By Nell Regan The rooks that rise above the serried ranks of homes augur unease as though soil itself has not settled, knows not what memory knows (or what the body recalls and expects) except come spring: when a nudge of weed and wild flower show through, a ghosted version from below. At each roundabout […]
Keith
Notes From India
By Sujata Bhatt for Pearse Hutchinson, February 2012 2:00 am in Mumbai and the crows are still loud. They circle the trees – hundreds of them around our house. A crow has died and all the others keep cawing, cawing through the night into the morning – endlessly they keep on calling for days. I […]
Grey Heron Is Not A Hood Ornament
By John Kinsella The twelve-footer outboards in from the bay, its ingress watched by gulls and the odd jogger. The sea’s a glasstop, so the chevrons from the boat’s passage tamp the harbour’s walls. On its prow, a grey heron, still as sculpture, staring down the man tillering the motor. His haul under wraps. The […]
Her Last
By Breda Spaight My mother, forty-five – another child, opens the door to Nurse Begley, all smiles and too much pine air freshener. I had forgotten how beautiful her face is, rinsed with innocence, like she’s brand new, as though under a spell. And her hair like a moonlit lake – black with silver ripples. […]
Two Fabulists
By Andrea Ward One doodled wolves in margins and spelled them in scrawl so urgent that they tore life-size from her copybook, padded between rows of pupils who turned back to see the fire door spring open, who pressed against windows to watch the pack lope across the sports field and around the gym towards […]
O’Neill, Shelley, Prometheus
By Lawrence Dugan Her paper to a dozen of us, a lady From Texas before the MLA at last, Quoting O’Neill’s characters remembering Their days at sea. So she should have, for who Better to feel the vastness of the sea At night than a teacher from the southern Plains, able to toss aside the […]
She Still Leaves Room: George Eliot, 2020
By Richard W. Halperin Her large mind moves slowly over everything, Flinching at nothing, even from what she Knows she does not understand. In each book, She minutely examines, over hundreds Of pages, one harmful act. Through the deep Vibration of her sympathy, she makes me feel That if I could see deeper into circumstance, […]
Elegy To The White Sea
By Anzhelina Polonskaya My countries and landssend your nights out for profit.O, White Sea nets,I am your fish.It’s over. Let all whom I lovedbe forgiven.I’ve lost the wordsor they’ve been burnt.Maybe the fishermen willrelease me into that cursed sea,looking into my eyes –With my fins, I’ll shield the boatfrom the white waves,and swim instinctivelyto the […]
A Springtime Day
By Vladimir Gandelsman A springtime day – May holidays, I guess –long fallen into my well of winter memories,like many others – into marine binoculars;a typical Leningrad day. Some Navy captaindrops by, a little buzzed, in full dress uniform –one of Mom’s coworkers, if I had to guess,and gives her a big book, and signs […]
Forest Park
By Howard Wright The starry track of the sun runs disorganisedacross the lake. Snow melt gurgles underwardsto a low stone bridge and a child’s gravel beach … All gone quiet. Nothing much is alive here,tree-trimmings and wood-cull, leaf-blood.Paths close their eyes as the forest thickens. A mist of dead needles; frizz and corrosion;a killer cabin, […]