Breakfast in Monmouthshire / Sea Breeze for Sarah by Robert Nisbet

Breakfast in Monmouthshire

Breakfast near the border,

by a spread of October farmland. 

A truck full of kit, a first gig in Bedfordshire,

and agents would be listening to our act, our songs.

We loved those songs, the four of us had crafted them

in a cabin at Devil’s Bridge. We called ourselves

Cambrian Mountain and we sang of land and places.

Suddenly, that morning, just short of Monmouth,

wings lapped above us, jackdaws rising

from the wood behind. We felt, that day,

full of the West, full of Wales.

 

When we made the journey back, in a lenten March,

having been crapped on,

we found a comfort of a kind

in the stillness of the Monmouthshire mud,

the gauntness of the jackdaws’ wood.                 

 

* This poem first appeared in Orbis (UK, 2013)

 

Sea Breeze for Sarah

 

Haunting Sarah’s nostrils, on this harbour front,

come the sniffs of tar, brine, jetsam, gutted fish.

Something here is urgent.

It’s not the classic sea-coast thing,

the Viking blood, the sagas, the passion.

Such gales burst further North maybe

but Sarah, whose life is laid out so much

in paragraphs and at desks,

feels a gentler thing,

maybe a gull’s feather’s thickness more oblique –

a restlessness, reminder of a world

quite close at hand, should she but choose to go there,

a world of wine and candles,

of evening’s cabin images.

 

Sniff the breeze, Sarah,

the seas, the rivers, the restlessness,

and then go back, go home          aware.

 

 

Robert Nisbet is from Wales, a former high school English teacher and college creative writing tutor who has been published widely in the USA, where he has four Pushcart Prize nominations, and in Britain, where his collection, In a Small County, has just been published by Seventh Quarry Press.

Set Aside the Necklace by John Swain

You knot your hands
before the canvas
like a fire rose,
twilight pigments the trees
beneath the sky,
you hold a starfruit
above a vase of carnations,
the sea crashes lavender,
you pour a ewer of water
into the stone basin
and glance
into a jewelry box,
the surface blurs emerald,
you set aside the necklace,
the crescent of your breast
opens at the robe,
we know the long parting
of our solitude remains.

John Swain lives in Le Perreux-sur-Marne, France. His most recent chapbook, The Daymark, was published by Origami Poems Project.

Rising and Setting / Heavy Heart by Sushant Thapa

Rising and Setting

I travel around, 
I am looking for myself
In your city. 
The walking melancholy 
Jingles and reaches beyond 
My path. 
I stare at the light,
I am blinded. 
Hope is a map to you
That I have lost. 
I cannot reach what I see. 
Feelings coil, 
They kiss the turmoil, 
Unreal, the flights of fancy 
Land like broken shards. 
The city never sleeps, 
Memories stretch
Like the silent street. 
I forget the name 
Of the horizon, 
To see the hope rise  
And set 
Like the sun.

Heavy Heart 

The sun has lost its charm, 
Time has lost its momentum. 
I lose what I cannot win, 
Beforehand, love does not 
Paint itself 
In our canvas. 
We overthink
Of acceptance in desires 
Sugarcoated in fear of solitude. 
We express not, but 
The heart plays 
Like a trumpet. 
I keep a close watch, 
Your photograph speak 
Of your eyes, 
In passion we have robbed 
Each other, 
Still future escapes 
Like the wind. 
For obvious reasons
And no reason at all,
We travel far from 
Each other. 
My soothing tune
Is your heavy heart. 





Sushant Thapa is a writer and lecturer from Nepal with 10 books to his credit. He holds an M.A. in English from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India.

Blossoms / The City by James Aitchison

Blossoms

Wind-sprinkled

over my path,

a morning carpet

scenting my day.

From the palette of

the night, softly greeting

my steps, while I —

I, in those same hours

of darkness —

did only sleep. 

          

The City

We wear them down,

our cities.

Shrines to sweat

become neglected, exhausted,

houses gutted of hope,

where factories make 

only defeat.

Downtown, uptown,

two parts of the same

toxic wilderness.

Shops boarded, 

a hollowed-out cinema,

apartment houses with

blind windows that can't see

mini-markets, garish motels, 

and more parking lots than cars.

Still the stubborn urban beast

strives to survive.

And people will say,

"but it has character."

James Aitchison is an Australian author and poet whose work has appeared in the Australian Poetry Anthology, Quadrant, Aesthetica (UK), and Black Poppy Review.

Sunflower Stalk Man by Diane Webster

Beside the koi pond the man/boy lingers
like a head-bowed sunflower stalk
too heavy to worship the sun
in an east to west arc awe.

His clone reflection ripples
away into goldfish flash
into plant roots trailing roots
to cradle, cuddle, soothe.

If he jumps, would he return
to his embryonic womb to finish
growing, receiving the missing gene,
the gene to happiness
to raise his head to meet the sun,
to mature the seeds he houses inside
wishing to emerge to feed friends
like sparrows bending over
a sunflower head drying, ripening
in autumn sun and moon freeze?

Diane Webster's work has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, New English Review, Studio One and other literary magazines. Five micro-chaps have been published by Origami Poetry Press. She was a featured writer in Macrame Literary Journal and WestWard Quarterly. Her website is: www.dianewebster.com

As You Like It in the Bishop's Palace / The Territory by Robert Nisbet

As You Like It in the Bishop’s Palace
An open-air production in St. David’s

A coastal summer and cathedral bells
and the rooks’ hauteur give us this night in Bardic country.
Foreground, romance in a forest.

From the back row of canvas chairs
they watch, they two.
They have not yet adventured.
But the voice of the lovers is reaching them
from the forest, from the palace,
and as eight o’clock deepens to a cooler nine
they draw the blanket more around themselves,
nestle.

Rosalind and Orlando are eighteen, nineteen,
but grown to love’s confidence
in the play’s disguise.
The playwright stakes out his promise:
Hang there, my verse, in witness of my love.

The watching two are in thrall.
Their hands, beneath the blanket,
steal together, clasp,
as in the happy ending of a play.


* This poem first appeared in Scintilla (2020)

The Territory

Things start with the cathedral,
a natural meeting place for wary lovers
from holy homes, aged twenty-nine
the two of them. From nave to chancel
to lady-chapel they threaded steps
and conversation, only to return then
to the city-village, to the ice cream
parlour’s rum’n’raisin, and some easing
of the mood. Their coast path walk
took them through floods of yellow
gorse, bathed them in sun. Is it too
fanciful to use the phrase “white light”?
Maybe it was the warmth, the sweating
of that squeezed untidy kiss. It would be good
to report that they hurried to the beach
and skinny-dipped. Et cetera. Well, no.
But as cathedral bells tolled evensong,
and heights of rooks exclaimed their
fright, our two were twenty miles away,
sequestered in a little bistro, sharing a
bottle of Chilean Merlot, making plans,
making such plans.

Robert Nisbet has been published widely over 15 years in Britain and the USA. His collection, In a Small County, appeared from Seventh Quarry Press (Swansea) last year.

Red Riding Hood in Winter