Click set title to read selected poems:
Stones #stones
Rag Trade #ragtrade
Art #art
Connections Gill Learner
The skin of this land
is shaggy with last year's growth:
blond undergreened with new.
The flesh of the land
is rucked; folds hold water
which the tilt spills
into falls.
Walls seam the hills:
a landscape's bones broken
into gritty chunks, locked
in fit of hollow and jut.
In lichened confidence
they stripe the contours
of the clough.
Dreams quarry memories
shy as mercury. In the noting,
words dislodge: with no snap
of jigsaw match, they slip
where they should cling,
are smooth where they
should be sharp.
Published in Orbis 148, Autumn 2009
The Wall Menders Kate Noakes
I see him now as a man:
my boy and I work together
making music of boulder and grit,
passing stones over this growing wall.
We fill the brief space between us
with small notes, flat, sharp,
coming closer in building a barrier
that forgets the contours of the fells.
I see him now in the air
and never-harming rain, a man spared
the heat of the pit. We make
our own small monuments.
We were here and we thought about
scored coping, lunkies for sheep,
made stiles and badger smoots
and paused for breath on the mossy clefts.
I might hear the gush of water
pumped from galleries and shafts,
whispers of re-hiring. But I'm too old
and spoiled by the open.
My boy lacks the skills of prop, board
and pick, spends his days
in this uplifting labour, his voice
quavering between whistle and hum.
Published in The Wall Menders, Two Rivers Press, 2009
Cave Lovers Wendy Klein
Serbia 2006
Almond-eyed, she smiles at us, our English-speaking guide, her gaze like a brilliant star in some other galaxy, and we are ready to join with her below ground. She shines her torch, and the walls glisten with gold moisture, constant as war, elusive as peace. In the room of crystal, calcified rock shapes itself into baronial chandeliers, fit for a ballroom without mirrors where vampires might dance. In the room of beehives, centuries have dripped shapes, twisted and honeycombed, to await a queen bee, damp with time, ready to instruct her workers in the darker arts of honey-making.
Blunted by dynamite, stalactites sharpen their points a thousand years at a time; one reaches out so slowly to its companion below, that the air, altered by the very chemistry of our presence, holds its breath at their lingering courtship - a millennial patience - the kiss they will take the next thousand years to achieve.
Abbey Ruins Anna-May Laugher
The windows gape,
no glass to glaze over the draughts.
Gates long unhinged and lost,
leave portals for the ghosts of monks
and living drunks, who lean against the flints
which are the walls to house the voids.
On carpet lawns stand turquoise orbs,
spheres giving birth to spheres
and sleeping girls; and when it's dark
the girls unfurl they stretch and rise
to dance among the ruins under stars.
Before they sleep, they coil like wire,
to make the conductivity for prayer;
theri mantras,novenas,their mea culpa's
escape through mortar falls,
mingle with the smoke
sucked deep into the lungs of office boys,
who dream of naked girls and cars
and Saturdays in Reading
Brickdust Claire Dyer
We watched the walls
square their shoulders
the day the wreckers came.
Glassless windows
held their breath
in the before-blow silence.
We could already see
the bare brown earth,
flat with anonymity,
hiding behind hoarding
that read "Care Home for the Elderly".
Reluctant traffic slid by,
its eyes averted, but
we saw, in a constant loop,
the filmings of our past.
Deckchairs gathering on the lawn,
firewatchers shouting,
batter beaten in kitchen bowls,
silver cutlery gleaming.
Blankets and warm toast,
stories under the covers.
The day our mother died.
We heard the hall clock chiming
and Nan's miniature roses stretching
and when the house fell,
behind the roar came
the brickdust, grainy on our lips.
We drew it in like food.
Published in R U Taking the Biscuit, University of Reading Creative Arts Anthology, 2009
The Parachute Dress Lesley Saunders
Invented for rescues
of red-faced inhabitants
from burning tenements
or reckless experiments by beings
with no wings,
for night-time arrivals among nations
who were nameless
and such a long way from home,
for space-shuttles returning
from Mars, for armies in free-fall,
for testing the destinty of air
which today is as heavy as apples,
for small Georgia Broadwick who did it
at five over Los Angeles,
for stepping out into sky
in high heels and sheer nylons,
for the harness and grommets,
for the drag co-efficient of silk,
for the risers,
for the light trapped in the canopy,
for the flowers of ice, their six-sided crystals,
for the songs and holy-rollering and white sand,
for the ineffable thrill of it all,
for soft landings in hard times,
for cushioning my fall.
Published in Magma, July 2009
Green silk dress Claire Dyer
I wake to see your green silk dress on the floor
spread out like a map just inside the door.
It has ridges and contours sewn into its folds,
stains and creases and other people's smiles
pressed onto it with large-fingered hands.
It is pointing away from me.
I remember the cloth waterfalling your curves
as you left, remember the drumbeats
of your heart; all was restless and pagan and tasting of fear.
You were being called away from me.
I waited in the dark for the scratch of your shoes,
felt the coldness of your absence wet-stoned inside my mind,
crept on broken knees to fill the space you had left.
You had gone away from me.
Then I slept a missing sleep;
half lit, half done, and this morning
look from the dress by the door
to your face on the pillow next to mine.
It is empty now of others, pale without flaw
and I wonder why it is I don't know you anymore.
Published in Boomslang Magazine, June 2008
Cloche Anna-May Laugher
That hat, a kind of corset for the head,
had kept her wildness in at dinner;
outside it didn't work as well,
instead of homeward she turned left.
