FLIGHTS - Issue Seven

Flights Issue Seven

Flights

Issue SEVEN December 2022

Edited by Flight of the Dragonfly

Flights

Welcome to issue seven of Flights e-Journal.

It’s hard to believe that we are now at issue seven. The depth and quality of the work we receive constantly amazes us. We are delighted to have received more prose submissions for this issue, please keep them coming.

We are also particularly pleased to be able to reproduce The Universal Ugly Tranny by Alice Denny. Alice, who originally produced this piece to deliver as a speech, shared this work with us at our last spoken word evening in the room in Brighton. We believe it is important that it reaches a wider audience.

Since our last issue we have published our first two single poet pam phlets, Body Talk by Niki Strange and Flammable Solid by S. Reeson, these are available for sale in our shop https://flightofthedragonfly.com/shop/

We also delighted to say that we have nominated to both Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Congratulations to all, these were not easy decisions to make.

Best of the Net

The King’s Peace - Phil Vernon

How to be alone - C.L. Bledsoe

I thought it was just the sun setting - Jeff Gallagher

You - Dorian Nightingale

Film Noir at Kelvingrove - Linda Jackson

i am a photograph - Mark Coverdale

Pushcart

Anniversary - Nigel Kent

Otters - Gaynor Kane

The Clown Service - Jennie E Owen

Hansel and Gretel -Nina Parmenter

Tartanalia - Andy Breckenridge

Bob Dylan turns up at Spoken Word London,VFD, Dalston at 7.57pm on 7th May 1969 -Simon Maddrell

We hope you enjoy issue seven and are inspired to submit to issue eight.

All the very best

Darren J Beaney & Barbara Mercer

Editors

2 December 2022

CONTENTS

Poetry

The Universal Ugly Tranny Alice Denny 11

Bob Dylan turns up at Spoken Word London,VFD,

Dalston at 7.57pm on 7th May 1969 Simon Maddrell 14

Fourteen minutes Simon Maddrell 15

I don’t know how to let go Simon Maddrell 17

Hansel and Gretel Nina Parmenter 19 News witches Nina Parmenter 20

In Ireland, the boys Nina Parmenter 21

The tablecloth trick Andy Breckenridge 22

Tartanalia Andy Breckenridge 23

Code-switch Maria Cohut 25

First aid Maria Cohut 26 Invasive Species Maria Cohut 27

6:25am Mark Antony Owen 28 Keep counting Mark Antony Owen 29 Fall Eliza Wyatt 30

English lesson Mike Huett 31 James Bond Mike Huett 32

Everywhere all at once Mike Huett 33

Betting on rainbows A. J . Huffman 34

Flash in the pond A. J . Huffman 35

The Cozy Monotony of Our [Inter]Course A. J . Huffman 36

Path of demise Dee Allen 37

CONTENTS

Poetry

Display Emma Gray 65

Poetry found on All Soul’s eve Gerry Stewart 66

A breath of garden dinner Gerry Stewart 67

Burnt toast and full bookshelves Gerry Stewart 68

Days of Autumn David Cattanach 69

The last bulletts David Cattanach 71

Festival Mandy Willis 73

Saltwater shells Mandy Willis 74 Pause Mandy Willis 75

Winter cage Charlotte Kidd 76 Geography Charlotte Kidd 77

Yes sir Charlotte Kidd 78

Dear finger monkey Candice Kelsey 79

Ode to Mari Shriver Candice Kelsey 80

CONTENTS Flash

Filling up Stephen Smythe 82

Into the blue Stephen Smythe 83

A woman like you Stephen Smythe 84

The box Barbara Mercer 85

The real Barbie Darren J Beaney 87

Prose

Poke Kate Lunn-Pigula 90

Torpedoes Bruce Meyer 97

The creative spirit David Cattanach 102

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES 105

Alice Denny

THE UNIVERSAL UGLY TRANNY

As a trans woman I’m used to the times when I’m marginalised, Abuses can come in so many disguises; an insult, furtive glances, shocked rejection in the tumult of love’s tentative dances. Being ignored. Insensitive questions in mocking advances. Lewd suggestions. Harsh words. You develop resilience; strategies of defence and defiance, for boosting self-confidence. Even so, remarks or events can take you by surprise. So when a fellow poet used the phrase “Ugly tranny waiting for a train” my heart rocked sideways I will admit. My strained expression couldn’t quite mask the pain. Tears pricked my eyes -a bit, I forced them back -again What else can you do but smile and get on with it?

