• Archive of all Poetry Space showcases
Editor: Susan Jane Sims
Photograph: Wessex Ridgeway – Chris Sims
For this edition I have chosen poems on love and loss, relationships and poems inspired by nature and by literature.
Bed Linen
The bottom sheet never stays tucked in,
unruly, flopping over the side
like your long legs dangling,
thrown carelessly around in sleep.
This bed is host to many conversations,
some of them just in my head,
others spill out of the pillows, taking up
position on the duck down duvet.
We argue over the pattern of its cover.
I think you seek reassurance —
the black cat motif might bring you luck
in the bedroom department, but really
you just need to move with my body.
The sheet, once smooth, will crumple,
imprinted with the shadow of our love.
I don’t mind if it’s never tucked in.
Sue Wallace-Shaddad
Mougins
I was shown how to fold up a clean sheet
in a garden near Nice.
On days when the Mistral was blowing cold
all the green shutters were closed.
It was a summer of scents – lavender,
rose, the garrigue. I learnt to speak French.
I brought back a honey pot from Biot
stoppered with cork. Full of glass bubbles,
it was crafted with the lightness of air
under the shade of umbrella trees.
Picasso lived in this village in a mas
for the last years of his passionate life.
I was young, just sketching mine out.
Sue Wallace-Shaddad
Mothers out there
Are there any other mothers out there,
who are waiting for the time to pass,
for the numb sadness to leave,
to grow fainter, to fade, with the passing years?
If so you have my sympathy
Are there wives and mothers
who hold cracked hearts,
minds and bodies in a see through wrapping,
looking whole and normal to the world?
If so, gather strength.
They same time heals; do you agree they’re wrong?
Will you show me your scars, the weeping sores of sadness,
rub your tears on my skin, in my mouth, over my eyes,
on the very place our footsteps tread?
If so I walk with you.
Do you feel them like sticky blood, like life,
like choking death,
like the stain that won’t disappear with washing
or powders or special cleansing. Or time?
If so, take my hand
Angie Butler
The friend who ate my words
We swap gifts
my friend and I,
made in the early hours of
yesterday.
Slipped into papers
of memory
and folded
into bowls of proving.
Served cold
in tragedy,
on broken plates
of sorrow.
Fed to each other,
supporting
sadness, grief,
loneliness,
With a knowing
and taste
for words,
food and love.
Angie Butler
A Dagger’s Right of Reply
To Juliet
Rash, hot-headed girl! I beg you: wait.
You say you long to die for love, for pity?
You call me ‘happy dagger’. Instead
I grieve, I keen for thee.
So lost are you in love, your liking,
so at sea in all your troubles
that you think to use me as your means
to leave this hapless life.
Yet why take the deep cut, the shortcut,
when you might still grow old in fair Verona?
So: let me rust in your breast, you say?
End your life now, you beg me?
Why, then, Romeo’s is forfeited already.
See—his beauteous body lies so still!
Think thoughts now cold as my steel blade:
blood spilt on city paving-stones
never can return
to veins or bleeding hearts.
Once rent apart by shaft or knife-edge,
gentle bodies will not mend again.
Lizzie Ballagher
A Dagger’s Right of Reply
To Macbeth
‘Come, let me clutch thee!’ you cry.
Have done! I’m no mere stage-prop
here for grabbing,
stabbing.
Heartless I may be, steel forged of fire;
but I shall not willingly take part
in shedding Duncan’s blood—
in stopping the heart of Scotland’s lord.
I must away.
You lunge for me again,
conceal me in your cloak
to fold me to your breast.
But I twist my blade aside,
repulsed by your fair skin:
so clean to look upon—
so full of lies,
of treachery and wickedness.
Now tightening your grasp on me?
Then must I do a deed so foul, like you,
O Thane of Glam’s, Thane of Cawdor…
perfidious king hereafter?
Lizzie Ballagher
Walking home
She was walking home,
minding her own business,
no doubt mulling over
the chat, confidences
she’d shared with friends,
thinking of a hot drink
and bed, perhaps of
tomorrow’s problems.
The tomorrow that
failed to come for Sarah,
jumped on, gagged perhaps,
raped – we don’t know.
One thing’s for sure
she didn’t make it,
taking that familiar path,
just walking home – alone.
Moira Andrew, March 2021
What Remains
Buried in the earth,
It decays. A tree sprouts.
Leaves whisper secrets,
Guilt crowds the mind,
The past remains.
Immersed in the sea,
Waves lift it high,
The tide hurls it back,
Pain sprays the face,
The past remains.
Scattered to the wind,
It rises, it drops,
Curtains tear, drums beat,
Sorrow reverberates,
The past remains.
Cast to flames,
A flash, a flare,
It burns to ash,
The past dies,
Peace prevails,
The present remains.
Leela Gautam
Woods: for sale
Greened claws grip and
a sinewed trunk lies
along the ground
to a knotted knee
of an old beech tree,
driven down by
long-since silenced winds
but its trunk curves still
and from its loins a tree rises
straight and tall towards the sun
and a copse of cousins
clings close around …perhaps
sprung from fallen seeds or, maybe,
from roots below the ground.
Another fallen beech lies
in a darker place.
Its trunks twist and intertwine
till they twirl and shoot
towards the sky…
though its roots appear
long since wrenched away.
Dark caverns underlie torn roots.
We can’t see where they lead,
nor what subterranean lives
sustain one another here. Nor
can we imagine what is to happen
to the wyrd web of life in this ancient wood,
about to endure the ruthless roar of a chainsaw.
M. Anne Alexander
Human
Celebrate the magnificence of all you are
So what if you widdle in the bath
and fart in the car?
Though your hair may be white
and you have to get up three times a night
skin stage curtains from decalcified bones
to a show that sold a ticket
to you, and you alone
you will always be a sparkling child of the universe
You may have been cruel, rageful, unjust
deceptive, deep-shamed by lust
please love yourself all the same
You incarnated to feel the grime
and the glitter
We all did
And we’ve all done it
or thought it
most definitely bought it
So allow yourself compassion
love yourself with a passion and
celebrate the magnificence of all you are
There’ll be time enough for perfection
when you’ve gone to the stars
so enjoy your time here
eat another chocolate
pour yourself another beer and
celebrate the magnificence of all you are
Mark Maddrell
Editor’s Notes
Bed Linen – I love how the bed and its linen take centre stage and become a metaphor for a relationship.
Mougins – An evocative poem that captures location well and the sense of promise.
Mothers out there – Having lost my own son I was drawn to this poem from a mother with part of her life forever on ‘hold’.
The friend who ate my words – Loss poignantly shared. The short lines work well to draw out the grief but also the love.
A Dagger’s Right of Reply – To Juliet – An unusual poem written from the view point of the dagger that killed Juliet. It invites alternative possibilities for this young life and is as much about other needless deaths by suicide in this present day as it is about Juliet.
A Dagger’s Right of Reply – To Macbeth – Again a dagger speaks. This time one in the hands of Macbeth as he is about to stab Duncan. I love how the poet uses language in keeping with Shakespeare’s own.
Walking Home – I received other poems on the death of this young woman, a story much in the news. This was the best. It’s tight, economical structure says it all.
What remains – A phisosophical poem addressing the treatment of a body after death. Different cultures have their own beliefs and cremation is the preferred way in hinduism.
Woods for Sale – A sad and shocking tale of devastation within this haunting poem.
Human – An amusing poem about being human and living life in the present.
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