Monthly Archives: September 2015
Mark Ryan Smith
Darth Vader’s Christmas Card Dear Obi Wan Is it really a year since I last wrote you? How time flies when life is so full and busy. Work is so demanding at the moment and I can hardly get time … Continue reading
Matthew Macdonald
Cloudcatcher the best of his work is done on islands specifically those on the west coast where the sun falls into the sea, carrying the rest of the day with it there is more sky to catch them he watches … Continue reading
Greta Yorke
Spindrift I step out into a night whose sharpness steals my breath replacing it with salty fusion. No conch trickery, the white noise of distant ebb roars gentle golden grains erased of transient print. The lighthouse glows in haunting persistence … Continue reading
Lesley Quayle
All the Pretty Children One million of you there in the beginning, calling, crying, whispering. I couldn’t hear. I didn’t know to listen then, swaddled in infancy. By puberty, hushed away, rocked in seashells, snug on the lullaby breeze, only … Continue reading
Catherine Lang
Train Times “She’s a lassie,” cried ma granny, glarin at ma dad. “Whit she wanted wis a dolly, no a Triang train, ma lad.” But the ingine wi’ its carriage, an’ its shiny smokin stack, meant sweet oors wi’ ma … Continue reading
Joan Johnston: Two poems
Ada in spring comes out when she’s ready and not before. In a lilac fleece, risking rain showers, she hangs her washing – two bleached tea-towels, an embroidered tablecloth – in the back yard first thing then sits for a … Continue reading
K Hodgson-Pryce
The Incomer I’ll be honest wi’ ye I dreamt my whole life of living in the Highlands I thought the north westerlies would shove me alive I thought I’d breathe deeper, feel freer think better but the shop assistants shout … Continue reading
Kevin Cadwallender
Joyce Tutorial He told me it was his life’s work To write a definitive study of ‘Finnegan’s Wake’. I thought of the word teleological but I didn’t say it. Have you read it? he asked, I hadn’t But wondered … Continue reading
The Open Mouse 