The thing is , what that poet didn’t see was the “Ugly Tranny” in the room -it was me. And I was the one on the platform too. I’m the one on the train, the one you point out with disdain in the Post Office or supermarket queue, the woman in Costa you’ll strain every sinew Just to avoid talking to.

My isolation and vulnerability may make me an easy target for any of you. But I’m used to this kind of strife because I’ve been bullied for most of my life; and I’ve been abused by the best, labelled batty-boy, Nancy boy, sexual transgressor. Toilet pest, even child molester. I’ve been called a bad-wigged, whining, transvestite bed -wetter by a has-been trend setter, would - be woman of letters , a toothless tigress who’s grown old and bitter. You’d think by now she ought to know better.

People tell me “Alice, get a thick skin”.

In fact these small hidings make it delicate, thin. And though the “ugly tranny” epithet maybe isn’t so strong, “Sticks and stones may break by bones and - names will never hurt me?” That playground song?

It’s just one big lie. For words and names come first before the sticks and stones begin to fly. Then the beating fists rain in. The boots, the knives Shootings, drive byes

Trans men and women are ending short lives

In dark city alleys, abandoned in lay - byes and transgender children, unable to thrive rather than live every day in a lie rejected, un-nurtured are choosing to die.

If only abusers could open their eyes understand how it feels when you KNOW you’re despised live in fear of your boy-friend changing his mind now ashamed of the “Tranny” who sleeps at his side

So if my reply is this weak, fleeting grin, it merely disguises the sorrow within.

I can be strong - for tomorrow, I’ll take all of those blows on the chin Show the world I will never give in, Over and over and over again For this is one battle we are going to win.

Simon Maddrell

Bob Dylan turns up at Spoken Word London, VFD, Dalston at 7.57pm on 7th May 1969

Hippy jeans on skinny legs crabbed out of bed at seven pm just for another cup of coffee.

The cellar club having a night off walls the colour of sex cock-filled toilet doors.

Snaking his waist inside, I imagine there’s a fag on the pavement. Put me on first, he must have said.

Ignoring his own ignorance of rules & giving his own fucks he guards a guitar like a shotgun.

Duncan in his cowboy hat & boots feels under-dressed in black nail varnish.

Hannah warns the photographer to wait, wait. She turns off the clock.

He sings Tonight, I’ll be staying here with you and then walks out.

Simon Maddrell

Fourteen Minutes

#

Circular saws mark my route, roofers next door hammering & tongues like long-lost friends scaffolding them in empty windows & doorways when months before they filled with cheering horns, families lined up on balconies just as I imagine a photo on their kitchen wall #

I catch a wind-swept leaf, I think about staying for thirteen minutes to catch a bag or wait ‘til winter to fill sacks on the road buses gush, cars harrumph as delivery scooters sew, the seagulls circle #

when I stop by the post, an NHS Priority Box, their gift claps as it drops #

down the hill the Grade I church is no longer a life of worship but they stage rehearsals #

on the promenade, the Angel of Peace homage to nurses in a way statues should be in a past forgotten #

wind turbines swirl through mist and I wait a minute squinting at the West Pier’s skeleton that seems to spell NHS, they keep saying it will be repaired one day #

the autumn spring tide washed swathes of pebbles over the railings, I pick one up and know my place #

at a defunct water fountain from an age it was free, the place I normally circle the square with its hedges & shrubs, nature’s prism, a hundred greens, one red, one yellow

#

when it’s dry, instead I walk shoe-less, grass-toed past the chattering sparrows in a restaurant of trees but it is seagulls walking this time looking for lunches, packed, alive or both #

unlike Lee Harwood’s dead bench suitably wrought with iron slats and plenty of gaps or space in-between where I find a broken key # in BRØD+WOLF I buy a pair of vegan coconut & lemon slices that save the planet two-by-two but not my waist #

and there’s nothing eco-centric about the main street when my health and wellbeing centre is shut, I feel my breath as if I had a mask on but my glasses fog with rain rather than steam up #

the dentist is open to national health patients, a relief to my broken front tooth that chews on stuff too much, a buddleia has lost its smell and I wonder how big it will grow and whether the family knows #

the roofers who reminisce about videos, how one has a free feature film now the shop has shut and how the clunk, clank of ladders marked the end.

