An online journal for small literature
White dust under soil
a headstone plot, the final
address for us all
Susan Wilson lives in East London and began writing poetry following the death of her mother in 2017. That loss opened the door to inspiration. Her poems have been published by Lucy Writers, Snakeskin, The Runcible Spoon, Dreich and Areopagus. Prior to the pandemic she was a regular performer at “Spineless Authors”, a local open mic event. Her debut chapbook is “I Couldn’t Write to Save Her Life” (Dreich, 2021).
A simple movement to intertwine —
intention, spells, and the divine.
Released from my lips like a caged glow
in a story penned a long time ago.
I stroll through the glade —
witches reunite, September fades.
October adorns the sky
with its paranormal lullabies.
Raquel Dionísio Abrantes is a Portuguese writer who loves rainy days. She can be found at her desk, libraries, mountains, museums, and vintage cafés. Tea is her favourite beverage.
My friends are a mess,
We are broken and scarred by the past and the world,
And the horrible, horrible thoughts that we think
When we think of ourselves.
We are queer, we are sad,
And the pain is so fierce that we should just be dead.
Yet we burn with disorganised love,
A cacophony of unsure affection.
A bond with no name, a bond with no box,
But we are cocooned, cosy and warm,
In an amorphous vessel shaped just for us,
It is here we exist when we feel that we fit.
Tumbleweed sleepy safe limbs on our caving-in couch,
A hand on a back, arms on shoulders, knee on a thigh.
In this it is clear that we love them so much,
And will love them so much, all for free.
Just needing them to be happy,
And to know without saying or questioning,
That we will remake their world,
One joy at a time.
Soothing voice on a midnight phone,
When life is too painful and savage to live.
We don’t need written vows to know,
That we are infinitely each other’s. Obviously.
Conversations are scattered,
Two hours on Sunday, then nothing for days,
Then 38 memes cascade through before bed,
38 “saw this and thought of you”s.
Tell me this isn’t the whollest of loves.
We don’t play by the rules,
Set by people and time.
They’ve never been kind, so no,
Thanks very much.
Thanks very much,
To a family chosen, adopted friends,
The platonic loves of my life.
We make sense of a world,
Will make sense of a world,
In which we make no sense at all.
Emily Aine is a recent physics graduate from the northwest of Ireland. She lives and works in Dublin, and loves spending time in nature, having late-night chats with her closest friends, and enjoying cosy evenings with her girlfriend (and occasionally her cat!). She has recently rediscovered her passion for writing and uses it to focus on joy, friendship, and seeing the beauty in the everyday.
You will never know.
You’ll never hear of the sleepless nights, concoctions of thoughts brewed in memories. Poured into ink, staining sheets, finger tips tinged black by contemplation.
Sleep shrouded by worry, unwanted guest. Exiled by questions, careful patter of rain on rooftops.
And my ponderings stretch, are you okay?
Are you lying in your bed at night, are you asleep.
The clock cruelly jeers, it’s late I should rest.
Bestial and callous, a monument of time lost. I see you behind fluttering lids, like birds, wings streaked heavy by splitting heavens.
Tears.
The questions swallowed back -Flu medicine.
My finger tips reach out to trace inky promises down your jaw.
But you’re not there, I’m suffocated by silk and satin and loss.
You will realize I know.
A day where you open up your eyes to the dawning truth. That I’m not enough.
Verve of the sun, boundless galaxies contrived, a prince .
Cracked vase, pensive questions brimming, a girl.
A journey and a stop along the way.
But how long will you stay?
And when you’ll leave you’ll take all the stars and dust the sun out of existence
and I’ll be left with barren skies and crushed lungs.
Don’t go, I want to plead, but how can I be so selfish?
The sun does not yield to commands of a stalk of grass, when it can illuminate a meadow.
Oceans poured for you and mountains stooped low in bows by your presence.
All I can give are the contractions of my heart,
promises of borrowed happiness from future memories.
So I’ll close my eyes and hope, that never will a day be so cursed, to open them and see your fingers slipped through mine.
Shifting sand.
Distant memory.
Kornelija Gruodyte is a Lithuanian and Irish poet. Through her work, she delves into the unseemly, slowly unravelling the uncomfortable realities of existence. She likes to probe things that are often constrained, bringing them to life under the glaring gaze of a fresh perspective.
—with reverence for Coleridge’s “Frost at Midnight”
A fire, much like the one that Coleridge nursed,
leaps muttering toward the flue; flames lick one log
in front, as his flames did. The room, no worse
for lulling me into a winter fog,
is deep in thought; I doze a little. Spring
remains aloof from any hint of pleasure:
the wind, as cold and strong as January’s,
mocks the happy lisp of glowing coals.
The room is warm. The windows darken still.
Fire complements the incandescent light
I need to fuse the moment into lines.
It will end, the fire; its light will turn to day.
This poem remains the only memory
of a quiet night I had just this to say.
Donald Wheelock has written formal poetry for decades. Recent attempts to publish it have proved successful, which he finds gratifying after a long career as a composer and college teacher.
I was a hired hand for the day,
working hard to earn my pay.
I was helping an old farmer put up his hay.
The old farmer and his wife were gracious and kind.
They invited me in for a break for my body and mind.
We sat at the kitchen table for a rest and a talk.
Then the farmer’s wife sat before me a glass.
