when the rain’s between
                                           fast wipers
               and                    slow intermittent
               or
               when it’s coming down so hard
                                             the fastest speed can’t cope
                            the windscreen now a waterfall
                    oncoming headlights just a glare
                                                                     then 
                                                shadows out beyond the verges
                                                            take on mass
                                                                   are transubstantiated
                                                                              into things of heft
                                                                material effect

                             you’ve glimpsed them sometimes
                                    and dismissed them
                                                      figments          flickering
                                                               between the trees or hedges

                                                         try not
                                                  to be caught short
                                           to stop and walk
                                    a little way
                             to stand
                      back to the passing cars
               presenting such a tempting tidbit
                                             to the darkness.



Peter J. King was born and brought up in Boston, Lincolnshire.  Active on the London poetry scene in the 1970s as writer, performer, publisher, and editor, he returned to poetry in 2013 after a long absence, and has since been widely published in magazines and anthologies.  He also translates poetry, mainly from modern Greek (with Andrea Christofidou) and German, writes short prose, and paints.  His currently available collections are Adding Colours to the Chameleon (Wisdom’s Bottom Press) and All What Larkin (Albion Beatnik Press); his booklet Ghost Webs is due out from The Calliope Script later this year. Web site: https://wisdomsbottompress.wordpress.com.

I have been to the woods at night
when Fomalhaut is rising, and
the Moon is new.
                                         And I have seen
the column there, which neither rusts
nor weathers, though whose raised
inscription has been strangely
hacked and melted, scarcely legible.

I have heard the melody that’s borne on winds
that rush and  shake the house until I think
it’s bound to crash around my head,
and yet the trees outside don’t stir.

The harmonies entwine shrill, greasy pipes
with microtonal strings,
and modulate from sweet to menacing
to something that’s beyond my wit
to comprehend.

Ululations burst from throats
that are not clearly beasts’ yet
not completely human either--
                                                              somehow
both at once, and neither.

Now at last I walk upon the winds
to all the hidden places of the world,
and soon shall venture out to other worlds,
though not by my volition;
                                                        I am captive,
carried where He wills, and finally
I know I shall be dropped, no longer heeded,
falling from an empty sky, half frozen,
either dead or dying,
                                             in my pockets eerie
souvenirs from who knows where.

And in the city street or open field or motorway
that breaks my fall,
                                         no-one will understand.



Peter J. King was born and brought up in Boston, Lincolnshire.  Active on the London poetry scene in the 1970s as writer, performer, publisher, and editor, he returned to poetry in 2013 after a long absence, and has since been widely published in magazines and anthologies.  He also translates poetry, mainly from modern Greek (with Andrea Christofidou) and German, writes short prose, and paints.  His currently available collections are Adding Colours to the Chameleon (Wisdom’s Bottom Press) and All What Larkin (Albion Beatnik Press); his booklet Ghost Webs is due out from The Calliope Script later this year. Web site: https://wisdomsbottompress.wordpress.com.

                                                                        i.
The thunder almost beats the lightning to me --
battering the house that shudders
under their combined assault.
I wait for sounds of shattered stone or glass,
for smells of burning wood, scorched paint,
of melting metal, violated air.

The whole sky flashes,
turns the world into a frozen negative
in black and white, and leaves me blinded,
vulnerable till I gain my sight again.

And then the rain falls --
though it seems to join the clouds and ground
with vitreous unbroken pipes
that gush out gallons till the road’s in spate.
I worry for the weeping windows,
for the roof whose slates shift, shiver,
held in place by moss and lichen
and cold iron.

The insistent fury of the storm
stupefies my mind;
it sweeps away both panic and delight,
and leaves me empty, undefended, opened up
to what the thunder says,
the lightning shows,
the rain recalls.

And I am driven from the house,
full pelt and unprepared, into the trees
(which surely weren’t there yesterday),
tripping over fallen branches,
scratched and bleeding,
fleeing fear in frantic darkness.


                                                                            ii.
This might be a path,
or just an accidental thinning of the undergrowth;
I have to follow it in any case,
and trace its faint meanderings
beneath the dense dark canopy of yews.