Simon Maddrell

I don’t know how to let go

Twenty years cooking a hotpot grow your own onions, potatoes father told me in Brentford they made those nylon bed sheets but not now it’s Brompton Bikes making it easier to get where and what you want, no-one knows you until we remember

that moving is no escape unless it involves all the roots getting our nails filled with its soil. I scraped most of it out though an orphan still remains in Bermondsey, but not really it’s Bermondsey Street you see

the argument is not what the argument is about my mother told me this over & again in a different way I was drawn to Stepney for four weeks in a bedsit nearby where she was born, the hospital rebuilding itself with an old facade

as if longing for her backwards nine months in Hackney where I also curled in a womb as though squatting in Broadway Market rent pouring from my pants like I am the gentry pissing my soul over the homeless

people battle every day with their lives, me with my own change put in their hand never in cups, speaking their names out loud just made it worse, for me ‘I don’t know how to let go’ continued page 1 of 2 ‘I don’t know how to let go’ continued, new stanza, page 2 of 2

in Shoreditch Triangle it’s easy to be lost like having no home to go back to mother’s story it’s easy to escape in Brick Lane nostalgia like knowing there’s no going back father said but in a different way in my arms just before the end. Memories of holding on the need to let things go to Brighton, naturally I tried Kemptown, obviously they both loved wordplay my parents, evidently Hove, actually is how I reach the sea.

Nina

Parmenter

Hansel and Gretel

it is pretty much the same here except the people have shells and metal teeth and Americans pronounce it to-mah-to and the trees sing and why are you dropping breadcrumbs

I honestly wouldn’t have noticed except someone mentioned the zeppelins and how Ed Sheeran is president and Wednesday comes before Tuesday and friction makes us faster so I ask you are we the same people we were when we turned down this path because isn’t that all that matters ? a spider nods but you you just drop breadcrumbs wordlessly you drop

Nina Parmenter

News Witches

They can conjure a crisis from a look and sticky tape, hang it on a headline, watch the stain spread

All night, drawn by the glow of a screen, their fingers chatter on keyboards — tiny teeth reaching for prey

By 7am, grubby spreads lying at their sides, they hang upside down in belfries screaming bong bong bong

Nina Parmenter

In Ireland, The Boys

gave us the chat in Casey’s played rap in unkempt caravans, lounged in chefs’ trousers after their shifts telling stories, safe in a nest of our knitwear.

After dark, we scaled cliffs together like baby lizards, egged each other to strip and dip. They held our skins and we grew into them.

In England, the boys visited. But in the chafe of our terraced houses, nothing seemed to fit.

Andy

Breckenridge

The Tablecloth Trick

So the tablecloth is yanked from under the set table of you.Your head cartwheels around the room. Once it was a solid rampart on a goat’s brow. Not now.

Glass crunches underfoot. A snapped stem, and a base minus a half moon wait to slit tidying fingers. Water from the slain vase edges over, dribbles on floorboards, finds gaps.

The bouquet has scattered its damp confetti. A spoon rocks to stillness and reflects your inverse portrait. Each audience member waits for an audience member to make

the first move. Every night the clatter reminds you she left. Under the duvet, you vanish.

Andy Breckenridge

Tartanalia

I stand outside your window at night waiting for you to open the blinds and see my tartan face the whites of my eyes

shot with blood lines - green irises popping see how the plain silver kilt pins jawbone my skin together in the wind see how

symmetrical and intricately blocked I am - each sawtooth of green dovetails with dark blue in a precise matrix

see how the straps and buckles fit so neatly through the slits in my waist - hold fast I was that night bus that snagged on departure

from Glasgow Buchanan Street and unravelled en route to London Victoria to help you find your way back - now I frown

at your lack of fealty and the accents of your kids and yours - while you sleep, I’ll slip sliver after sliver of tablet onto

your tongue until your teeth pop like lightbulbs see my gridlines keep everything in check stretch to infinity like a spreadsheet

weighing up the debits and credits (you are in the red) that’s me peering in right now, an arrow slit of borrowed moonlight

that’s my breath - that’s me hanging lifeless in your wardrobe - following you in the car lurking on shortbread tins and tea towels

as you scurry past gift shops at airports avoiding eye contact - weigh me is my cloth too rich and heavy?

Morning light slides past the blinds again and the first trains shake me out of the air.

Maria Cohut

Code-switch

A subtle shift in dream register portends it: one door, unstuck between home and home, speaking in tongues, vowels jammed at the back of my throat as I pedal through the usual answers - “yes, I live here,” where “here” is any given place that holds breath for me.

My feet might describe it as the comfort of treading water, of being swept up with the memory of sand, from pebble to dust, dust consolidated into sheer cliff top overseeing the freedom promised by the horizon.

Those tall tales of belonging have carved themselves into the fabric of sleep: a language I never cease to forget.