Left, to where she knew he'd flex his fingers,
shape clay, form pots, bowls, plates
with sensual slip and hand slides.
En route a terror that she'd been found out;
a drunk uncurled himself from his wet coat,
shouted her name, it rang across the street
like an interrupted crime.
She ran, heart knocking at her vows,
but Ellen was lit up for fast and loose.
Hollow the clop and tap of reckless heels
down steps to overthrow his Muse.
The weary potter hunched over a sack
and thought he ought to pay the rent.
He dug into predictable clay flesh, yielding
cadaverous, the way he liked it best.
Three-dog night Wendy Klein
for Robin
Because I was poor
and you were portable
I took you with me
everywhere. There was
no Moses basket, only pools
of coats, quilted, embroidered;
of shawls, soft or scratchy -
makeshift beds in hippy houses
all over the world. In your
blanket sleeper, your eyes
closing already, anticipating
the soporific stuff of coats,
we lay down together on floors
on landings, on strange beds -
wherever the coats of guests
were left. Sometimes I told you
the story of the Aborigine boy, how
he slept curled round his dog
for warmth, and as the nights grew
colder, invited a second, then
the coldest: three-dog night.
By the third dog you were asleep -
always. I could slip out, door
ajar in case you stirred, leave
you to breathe in, second-hand,
cannabis, patchouli joss sticks, cheap
red wine, to learn to share your bed
with furtive lovers, family pets,
weeping drunks of both sexes -
a comprehensive education of life.
Very soon you got the hang
of covering yourself with coats -
in railway stations, on freezing trains
on late-night couches - became proud
of my gift to you: the ability
to make your bed almost anywhere.
Published in Cuba in the Blood, Cinnamon Press, 2009
Now I catch my smile in a shop window:
I don't covet their allure or begrudge
the busy clamour of their youth but
I must admit I envy them their teeth.
Published in Cracking on: poems on ageing by older women (Grey Hen Press, Keighley, 2009)
Degas wants to paint me ironing Anna-May Laugher
He says it's wonderful to watch me,
I'll just bet it is
When I'm the one who's working.
He's going to pay me, pay me to pretned
And now that I'm pretending
I have to wonder
how my ironing has changed.
First with little flutters of the heart
Rounding the collars, love details
For the man, the loved one.
Some days my belly so far out
I'd barely reach the table,
Slow heavy sweeps just shy of burning
I was tired in those days.
Then my first deliberate scorch
joy of a brown triangle on linen,
that smell of a second before smoke;
ha, that was wickedness, his favourite shirt
he slapped my face for that, but it was worth it.
And ironing some things for the last time,
small nightgowns of disease
how carefully I did them
folding my heart into the pleats,
pressing my goodbyes into the sleeves.
The driftwood horse Claire Dyer
I too have been crafted
from scatterings, bleached blonde
by the sun. I have felt the nimble
fingers of explorers stroke
for smooth contoours, searching
for limbs and haunches.
I too have been constructed
with arched neck, proud head
and a space for my wild blazing eyes.
With the other horses they tried
to tame and exhibit me behind
wide glass where the watchers
walk on morning-washed streets.
One by one the horses left
to go I know not where, but I hope
that they have answered the wind's
calling, been returned to the shaping
of the elements; exposed pre-carboned
to the breathing of the sea.
I imagine them running free and that
they call my name. All but one that is,
the solitary horse, like me left behind
to live under spotlights so sharp
they leave no shadows at our feet.
National Geographic store, Regent Street, London, 2009
Published in Boomslang, September 2009
Rain, steam and speed Gill Learner
by J.M.W. Turner
Look how, against a weight of strange beliefs,
the hare lopes from beam to beam
between the singing bars then hears above
a harrow's scrape and dancers' calls,
the growl of some strange creature larger
than a horse, deadlier than the blades that shred
his field in shrinking rings; hears the growl
become a roar and, scalloping the air,
stretches to escape the iron and smoke,
westward through dissolving sun and storm.
Poor hare, that in this new millennium
cannot outrun the train.
Late Marriage Kate Noakes
Alfred Sisley (57) and Eugenie Lescouezec (63) were married
in Cardiff Town Hall on 5 August 1897
You said you'd started to feel unlike yourself
those past few months, that your tongue burned
when you spoke, that food seared your mouth,
and could we make it all right for the girls?
My own throat scorched, I agreed, who else
to please if not ourselves.
On that blaze of an August day we stepped
into light: the sun silvered the sea,
Penarth pier gleamed just for us. Though almost
all my mind was on patterns, shades,
the shadows of Storr's rock, and how to make
Wales the south of France, I knew your death
would not be long in coming, so I said
I do and oh, I meant it.
Published in All the Way Home and Other Poems, Leaf Books, 2009
Dependable Light Wendy Klein
I want to stay in this room where young girls
once came to learn art; its blues and whites Dutch-
clean. Here the floor is etched with knots and swirls
and wood-worm tracks - feels warms under my feet. I want
to have arrived in my huge rain-proof cape, its hem heavy
with street-mud, to have shaken out my skirt that just clears
the floor, kicked off my boots, peeled down to leg-of-mutton
sleeves. My smock will be drizzled with yesterday's spatterings,
and I'll scrape my hair back into a serious knot. In a turpentine
trance I'll fill my lungs with risk, but keep safe as tiles in the tin-
glaze of windmills, of tulips, to blacken my fingers with charcoal;
mark out the form of the day's model; her angles and slopes;
the sheen of naked flesh rubbed white by my thumb, wher tall
windows offer up dependable light for work on this leaden day.
Winner Wokingham Library Competition, 2009