There shouldn’t be this undergrowth, in fact;
the sun can hardly penetrate,
yet here it is.  And here I am...
though where I am, I’m not entirely sure.
I sense that there are animals and birds,
but hardly catch a glimpse or hear a sound.
I see the signs of people here and there –
old footprints, dropped possessions –
and occasionally on the breeze
a few faint words.

This might be a forest,
but it feels more like a dream --
the clearings that I come to
(sometimes bathed in rain, or hail, or snow;
sometimes flooded with warm sunlight,
blinding me for vulnerable moments)
strain to tell me… tell me stories, maybe,
fill in holes that leave my memory,
my knowledge of myself, like lace.

Once or twice I stumble on
a long-abandoned hut,
roof falling in, wood rotten,
and around it gardens overgrown;
neat rows of herbs and vegetables
are swallowed by a mess of hybrid forms.

This might be a metaphor;
the forest still gets dark when night is falling, though --
but moonrise shows a thinning of the trees,
a way out, as the frost begins to crackle
underneath my cautious feet.


                                                                           iii.
Rising from a dark-green tonsure,
gleaming under snow,
the summit’s still and silent,
though the mountain is in torment,
its heart bubbling with unimaginable heat.

Upon the peak there is a tower;
its white walls glisten as if made of snow,
and sunlight flares reflected from its top.
I’m not sure how I reach the tower’s foot,
but when I do my feet and hands and ears
are pierced by cold, my eyes ache,
and my breath is short.

I climb, I scrabble upward
with my eyes fixed down,
and as I lean against the rough stone
whitewashed wall, I suddenly discover
it’s a lighthouse.  Or it was — its only light
now glints from broken windows,
and the door hangs open, letting snow
drift thick across its stone-flagged floor.

I stumble in and let myself collapse
upon the stairs, sit sucking in the thin, cold air
until I’m ready to explore.  Slowly,
scared that one misstep would send me tumbling,
I make the long ascent.

The winding staircase,
steep and narrow, dark and chilly,
passes through a storeroom, kitchen, bedroom,
ending in the chamber of the lamp.
Snow and shards of glass crunch underfoot,
and yet the great lamp is intact.

Neither reason nor experience,
but some internal source of knowing
pulls me to the stores of oil,
guiding my unpractised hands
in all a keeper’s tasks:
the filling of the reservoir,
the trimming of the wick,
the cranking of the pump,
the winding of the clockwork gearing,
and the buffing of the glass.
Then should come the spark of tinderbox,
but I am beaten by the spinning of the Earth.

Night doesn’t fall, it coils itself to spring,
and darkness sinks its claws
into the fleeing rump of day.

My fingers tremble as they strike the flint;
there is an age of fevered fumbling,
until at last the lamp is lit.
Across the forest all around the bone-white summit
sweeps the beam, and I collapse, exhausted,
sure that I have done what’s right,
uncertain whether I have set a warning
or a summons.


​
Peter J. King was born and brought up in Boston, Lincolnshire.  Active on the London poetry scene in the 1970s as writer, performer, publisher, and editor, he returned to poetry in 2013 after a long absence, and has since been widely published in magazines and anthologies.  He also translates poetry, mainly from modern Greek (with Andrea Christofidou) and German, writes short prose, and paints.  His currently available collections are Adding Colours to the Chameleon (Wisdom’s Bottom Press) and All What Larkin (Albion Beatnik Press); his booklet Ghost Webs is due out from The Calliope Script later this year. Web site: https://wisdomsbottompress.wordpress.com.

After I am dead
You will hear about it somehow.
You will cry and imagine you flung yourself
Upon my already descended coffin,
Crying for God to take you, too.

After I am dead you will think about me
At moments during your day sometimes:
You will imagine that we lived the second half of our lives together
Until I died.
You will close your eyes and see what I must have looked like
With a head of hair more white than brown. Such deep creases around my eyes
Still dark and blue and looking right into you.
You will lie in bed and imagine I am there, my head to your breast.
Your hand holds mine and my voice vibrates your body
When I tell you that you are still so
Very beautiful
When I look at you 
In the morning
Lying beside me in bed.

After I am dead you will cry sometimes:
A small silent sob.
Not every day or even every week, but often enough
That it disturbs your heart.
Someone you love may ask you why you are upset,
Seeing your tears before you can hide them
And you won’t tell them, of course.