Maria Cohut First Aid

It was the clouds that held me at first. Those duvet clouds, rain-bloated, that blotted out the sun. They lulled me to a dreamless sleep. For months, I didn’t even think of other people’s mothers, how they were just a train ride away.

Then, there was the laundry, always clean, its crisp scent of cheap detergent a different kind of comfort. Strange, what numbing medicines we cook up when our hearts blister over.

Maria Cohut Invasive Species

It’s how they look at you - in class, on buses, at the letting agent’sthe frowns as you let out the words and your accent won’t settle - a wild cat, braver than youdespite years of polite conversation.

You used to feel safe in the remoteness of this language, unburdened by shame - the homes and hollows of your elders. It’s the stares that wall you up now, your rolling Rs the curse of generations.

You have come to see it, your enormous guilt - how you have brought respectability into disrepair.

Mark Antony Owen 6:25am

In the rear-view mirror, a dawn wounded pink –bruised as clouds on a child’s legs. Houses, not yet houses, just shapes scissored cleanly from a swelling sky. The light, wiping the night’s dirt from each home’s bloodied face.

Mark Antony Owen

Keep counting

We found a way to play this game, then you found the best hiding place of all: under shingle, marble, your dates in gold; under sun, rain, snow. I covered my eyes as you were closing yours, as you made yourself invisible at last –

made yourself impossible for me to find. But I can still see you mate, with my eyes shut. And when I close them for good, ready or not, I’ll look for you. I just have to keep counting, don’t I? Keep counting till it’s my turn to hide.

Eliza Wyatt Fall

a gorgeous butterfly bursts in my heart on a rainy day on train tracks that lead her away from a horse that rears, struck through going in the wrong direction for meetings sketched in dirty water, I side-mirror her look again for a second-long vision of blood red sun yellow tumbling over this chain-locked dog ankles splashed with mud bicycling fast in the direction of love

Mike Huett

English Lesson

Imagine you’re a rock, he said.

I tried to think hard, solid, as you do. A struggle, for I didn’t feel hard, or solid Back then, I was the kid who jumped away, as you appeared aside the desk. That startled boy, jumping so often, you even asked why?

But, I knew the drill, and didn’t talk to strangers I never wrote that poem, imagining you’d say; startled, jumping rocks, don’t exist, right after I’d jumped away, from a thump, that also didn’t exist

Mike Huett

James Bond

a drunk being quiet wakes the house (no mystery there) only this time, he’d jemmied a crate, half-inched from god-knows-where, its wood keening like a banshee brought mum down the stair, whereupon the kitchen table, under 60-watt light, diamonds appeared, in her short-sight What have you there?

B’Jesus son, it’ll be prison for you! he started laughing, and laughing Diamonds aren’t forever; wrong kind of ice, fish, meant for the Chippy (it fell into plaice) surrounded by growing puddle, and wooden splinters (the wrong sort of chips)

years later, he robbed a jewellers sober (no drinking on the job) I asked him; do you see a link? he started laughing, and laughing James Bond, bruv, James Bond

Mike Huett

Everywhere All At Once

There’s a place in grief worse than pain A place that scares me to the bone

That place where nothing happens, over and over and over again Treacle days where I walked in nothing, and nothing slowed me down a pace Slowly, slower, still, as frames unravelling from cinema reel Somehow Time forgot its name, and Change and Chance did the same How long held between; a photo without a scene? Then shift; a tiny movement did occur? Tiny tremor, tiny stir? Thank god, or quantum fluctuations of the void; jitters restart the film again Whoosh; voices sync with mouths again It’s back; I’m back, you’re back, in a world where everything happens, all at once, everywhere, all the time

A. J. Huffman

Betting on Rainbows

to fall short of promised destination. Gold melting like chocolate, just out of reach. Still I follow the ephemeral arches. Unbelievable as a Leprechaun’s emerald ensemble, I grip hope with both hands, use it as a steering wheel. Pray

I will find something tangible at the end. Pray I will recognize it in time to avoid inevitable crash.

A. J. Huffman

Flash in the Pond

Turtle slowly treads across manmade mimic of stream, blackened to folly. Spot of green dropped to ripple.

Reaction: flare of koi erupts, brilliant red, yellow, white, finned beats flashing in fractal flow till toenail touches cemented pathway, withdraws from water, continues, unmoved by the magic of its momentary passing.

