All posts filed under: Alphabets

Song To Sequana (Burgundy, 100 BC) and other poems by Tim Miller

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SONG TO NEHALENNIA (NETHERLANDS, AD 200)   Lady, here are offering for all those whose business has to do with ships the ones from here to Albion & back and the prow you always lean upon;   Lady, here are offerings for all those whose business is with the worked earth the ones with and herbs and flowers and all the fruits piled upon your lap;   Lady, here are offerings for all those who have ceased with commerce and died our sons in the sea and our fathers in the ground and the Dark World’s dog always as your side;   Lady, here are fresh loaves from all those that have desired your altar and temple and shrine the ones who follow your miles to the water theirs and our mothers the long background of you.   LOOKING FOR NERTHUS (AD 100) for Jenny   The priest senses a new weight in the wagon and it’s driven by boat to the mainland and wheeled with rejoicing from place to place:   the pulling cows …

“Fabric” and other poems by Kate O’Shea

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Fabric Italians hunt song birds, gawping silence, decaying rope from where a small girl hung in the rubber hoop of an old tractor tyre a lifetime ago, no limits on adventure growing up to carry the fire not knowing about box files, computer monitors the prescribed texts and reading lists that deformed desire replaced it with a constabulary of deception despite all this she did not dwindle into a wife and mother the spindle of life is cruel it twists and turns – one makes the other. The brushwood burns, watchmen flock together and camp in the open. The Night Watchman Love is not real estate expansive as flood plains intimate like silt destructive and constructive it is not for those who role play or get lost in the night led astray by bright lights and flesh turrets maidens with drawn out hair beefy knights. Love is insomnia of the soul and you are always watching it is more satisfying than breathing a little call that a life? to watch over, to be there, to …

“The Infinite Body of Sensation”; Visual poetry by Salma Caller

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Sound is a shell Sound is a shell An ear Curves of sound Vibrating and condensing air Echoes in a curved space An ocean in the shell of sound Pearls Things that stand in for other things The Witches Pouches Bags of velvet black Nets entangling objects Bones of birds The insides of shells Spells Pearls Things that stand in for other things Nets entangling objects Bones of birds The insides of shells Black Lace Turn this talk into a tale A small dark textured cloth Shadows with shades of velvet Borders and edges tactile Spaces glittering and ornate An elaborate intertwining language Of touching A complex dance of bodies Claustrophobic close Obscure ornate organs Lying in a dark net of black stuffs Needles like obsidian beaks Braiding sound into A florid calligraphy of sensations Rose Point Point de Neige Gros Point Punto in aria Lying in a dark net of black stuffs Needles like obsidian beaks Braiding sound into A florid calligraphy of sensations Rose Rose coloured lips swirling around a dark spot Tasting …

‘I wanted to tell you, but there was no time’ and other poems by Csilla Toldy

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Kitchen   With hot chilli in my eyes I read between the lines, a coded message of noises: A child’s scream sheathed in wind blasts,   gashes through the cracks. The mandalay porcelain clock, riveting, ticks between my shoulder blades. I carry my life like a snail.   The fridge sighs, a boiler roars into motion, it broils the oil of the seas and heats – my place, the kitchen at dawn.   Clouds scrub the stratosphere with desert sand; a mad dog, stuck in fear, just shrills. The river at the bottom of our glen, shushing its song, cushions our senses.   In my body’s kitchen the heart spins unrelenting. Organs send impulses talking to each other. “Thanks for the parcel, we enjoyed the food.”   The universe of enzymes awakens, matter is transformed, vibrations vocalise. My body is gauze, from Gaza, letting through the particles of light – staunch at covering the wounds, so absorbent.   Beyond its wonders I remember last night’s cosmic dance at this table, our conversation about intelligence and …

‘Cry Oceans’ by Mary Cecil

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Cry Oceans   Cry oceans and weep the seas Where waves flow over The endless motions of life The swimming perfection that flees   The Armageddon of destruction By all means possible The mechanisation of death The beginning of the end   For whales and tuna to consume The mercury to garnish The insatiable greed to fill The merciless plunderers   To crush and pulp for cattle The wanton waste of the world That flies in the face of God And wilts in the sun   The lonely song of the whale That echoes in silent reproach The albatross that soars Over oceans of emptiness   The flowering coral that dies Blooming in acid The hymn of death Beneath blue heaven   © Mary Cecil, Rathlin Island   ‘Written in protest to the mechanisation of fishing with super trawlers‘ Mary Cecil is the mother of large family and Grandmother to eleven. The widow of Rathlin Island’s famous campaigner, diver, author (Harsh winds of Rathlin) Thomas Cecil. Lover of Rathlin Island, Northern Ireland’s only inhabited island. Mary …