The Poetry Village

Shriram Sivaramakrishnan

At a restaurant

between its kitchen and fine-dining area,
near the billing counter, between the bar
that had a Buddha head between bottles
of brandy, I wrote this

on the back of a duplicate invoice
of a takeaway order (one Veg Rogan Josh
and one Lamb Goat Biryani ),
the distance between a lamb and a goat

being collapsible space made up of time.
I scribbled it after the last customer
(a lazy brown man in a Tuxedo, farting
his way out to the car park) left.

To my right, unkempt dinner tables –
a bohemian battleground of forks and knives –
beside which lay a graveyard of glasses,
the bar-deck. Guinness, Pedigree…

glasses, but in posterity empty obelisks –
each representing a moment of that day.
Under every glass a mark: a shape
of its own bottom, the instant

of a beer-spill. A mark that said
I happened here. I used an odorous rag
to erase them, before I tallied the day’s
business into profit and pretence.

Shriram Sivaramakrishnan is a proud alumnus of Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry. His poems have recently appeared in Allegro, Coast to Coast to Coast, among others. His debut pamphlet, Let the Light In, was published by Ghost City Press this June.

Robert Ford

Factory gates

Every day at four they burst the dam, the sound
of the siren demolishing the loaded stillness
of the afternoon air, and from down the road –

squinting into the sun – you’d see them emerge,
a river of a hundred men on bicycles, flowing along
like a grainy film of everyday scenes smuggled

out of communist China, their trousers clipped
securely above the ankles, thermos flasks nosing
between the neat teeth of zips on shouldered bags.

Who knew what on earth they did in there, precisely
which pieces of the mechanism they may have been?
Or fathomed out the metronomic precision that made it

all fit together? As the torrent swam by, each one
making a shadow puppet across the tarmac, their
amber faces shone like zen monks, giving nothing away.

Robert Ford’s poetry has appeared in both print and online publications in the UK, US and elsewhere, including The Interpreter’s House, Brittle Star, Butcher’s Dog and San Pedro River Review. More of his work can be found here

Hannah Stone

Visiting Rights

In the long green womb
of over-wintered broad beans,
seeds begin to swell.

Cow parsley fringes
the lane beside the station
where I catch the train.

Walking along routes
we used to take together
feels quite normal now.

You have almost left,
though your body still lies here,
in a bed with rails.

We couldn’t keep up
with the pace you set, climbing
your favourite mountain.

Now, each shallow breath
slips over the precipice
that is your ribcage.

Skin sags from your bones,
unplumped by flesh or muscle,
busy hands wasted.

You are almost there,
scaling the final incline;
arrive triumphant.

I play you music
with trumpets in A major,
to greet your entrance.

I will sow speedwell
into the lining of your coat
for a safe journey.

Hannah Stone has been widely anthologized and published on ezines and in The North, Dreamcatcher and other journals and collaborations. Solo publications include ‘Lodestone’ (Stairwell Books, York, 2016) and ‘Missing Miles’ (Indigo Dreams 2017). She collaborates with poets, composers and broadcasters. In other lives, she is a hillwalker, forager, singer and teacher.

Cheryl Pearson

Antiques

A mounted woodland, baring tiny teeth in fury. Fox and pine-
marten. Waxy badger. A stag, all posture and buff chest, antlers

hung with mourning-jet and glass. Aisles of dulled skates,
and typewriters. A case of Roman coins rubbed smooth of emperors.

I see you stop at a box of arrowheads, fill your hands, and pour.
I get lost in the writing desk – its ink-well, black as tar; its polished top.

We both like the flank of rusting signs along the brick: The Swan Inn;
The Queen’s Head; The Pickled Egg. The chess-set struck

from ivory and gold leaf. We’ve  lost an hour, two. We know
the local pub runs out of beef on Sunday afternoons. Still we loiter.

To lift a quill and write our names on air. To rest a palm on a gargoyle
chipped from its clutch on the church roof; rain-gentled, rare.

Cheryl Pearson lives in Manchester. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in publications including The Guardian, Southword, Poetry NorthWest, and Frontier. She was Highly Commended in the Costa Short Story Awards 2017, and has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her first poetry collection, “Oysterlight”, is available now.

My social media / website links are below:

Twitter: @cherylpea

Instagram: aredheadwrites

Website: http://www.pindroppress.com/books/Oysterlight.html

Nick Allen

silence made the curlew

listen

silence made the curlew
summer gave us swifts
death birthed the vulture
night bequeathed crowbird

love made the poet
heart yoked to pain
fever screamed an alibi
fire crept just the same

water marked the fall
stone grew the way
willow shed the answer
ocean captured day

love stared the darkness
heart unbuckled armour
fever fetched in madness
fire pulsed the sky

wall drew a history
moon swallowed hunger
shadow caressed the captive
blood grew only anger

pain sung the singer
hurt declined the sugar
whip denied clemency
peace sat alone

love forged the poet
heart forged the poet
fever forged the poet
fire

Mark Connors

When You Dream About Bacon

the dead are trying to talk to you.
They want you to remember
their very best and worst:
how they lived, loved coped with stuff,
didn’t sweat the minutiae, trawled through all
the dramas: births, deaths, the details
in between: illness, madness, failures, joys:
all the evergreen worries of being here.
They are saying to remember their lives
is to be mindful of the pitfalls
and the things you need to get right.
They want you to honour their time
by ensuring if or when you fall,
you get up, dust down, crack on,
or if you can’t, seek help,
to do this in memory of them.

Mark Connors is a poet from Leeds, widely published in the UK and overseas. His debut pamphlet Life is a Long Song was published by OWF Press in 2015. His debut collection Nothing is Meant to be Broken was published by Stairwell Books in 2017. For further info visit Mark Connors