A. J. Huffman

The Cozy Monotony of Our [Inter]Course

I spot your eyes. And shudder. Now you see a million of me. Yet still I cannot breathe. You reach out. Twice. And again. But we are shifty. All sin and skin and wings. Shoved into a light. Too bright. And sickly orange for your taste. You manage to pin me to your wall. But another sets my self free. Until I have bruises all over my bodies. Night comes to bandage us. And whole again I find you are tired. Of this game. And lost to brighter shadows. Deeper. Darker. And less defined than my own.

Dee Allen

Path of Demise

Lust for handling firearms

Angry mind siren calls

Shots ring out the loudest After the sun falls

Night time is blood hunt time Survival prospects slim The path of demise Is sought through him

Your very worst enemy Looks similar to you Bullets spent on men This dismal world fears Darker than blue Ms. Death claims victory

Over people at each other’s throats Sleeping boneyard on the hill Crammed with the fallen, it bloats

[ After Davey Bales. ]

Dee Allen

MEGRE

Desire for the miss from another race, Still seen by some a total disgrace.

Environment and skin, different from mine, Her shape, her heart Just causes for me

To cross over a phantom line.

She sees my colour and I see hers. Black and White, in flesh made sacred, merge. This century’s norm-Sweeter wind, permissive this time-Was a sin that led to the hangman’s noose-Last century’s crime.

Dee Allen

DISGUISE

I don’t want to come off As a man w/ all the answers Because I don’t have them, But Allow me to use This space To share My impressions on

Love Can be sweet, Can be thoughtful, Can be nurturing, Can be reliable, Born from need, Grounds you to reality Made for 2.

Love

Can go silent, Express itself In little actions.

Love Can also Be a cover, A thick cloak, Timely disguise For feelings

Able to batter, Break & shatter Fragile matter More so than glass Human hearts--

W: World Vegetarian Day 2022

Julie Stevens No Escape

They always take me to the darkest land and fill my head with thoughts that hurt,

words bounce hard, bruising my insides leaving heavy, swollen questions.

My daily battle with the fiends inside always losing before I wake,

the nights so long, they crack me open seizing sleep as it tries to unwind.

Days rummaging down worn paths calling answers that won’t stop running.

They take me to the tormented land where only still minds find their way home.

Julie Stevens

How to See a Whale

They took the wrong path and we didn’t say. We held firm, as they dashed to the front, the rocking, rocking of lives left behind − a splash of success nearby.

The clock drained as we waited, waited these legs couldn’t walk on a rocking boat, the silence dragged a doubt to us, still we watched, we waited, for it to come.

Their smiles and pointing made us envious how they might witness such a thrill, the fear we’d miss out was all too real but we rocked, we waited, we waited.

Too much concern, two stunned faces, from the dark the whale’s grey body rose, lay on the surface, its mass balanced − we saw luck lying below.

We turned, we thought, we didn’t want to shout in case this giant changed its mind, we watched, we waited, we kept so quiet, they took the wrong path and we didn’t say.

Julie Stevens You Won’t Stop Me

And when the mountain becomes too high to climb I will take out its insides and haul them down,

I will leave the ground flat with a soft suspension and walk, and walk, and walk.

And when the path is lined with hazards that trip I will claw them out and fill up your dustbins,

I will leave the ground flat with a smooth polish and walk, and walk, and walk.

And when the bushes reach out, try to grab my feet I will hack them all off and shred their sharp skins,

I will leave the ground flat with an airy cushion and walk, and walk, and walk.

Jon Doble

NAMING

It began with a mother’s gift, wrapped in hope and dreams selfless seeing what could not be seen, for in that gift, there is past living by those who bore it for themselves, shaped its resonance for now, this moment, this beginning opening yet untrod paths of what will be lived out in the gifting of your name.

Then in the living time, the name was stretched, belonging less and feeling more that what was meant to be or not, was fuelled and fanned by baleful lessons taut with fearful knowing of the ways and means of your living.

Then in the fleeing time, the name was foundered in the intensity of depth by deep despairing, severed from the gifting long ago, abandoned in the floating, free at last, and in the last the rite of passage overwhelmed the hope then ripped apart the destination of your fleeing.

Then in the landing time, the name was othered in the press of cuttings rich with shame and blame, but still no name to shun the judgment of their ire that points the barrel of dark opinion, triggering and echoing still the frothing waves of bile, to drown the faceless invasion of your landing.

Finally, in the banishing time, the name was smothered, ousted out of time and mind beyond the border lines of hopeless understanding, held vice like, fear gripped, preying now, and staring down past condemnation of the fallen, glittering still with doleful droplets of such weary waters of the baptismal banishing of your name.

