one of his bikes. On occasion, while he is out exploring, he is moved to stop to take a photo of some inspirational thing. On the best days, the thoughts of the things photographed turn into words and the subjects of his writing.
STATEWIDE LOCKDOWN, DAY THIRTY
By Ace BogGess
The lowdown humdrum,
the blah, the meh
like I spent my life
visiting graves
of minor celebrities.
Talking heads are bored at home,
their ringtones matching
the drone of their voices on live TV.
Spring rabbits grid the yard,
adorable devourers.
I watch a long truck back up,
turn around in the cul-de-sac,
its squealing brakes
a scream that needed voiced.
"BUT WHAT WOULD THE NEIGHBORS THINK?"
question asked by Mary Carroll-Hackett
Loneliest celebration we have witnessed,
the party has gone on too long:
rock music booming, we hear none of it,
see no dancing, cars in the drive.
Where are the cocktail shakers,
where naked revelers
cannonballing into the empty pool?
We wait for fireworks
so we might phone the police.
Should officers arrive
they’d be drawn in by that sad, silent festival,
their nights ruined, paperwork in disarray.
How does one write a report
on nothing when it happens?
The middle-aged man
smokes a cigarette—bland & normal—
while he paces on the patio,
then goes inside to choose his darkness.
We hope he dreams a single rousing scene.
Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, including Escape Envy (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021), I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So, and The Prisoners. His writing has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble. His seventh collection, Tell Us How to Live, is forthcoming in 2024 from Fernwood Press. Twitter.
A SONG OF BROKEN BONES
By David Harrison HorTon
The gown is made of a velvet
that darkens when sweat
rolls down her back,
as it is now.
The lemmings wish they were lemurs,
but do not have the vocabulary
to make the request,
so the grievance goes unfiled.
The weather has been recorded.
There has been weather.
The silver in the drawers
of our canister days
needs to be removed,
polished and hidden beneath the oak.
A SONG OF A SHOT FROM DOWNTOWN
The islands have been harried.
There is no need
of a fortress
now.
A dying man says he can taste
the junipers in his gin.
It does not matter
what color the walls were.
If you prefer the left, I will go to the right.
If you prefer the right, I will go to the left.
A man is lighting fires
in a drought,
waiting for a warmth
that must be stolen.
David Harrison Horton is a Beijing-based writer, artist, editor and curator. He is author of Maze Poems (Arteidolia) and the chapbooks Pete Hoffman Days (Pinball) and BeiHai (Nanjing Poetry). He edits the poetry zine SAGINAW. davidharrisonhorton.com
UNTITLED
By MaT BlunT
Screaming into sadness he heads down the same avenue as before.
Knocking at the door
Medication, mediation, meditation once more.
Yet this time he owns the wheel
Knows how to steer and navigate.
He's stronger than before.
So he lets it take it's course
But sure , this time , he's sure
That the sadness will ease
The legs of jelly and arms of spaghetti will cease.
What people think, he's not sure
But does he care , is he at peace?
He tells himself no- liar!
But yes a survivor.
52 plenty to do.
So this may end not where he wanted it to be
But this time he's in charge
Watch this space.
Mat Blunt began writing in April 22, so it’s still a learning curve. He work in education, has 5 boys , a grandson and the most amazing wife.
​
"Spare Parts Lit chose to publish me and that gave me the courage to pop stuff on Instagram and also facebook, plus read out my words at open mic events." Twitter
I'M SURE IT'S BEEN DONE BEFORE
By ElizabeTh Gibson
I’m sure it’s been done before,
the rainbow quilt an oily ocean in the dark,
rumpled, froth of sheets shyly showing their face,
lone abandoned coat hanger tossed as a ship,
fat seal of purple rugby shirt, waiting for me
to slip it on as I read, and the yellow light
of squat turquoise lamp, way across the room,
how is it the only source of light here,
or of heat – apart from, I suppose, me?
I’m sure it’s been done before,
but I have no choice but to set down this love,
somehow, a painting of a painting of an ocean,
never again exactly like tonight, but I can try.
Bare feet, abandoned jeans, flip flops for the wood
floors outside, but in here, all is soft,
my cuboid of heart-chamber awash
with salty, messy ownership, the glory
and disbelief of it, that a home can be created
or can shake down into itself without you noticing,
until you sit in the right place, way across the room
from your lamp, mighty bed, adult bed.
EVERY NIGHT NOW THE WOODS ARE GONE
I call it a fox bark, though pinpointing
or forcing language on it is wrong.
Every two or three in the morning:
cock-crow, nails on blackboard,
a scream from a 2000s videogame,
sandpaper on a joint, walrus out at sea,
bone fragments of a forest ground to dust.
You will know when you hear it,
like you will know the smell of death.
Almost more bird than walking animal
yet it comes from a throat of fur,
rings of constricting muscle, warm belly,
sparks flashing in mammal eyes,
sound of acceptance: you can’t fly away.
Asking, like a dog, gamble of begging,
declaring you are still here, stripped
of your green cover. It is the night
being opened with scissors, jagged
and clean, brick hitting another brick,
red-orange dust staining tar-black road.
When we do catch a flutter of fox,
it is so barely-there, it makes sense
they are equipped with this volume,
miles of mourning, of witness, of proof.