She said “Careful son, don’t drink it too fast,
that’s Dandelion wine, and it’ll kick your ass”
After the break was over and my glass was empty,
it was back to work and back outside for me.
There was more hay to haul, out to the field I was bound.
Upon the tractor I did attempt to leap,
but I missed the step and I hit the ground.
From my right forearm I could see the blood begin to seep.
A nasty scrape, nothing more,
feeling quite numb from the wine,
and a dizziness like I’ve never felt before,
I climbed onto the tractor more carefully this time.
Away we went, the tractor , the wagon, and me.
Headed out the gate,
it was already getting late,
had to get the hay in before it was too dark to see.
But on the way through the gate, I hit the post.
The fact that the gate was 12 feet wide hurt the most.
Returning with a load from the field,
to the old farmer my sad story I had to yield.
He looked at me, a young man of fifteen,
with a laugh he said “No more Dandelion wine for you,
not until you’re at least going on eighteen”.
The following day,
I was back there again, not to put up hay.
I had a gate post to fix,
the price to pay for my antics.
Taking half the day to dig a new hole,
and put in the post with the fill just right,
I was all tuckered out being up most of the night.
I had a horrible headache and was sick as a swine.
Believing from right now,
never again to drink that Dandelion wine,
being thankful this time,
I survived somehow!
After a successful career as a Senior Engineering Designer working with international mining companies, William David is retired and living in Tucson, Az. He likes spending time now devoted to his passion: writing poetry. William writes for his pleasure and the pleasure of those who might read his poems.
He has recently been published in three journals, the poem “A Dead Horse Fantasy” was published in Underwood and “Belle’s Saloon” in True Chili, as well as “On Hold”, “I Never Judge”, “Freestyle”, and “Early Morning Sunlight” in Rue Scribe.
Even if you deem their choice unwise,
Leave the grown-up person to decide.
Good intention rarely justifies,
Patent risk of hurting someone’s pride.
Mr. Winick began reading and writing poetry two years ago, at nearly age 65, after concluding a long career as an attorney.
Some days are uneventful,
Others bustle with delight.
But each day begs one question –
What will dinner be tonight?
Mr. Winick began reading and writing poetry two years ago, at nearly age 65, after concluding a long career as an attorney.
We were only ever colors
Turquoise
Yellow
Crimson
Gazing up while fading gray
We say the stars are suns
Our eyes and ears dissolve
We say their light is old
Our hands disintegrate
We momentarily live fully
In the restless pressing
Of our unseen hips on uneven land
Then sleep to wake
And assume the crisp shapes
Of saturated dreams
Kathryn Spratt is a teacher more than she is anything else, but she is also the primary walker of an unruly Brittany Spaniel. Her hobbies include being married and taking pictures of trees.
He wouldn’t give up now; there was no point. The smoke wound, blue and delicate, through the warm air. The bottle of rosé wasn’t quite finished. After the first sips of coffee, he knew it would taste bitter. Crumbs of fig cake stuck to the little dessert fork on the uncleared plate. He didn’t want the meal to end. He ordered a brandy; he’d sleep later.
The sun flared from the dust jacket of the book lying on the table in front of him, obscuring most of the title, though he could still read the black words ‘…of Pain’. He’d nearly finished it. The descriptions of the author’s worsening condition were becoming more graphic, more terrible. He hadn’t known the disease existed in that particular form, the evolution of its crippling agony a new and yet, strangely, not unwelcome discovery. There seemed no reason now not to immerse himself in it, like a guidebook to an unfamiliar, impending destination. He felt more and more a creature of unchosen movement, surrendered to ancient currents.
The restaurant occupied the ground floor of a building at the end of a row jutting between the start of two streets. One disappeared back into the town, winding among tourist shops, dropping in steps and slopes down towards the river. The other shortly became one side of the main square, opposite the colossal old Holy Palace. At the far end the square terminated in a bluff overlooking the bend in the river half-spanned by the famous ruined bridge. Between the Palace’s river-facing flank and the first tumbling rocks of the bluff was the small park where he’d walked that morning, stunned by the white gold heat and the blueness of the sky and the pale bright Palace rising vastly behind him as he looked at the green and glittering river below.
Standing there, it had seemed so simple to him. Each of these things, each component of the day, bold and exact, combined around him with architectural sureness, its edges hard against the others’, its qualities unarguably displayed. These few expressions of place and quality and moment buttressed him with their certainty. Among them he felt calmer and reassured, something restored that had begun to drain from him in that surprisingly small office, two months ago and hundreds of miles away, as soon as the thin, immaculate, matter-of-fact specialist had begun speaking. Here, where a handful of elements supported the world with such beautiful authority, he breathed more easily, blessing every sight.
He blew smoke upwards; it drifted slowly, fragile and weakening. Above it, arcing like dark formulae against the lapis brilliance beyond, swifts screamed. He’d always thought them lucky. Soon he would pay and leave, tipping this happy day extravagantly. He would walk the short distance to the hotel, the alcohol thickening his senses as he moved between deep shadows. In his room he would lie on the sunlit bed, staring out at the crowding, red-tiled roofs. Vainly, he would try to read his book but, in the stillness, he’d drift off to the noises of the town and to the sound of the swifts overhead, increasingly high and far.
Craig Dobson lives in the UK and works for the local council library service, watching the books dwindle in number year after year but still pleased about how many people turn to them when it’s important. Aside from that, he ages and fattens spending much time staring into the middle distance, where he is sure that some revelation lies, waiting.