Jon Doble

BROWN MEN WITH iPhones

They have arrived in our small town, the men, yes men, for men they are, with darkling beards and shiny phones, yet without an ounce of human being. And our hairdressers are revolting.

They come, unwanted, uncalled for and unkempt from far away, from places without names or nouns, to shake the walls and break the moulds. And our hairdressers are revolting.

They come without the decency to ask, without their wives and kids, abandoned now for watery ways that risk the grave assumptions of the way. And our hairdressers are revolting.

They come with beards and phones replete with unseen means to harm and we now need to cross the road to shun and then to shame with blame. And our hairdressers are revolting. And in the salons of our little town, we share the threat and stoke the fear and in the dark degenerated buzz of bile the borders of our time are now closed. And our hairdressers are revolting. And in the blindness of our being without the common decency of sight we tell ourselves we know it all blind to the otherness of them. And our hairdressers are revolting.

And yet, behind the beards and phones the fear of drowning out the human soul bereft of being seen and left to sink alone while waters choke the gift of hope. Our hairdressers are revolting.

Jon Doble

OTHERING

My name is…..

I will not understand your name for it is too long and was too long in the making, far from here, contriving to confuse and obfuscate the essence of my here and now, puzzling the origins of words unknown. I will not understand your name.

My name is…..

I will not hear your name for it does not heed the subtle stress that shakes my world and fears my judging differences of hearing out the trials of indifference to utter helplessness. I will not hear your name.

My name is…..

I will not speak your name for I cannot yet articulate the strangeness and the incongruity of lost hope, and in its loss the deafness I inherit to all but the proclamation of me. I will not speak your name.

My name is…..

I will not know your name for I will not, cannot fathom yet the depth of all but still water shaping your knowing, drowning out the knowledge of your now in the confidence of my conviction of your guilt. I will not know your name.

My name is…..

We will not recognise your past, nor the story of your name, for there is but one mind in the absence held in the silence of our now without the presence of sister or bother. Your name is Other.

Emma Clowsley

Palms

My palms sizzle with anticipation

As your hand reaches down your thigh and stops at the top of your knee, I want it to reach into me and palm to palm make heat into connection.

Your shoulder brushes and ignites mine,

As you retrieve your plastic cup of wine from beneath your chair. You reclaim your position, and our arms find each other For just a second.

My skin tingles and burns as if prickled by nettles Hands begin to steam like water boiling from a kettle. My cheeks crimson red, as blood rushes to my head, From my heart down to my feet – I am on fire.

Resplendent in warm embrace, where fingers intertwined, Minds joined, fused with thoughts of lust.

I can feel heat radiating from your body, Like I’m absorbing the sun’s rays, The little hairs on my arms are alert, As if under attack.

Finally, your palm touches mine And the world explodes into fragmented time. Sparks fly frivolously, bursting into flame, I wonder if you are feeling the same.

Chemistry, rising like mercury

As we mould into this glass tube. Too hot to read the temperature of the room.

Dorian Nightingale the verdant and the blue stop, and take a look from over my shoulder. hold me close, as you map the surface and bear witness to my furthest geography. the land that follows me from high to below sea level. as far as the crow flies between the verdancy and blue. my terrain on view, my footprints found on every footpath and detour. where you can see my fingerprints all over the fingertips of the headland. down to the white tip of my nail, a recurving spit that still defies the tides. now bitten to the quick, on ground that is no more stone than wet sand.

Dorian Nightingale sea reveries imagine sinking beneath the surface wake, and sleep awakening? to be taken below the quickening stream where sentient flows migrate and settle upon the invisible sediment. swathed to the silt of the seabed, cognizant. visions wrested from the almost still. distilled luminosity moving the pensive dirt.

Dorian Nightingale words unspoken and just like that i snap back to that place beyond the perimeter. where words run out as they cross the periphery. dropping to the ground, collapsing their mass right there right in front of me. buckling their knees whilst beseeching their worth, offering me contemplation in the wet, sticky earth. reasoning i have to choose from many of their meanings and claim me for their equivalent terms. pleading with me to utter their name and be part of their lexical territory.

you see, their rhetoric doesn’t speak to me, and they will always fall short. ill-defined, ill-equipped, not cut out for such intimate thoughts. so i remain tight-lipped, unmoved as their voices die down. bwing their heads in quiet enervation, my silence again deaf to all their pointless whispering.

Pauline Sewards Rainbow Path

Turn left at Old Steine to St James Street. Acceptance and love go far between Beacon Centre and Rock Place. All streets on the starboard side lead to the sea glimpse the shining ocean pearls as you glance away from busy shops.