Elizabeth Gibson is a queer, neurodivergent poet and performer in Manchester. She has been the recipient of a New North Poets Prize at the Northern Writers' Awards, and a Developing Your Creative Practice grant from Arts Council England. She edits Foxglove Journal, and her poetry has appeared in Atrium, Confingo, Lighthouse, Magma, Popshot, Queerlings, and Under the Radar.
Twitter and Instragram
MORNING, NEW YEAR'S DAY
By Bill Verble
The glass slips and shatters
in the sink, slicing my hand
still in a missed grip,
drops forming red suns.
We leave ourselves stunned
when we carry on in two worlds.
Even dreams can draw blood.
Shards glisten making blades
brightened in the light
of the young year.
We enter the ritual of renewal
gathering what’s broken,
carrying what’s incomplete.
WINTERING
Drape shrinking days in gray
fading color under
a seamless dome. Wash us
not in waves but endless
drizzle with stinging chill
until the skin numbs.
Slow our pace to a plod
soaking through to the blood
suspending living in
reptilian stillness.
Bless us in frozen baptism
until light bleeds through
and our blood quickens.
The frosted shell cracks
but the pieces I will grasp
to keep my cloistered peace.
Oh icy darkness
do not cede again
to the sun-sprung spring.
I do not want to go.
MY GLOBAL POSITION
1.
I need to find my global position
I need a system to guide me
A system to reveal my destination
A system to show where I am in a chaotic world
A system for why I am
A system to take me to the corner office
A system to unveil its wisdom
2.
A global positioning system, GPS
GPS promises a pathway
GPS commands me to Turn Right on Vine
GPS leads me back when I don’t turn right
GPS knows I’m imperfect and lost
GPS tells me in a soft voice when I’ve arrived
I hope GPS is pleased with me
3.
My global positioning system, my GPS
My GPS is unseen in the sky
My GPS leads all but I’m the only blue dot
My GPS warns of difficulty ahead, but I see nothing
My GPS shows several ways, but I don’t know the best
My GPS takes me through a strange side of town
My GPS doesn’t know Sam’s Bakery burned down
My GPS is failing me
4.
The system can’t stop this jam and I’m stuck
The system doesn’t tell you how steep this hill is
The system won’t tell you it’s just past the old cemetery
The system won’t point you to the Crab Nebula
The system won’t take you from temptation at the drive-thru
The system won’t lead you to the bread aisle
The system sent a man hurtling off a broken bridge
The system lured a family to freeze in back road snow
The system won’t lead you to a better system
The system is a war weapon
5.
Why won’t GPS take me back to Granny’s kitchen?
When will GPS pull me from my dark days?
Can GPS go to where the stars fill the night?
The system has no answers to tell me
when to step back from my children
when to cradle my father
when to overturn tables
when to hold hands with strangers
when to give alms
when to go back to the wilds
What happens to my blue dot when I have no more destinations?
Who positions the system?
GPS, speak to me, speak to me, speak to me
I hold you in my hand, speak to me
Bill Verble began writing poetry about five years ago as a remedy for a persistent creative itch and a desire to package as much meaning into as few words as possible. He’s inspired by his father, who was a poet-in-residence for a school system. His work has appeared in the The Poeming Pigeon and Okay Donkey. Bill lives in Lexington, Kentucky in the U.S. with his family. You can find him online on Twitter.
ABOUT LOVE
By Yuu Ikeda
Whenever she is sitting
at abyss of loneliness,
its silhouette appears
like blaze of a candle
that sways in the coldest night.
She reaches toward the warmth.
She craves the evidence that
she is alive.
Its fragility is like a flower
that only she knows.
Its intensity is like a puddle
that reflects only her.
SWEET NIGHT
Powdery snow is falling,
as if an angel is making dessert.
Sweet whispers are chocolate and cream.
Holy kisses are softness of sponge cakes.
And powdery snow is sugar
to decorate and complete dessert.
Yuu Ikeda (she/they) is a Japan based poet. She loves writing, reading novels, western art, and sugary coffee.
She writes poetry on her website. poetryandcoffeedays.wordpress.com/
Her latest poetry collection “A Knife She Holds” was published from Newcomer Press.
Follow her on Twitter and Instagram
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SALLY ANN BAND
By Henry Hudson
At the corner of O’Connell Bridge
Abide with Me rose soft and low
As a band began to play anew
Hearing, my father took my childhood hand
“Come, there is something I must do.”
We walked the length of Dublin’s longest street
I knew the story well, Belfast 1940
When the British Army spurned my father’s crippled hand
His one-way ticket left him bereft
A Catholic in a Loyalist land
Salvation came from an army of that name
They freely gave him bed and board
Unquestioning of which god he cared about
And in the morning, a sterling pound
To take a Samaritan train back south
We paused when we came band-side
Then my father emptied his pockets
Surrendering every note and sou
To pay yet again a sacred debt
That forever would fall due
Six decades on Abide with Me
Still soothes my childhood soul
Hymn-embalmed by that Sally Ann band
And the silent fall of grateful coins
From my father’s crippled hand
Henry Hudson was born in Dublin. He worked for many years in the Pigeon House power station in Dublin Port and then studied at the Samuel Beckett Centre in TCD as a mature student. He is a former winner of the RTE PJ O’Connor Radio Drama Award, The Heinrich Boll Award for Literature, The Listowel Writers Week Playwrights Award and The Best Play Award at the Cork Arts Festival. He has written collections of poetry and short stories, stage, and radio plays. His novels Pulditch and Poor Lamb, Poor Lamb are available on Kindle Books.