After I am dead I will remain the dirty little secret of your life
And your heart.
You will see yourself as my widow,
Reading the hundreds and hundreds of poems I wrote about you
Before I gave up on us – some long after you gave up
On us.
You will never set eyes upon the thousands of poems I wrote about you
After we both surrendered to your weakness.
You will know, somehow, that they were written.

After I am dead
You will look in the mirror
And see me beside you. You will feel me there,
My hand on your shoulder, my fingers in your hair that has become white
And still so very black.
You will feel my breath warm in your ear,
My lips then touching your neck almost imperceptibly.
You will shake uncontrollably,
Knowing your life has been largely a fraud.

After I am dead you will think about me.
You will think about me often.
You will see me in coffee shops,
On the train,
Across from your kitchen table as you look out of your window
And pretend,
In the stairway that leads to your lonely bed.
I will be infused in the objects on your dresser.
The utensils in your kitchen drawer – each one is a word in a poem
I wrote about us.

After I am dead,
Until the day you are dead,
You will think about me when you least want to and realize
That you made a terrible 
Terrible mistake.
I was not a game piece
But your life
Was just a game.



​John Tustin’s poetry has appeared in many disparate literary journals since 2009. fritzware.com/johntustinpoetry contains links to his published poetry online.

A silky crow, sheen shine in bake,
clamped to bloat, so stabbing care -
though gas expelled, had long depart -
gorging on the offal there.
Carcase, Varanasi float,
Benares, back street he had birthed,
always moored, black ghats about
Ganges gods, slat water gloat;
lobbed for fear from funeral pyre,
shortage of pile wood supply,
limit, holy time applied.
When beak peck, dorsal stripped their share,
mantras, incense, saffron robes,
sanyasi silent in sage prayer,
that bird flopped off from bobbing lump,
near wallow slurping ash smudge flesh,
with belly wobble dignity.
Death too busy in this life.



Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com. 

Where the ghost went, I followed,
through rooms and corridors 
of my own house, but all unfamiliar
as my footfalls trailed a spoor of silence.

Out into the full-moon night, we travelled,
across the mists of lawn, 
feeling less human with every step,
no mind, no body, no anything.

To the graveyard. Where else?
A stone sleeping in the soil. 
A name carved with no other purpose 
than to enlighten me.

A greeting from my own passing
hushed amid tall grasses.
No great welcome in those eyeless sockets.
A life unwilling but a death in charge.


John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, “Leaves On Pages” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Ellipsis, Blueline and International Poetry Review.

Like an army of emmets
with the trenchant mandibles
who sniffing at tangy baits
crop up in tow at tables of dinners
beating up once and all the quarters of quarries
petrified plunged into posthumous pits,
my pop-up pallbearer friends sort of way
smelling the roses whilst weather is fair
on a call-out congregate over my marmoreal coffin
gaily on al-Adha night smack-dab when
cannibal cafes coincidently cornered
and butchers on furlough ensheathing their cleavers
betaking themselves for pilgrimage to Mecca,
to see me rigor mortis camphorated off to God’s acre.


Husain Abdulhay has poems published in Alban Lake Publishing, Avocet, Cacti Fur, Eskimo Pie, Fib Review, Jellyfish Whispers, Madness Muse Press, Muse Pie Press, Quail Bell Magazine, Scarlet Leaf Review, Soul-Lit, Sweety Cat Press, Synchchaos, Trouvaille Review, and Ygdrasil. His haiku appears in Failed Haiku, Haikuniverse, Pkankmaton, and Wales Haiku Journal, likewise.

You drew the circles, spilled the salt.
Cut the thread into the prescribed lengths.
You read the book until your fingers
were black with the grime of acid hydrolysis,
the words etched in your brain
as if a sculptor had carved them
into the back of your skull.

You spent hours over the motions,
the words, paused only for sips of water
at less crucial times. You embraced
the twelfth century as if it were your own.
You believed. You believed. You believed.

And then it was over. You lay on your back
next to the design, waited for a sign
that it had all been for something, anything.
You slept, brief, fitful, until your bladder
woke you. You stumbled to the bathroom,
looked in the mirror--



Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry in Akron, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances in The Shore, Sein und werden, and Moss Piglet, among others.