How will you make your way?

With sepia flicks of history? This was Brighton’s Bond Street, home of Forfar’s bakery, the lingering aroma of Beano Pies, listening booths of Tilbury Gig.

Or will you take a personal story? I lived in the pink house in Margaret St, heard the grit of pebbles crash the waves at night. Or are you mosaicing your own map from kebabs and coffee, a haul of driftwood and sea bleached rope?

This is a street where no one tells and everyone kisses. Not just gateway to Kemp town but a whole village. Brighton in microcosm, the city’s pulse.

Pauline Sewards Get Back

As if your cat starts talking, or a fish-tank reads like a novel the skin of the world peels down and its 1969 again. In colour, unshaven, these boys who shaped your past. It’s ‘dig it’ and ‘man’ without irony, meaningful glances. Work of chords and strum, hum drum staccato of genius. The many hours put in, fueled by tea, toast and Pale Ale. Hari Krishnas chant,Yoko files admin, chats to Maureen. Billy Preston drops in to hang out and never leaves, brings sunshine gleam to piano keys opens the room. By the time they reach the roof you feel you’ve earned it. You put in the hours too, drank the brew, smoked until your lungs ached. And now it’s time for joy, velvet loons, fur to keep out the chill, shoulder shrugs and head gyrations Street scene far below seems innocent. Coppers mount the stairs.

Note: written in response to Peter Jackson’s film Get Back - 9 hours of edited footage of The Beatles recording Let it Be, an album released in 1970.

Pauline Sewards

The awkward bend

We are driving up the steep hill alongside Woodvale cemetery. Down in the valley, folded into lights, is the street we lived in forty years ago.

If I turned that house upside down I’d find no trace of us: not a cleaning rota, or a nettle pie in an enamel dish or the wigs we wore for the 1960’s party just before we all moved our separate ways.

I have held you, lightly, for decades In hand-drawn maps with travel instructions your looped handwriting in birthday cards, the glass bead earrings you gave me when you were ill and they were too heavy to wear

and the afternoon you were more than by my side as we giggled and yelled our way through childbirth arguing with the midwife, a strict PE teacher on the 13th floor of the hospital with a sea view.

Both of us have libraries of friends ask little of each other and deliver a lot. Turning is easier at night when the oncoming traffic shows up.

Rowan Carteret

Brockenhurst

Not always writing, at the end of a smart phone Hijacking the email at a diffident time Cracked for marrow, siphoning the bone Future queens of content, poisoning conversation Cutting through silk, mumbling on the quiet.

This mark is good for you, like it or otherwise Picking ou husband’s on a father’s free will, The essential bowing down to the break of dusk The hungry minion basis in its own cold Hitting gibes at the less fortunate, a date sealed.

What to give for another leeway! This substance abuse, Flying in your own hands above a universal slob,

To cease and desist from the potential snowflakes Crying out scandal, at least before time Inferno in a heart wiping out transgression.

A place for the self-absorbed, true, it is, Right time for repentance, paying through the nose, Growing in stately fear, a port in a storm Home truths of hell measuring precious deeds Expelled at midnight through the wedding feast.

Rippling through good, the stately mansions bleating Gone through sarcasm in a classroom brawl Lies and conjectures roving through desertion Falling in hate a growth more than cancer burns Not returning ever, evermore aged and foolish.

Rowan Carteret

Wisdom (Teeth)

I am sitting in the branches of a twisted tree, Held up by the laughter of a godforsaken creature

More commonly known as “you”.

(We all know this one; or someone like it.)

I was dragged from my classroom

By that seagull’s bark of a sound. (The grinding and clenching of teeth.)

I am half-tempted to let myself fall Because this stopped being fun years ago, (I thought it might correct itself over time)

But you’d catch me by the wrist

And you’d leave me hanging there for the rest of the afternoon. (It probably goes without saying, but whatever you do, avoid this one) You may have chosen your own name (Another fancy word for a not very fancy problem)

But you forget that we are all self-made of broken china, (Porcelain and composite shells)

And we know what you mean when you threaten to jump. In three years I might not even know you, (A rift, a fracture, our hundredth disagreement)

And I hope you never have to splinter anyone else Just to sharpen your edges.

