Archive of all previous showcases
Edited by Susan Jane Sims
Photograph : Susan Jane Sims
Aftershock
My fingers tremble
as I lift her,
just a whisper
of shell-bone and feather.
Her wings are warm and soft,
folded and still
in the cup of my hands,
her eyes, half closed,
hide their shine.
I look to the sky,
filled with wing beats
and birdsong,
and I curse
the bright blindness
of glass.
Sonia Goulding
The Tambourine Prayer
When you speak to me…
when your eyes speak to me…
when cymbals spark light
across the sky and the sea
and dunes run bare-toed to grasses disporting
the evening-ebbed warmth of sand
and a curlew loses its tongue from far away
across a flight of bog-lands
as if intervalled mountains were nothing
but resonant chords and sound space
where time pools as lightly as a memory
of a melody heard in childhood
or wings settling to re-found nests
for another day gone
spent breath-lightly enough
to coax sunset-dragons
to pantomime the hill-sighing-day-light
with surplus skins
that ember the shriven colours
to velvet and grey
and so the stars are sown…
When you speak to me…
when your eyes speak to me…
then.
Gareth Alun Roberts
The Secret
In a box, in my room, at the back of the cupboard
lies a secret, I have never seen.
There amongst the badly filed paperwork
and bag of odd socks still waiting to be paired,
a black and white film, 35 mil.
From a second hand shop in a small run down town,
I bought a camera like the one Ansel Adams had.
A minolta, slightly battered, but worked.
In that I found the mystery,
of which I am the guardian.
I've always wondered what’s in that film:
Great landscapes, portraits, family snaps,
intimate photographs, erotica.
Never developed though I had a chance,
I’d prefer to imagine rather than perceive.
Paul Truan
Yours
is just a syntax version
failed attempt to fill in what’s not possible,
establish order from how each relates to one another,
pastiche of what was, perhaps –
airbrushing archives reveal stark facts,
Fathers’ names
if lucky, a date or two
or indication of how they moved
through a disappeared landscape, a
trail of poisoned patterned heredity,
violent rupture of territory
linked by rivulets of blood.
Women’s absences coil
through their men’s interweaving pursuits
of power, prestige
and ownership of bodies and land –
a mother’s love
suggested only
by a choice of Christian name –
a Christmas Rose
or summer Violet.
Julie Sampson
Snowdrops
… hedgerow listeners,
mouths agape
in top heavy headiness
yet as fragilely-white
as fine china.
And, there,
an early-year bee
deep-seeking
the freckled throat
till that pollen-heavy
withdrawal
zig-zagging away
as if drunk
on Candlemas sun.
Snowdrops,
so many winter postulants
with their leaning need.
How they shiver.
Roger Elkin
100 daffodils
They open
golden mouths,
lick their yellow lips
and purse them
into kisses
for Valentine’s Day.
They glow
lighting up
the morning kitchen,
spill promises on
the breakfast table
with marmalade & toast.
100 daffodils
(or more perhaps?)
such over-the-topness,
such glory
all saying these three
well-worn words.
I love you. Me too.
Moira Andrew
Free Time
The roar of the swamp
is like the criminal lion
and also like the crimson frilled skirts
of the violin madam
of Vivaldi,
so I sink into a drowse on the sofa
and find my young self
on the city bus,
Monday morning,
late January through the biting cold,
to high school
where the ugly bronze head
of Abraham Lincoln
greets me as I walk through the weather vestibule,
the lobby that separates the frozen elements
from the somber tasks
of education
I know I could let go of
to dissolve like small piles of warm sand
right there
and not be held accountable for being born.
Being me is like being married
to Salvador Dali on a bad hair day,
and so that is why my second hour
creative writing teacher will not kiss me,
but she lets me stroke her breasts
in the locked classroom
as the gods applaud with beams of sunlight,
and when I arrive home
my mother and father smell such luck upon my clothes
and seal me in the freezing garage
to practice upon a pile of trombones.
Rustin Larson, USA
O, Luna!
Surreal moon—
now merely a chipped bauble
suspended over frosted gardens
about to be engulfed
by wintry cloud
so you know,
too, for sure,
all fairytale romances
are long dead.
Galleon moon—
in full white sail across
sky’s choppy ocean
without a captain
at the helm
without a sailor
on the deck…
yet certain to circum-
navigate the globe on time.
Dream moon—
through it you might see
patches of blue:
holes in the silver dust
of moon & sky
where, when you were little,
moon mice rattled in & out
all night searching
for crumbs of cheese.
Lizzie Ballagher
Shaping Water
I altered the world from the kitchen,
a pastry cutter dipping into flour shaping countries
and pouring water around the peninsulas,
inlets made squiggly coastlines.
A breadknife worked on craggy cliffs
so impressed were the seagulls they came to nest
and diving below to catch
fish covered in flour for my tea,
thinking political when I shaped water
I revolutionised to speak about injustice
poverty stricken lands with no tap water,
it is time to harvest the rainclouds and flood
underground reservoirs at the Sahara
wash away all that sand, it gets everywhere
but keep some for the beaches.
My sink is overflowing, ripples of water swirling
around used plates, spoons, teacups, frying pan,
washing-up liquid bubbles and ferments the smell of cooked tea.
Johanna Boal
How to care for a soul made out of sun
Feed her with books and wildflowers
Let her try to find meaning
In meaningless abstract paintings
Shower her in sticky honey once a month
And never forget to play her the song “Vienna” by Billy Joel
Twice a week
Allow her to give the love she was never able to give you
To everything around her
Allow her to run out of that love
And discover that she too can produce it
Take her to the beach on cloudy days
Let her step into the cold water
And try to find where the blue meets the gray
Encourage her love too hard and get hurt
Make her radiate her light too brightly into this earth
And hope that one day she realizes
That she never really needed anybody else
To light up her darkness
Mariana Santana Soares, aged 14, Uruguay