Rowan Carteret

Colour in Natural Fibre

just around the corner is a wonderful memory i’ve treasured; the story of late night, fleece lined, natural warmth. a fleeting seasonal highlight, equally comfortable between the covers as wandering the countryside. press pause. the secret genius dissolves in acetone; the singer and songwriter, we catch up with them tonight on an autumnal pilgrimage before the storm strikes they were required to wait, nervous, a few weekends ago; savour the calming music, stoke up the fire. cold blooded but cosy, gathered around a source of light, warm on the coldest day are any of you secretly the same, i wonder?

Clara Pasian Grief

I caught sight of you Walking to the forest Pines of amnesia

Silence remains So does your face But the ghost you’ve become Is even more beautiful

He surrounded my heart With barbwire ivy And his whispers Itched my lids

I also come nearer those trees Standing as melting candles In search of lost solace It could be found Hidden behind nettles and hollies These webs of horns

I may have left dots of blood On my snow-white hands A tissue of skin

It took me so much time To find the answer Of dosing away the pain

You need to forget Dance the way Wind carries raindrops away From the trees

Clara Pasian

Insignificant Earthquake

The dagger you left Whose blade was blunt you claimed Hangs over my head

You removed it from your chest To stab mine instead

This is the suspended sentence

The honed dart that drops your blood On my trembling body

Despite all the shivers I won’t let it crucify me

Find yourself excuses

Call me a ventriloquist, A starving lover or a narcissist Your finger points at a pile of lies

If I shouted out my feelings My voice would have torn off The skin from your face

It is the raw sheer silk Of a poppy picked with a jolt And restitched by rage

I’m overfed with the wine Our feet have made One day I will throw it up Make my own holy liquor And enjoy it alone

I saw you from my window

Nonchalantly walking on by

A few flickers may have quivered But something greater radiated Peace – pure and light

A red balloon floating in my head

Clara Pasian

These were the days

These were the days With you

While I was fishing for compliments And you came out as a rainbow fish My creased hands picked you All wiggling and youthful It was the sun on my belt That drew you to me

These were the days When we tamed each other Under a drizzling honey sun And we both shared a spoon To taste this golden lava

These were the days When I drank nothing but in the river Where you said you lived Kisses were slow and wet then And our arms could hold the whole earth

These were the days In which I sang A love like ours would never die I pushed your face To any poems’ lines And I wasn’t afraid to smile

There was a day When you said Old and grey You needed to hide your tears In the water So you dove and swam away

There were days Where there was nothing left But mud The spring was gone So I filled it up With a course of Rhum And used a beer bottle bait In hope of finding your specter Meanwhile I remembered These were the days Twenty-seven days My lucky number I would look for you All day long Bending over the river I could have fallen and drowned In this bitter orange flow It wouldn’t have mattered You would have kept swimming These were the days I need to get over them

Emma Gray

that high-bird night on Calton Hill when the wind looted our words so we perched close, you becoming my airfor how your braid would breathe into the fibrous root of itself the tracing of days; guitar strings, tobacco, onions frying whilst you danced, would snake to sup our heat. I joked I’d know if you were cheatingthat you’d buy shampoo, cut your hair executive-short, but the end, no Event, just that unparticular morning waking to hate your smell as if something between us had rotted, made us sick.

so I must have loved the smell of you

Always

The young poet says he is getting married, the workshop has a wedding theme. When we are to choose a person for a starting point he homes to his girlfriend as an example of a person,

says he always thinks of her in a yellow raincoat though she doesn’t have one and did we hear her in the next room laughing? He doesn’t know what at. I wonder at a longing to pause us to ask and what, when we write our lists of things old, new, borrowed and blue, he is placing on the long linened table of his page -

if he worries his gift of a raincoat (there by the sonnets, the song thrush’s egg) might replace the one she wears when he holds her in thought always weatherproof, golden.

Mother [who liked them as babies bestprojected on to screen of fresh skin the milky icon of herself before their mouths learned the sound and the shape of no and the whorls on their fingers deepened their difference to spread]

shrines them small. Each adult child a shelf:

* three plain pebbles barely-shaped blocks of wooden boat long-forgetting small palm unfit for sea

* bothy for one clay boy beige fired lion worked-wax he intended gold torso of man

* comedy dog unicorn poem glazed girl smiles smiles hugs knees

* Unused mug. Handle, an infant’s ear. Name glossed.

Gerry Stewart

Poetry Found on All Soul’s Eve

Pink-fingered, dawn drowses an hour longer before rising, but we both long to pull the covers back over our cold shoulders.

My ragged thoughts drop to the pavement, four hoodie crows pecking their disappointment at another Monday.

A splashing gold tree waves its last goodbyes in the graveyard amidst candle stubs and frost-bitten roses.

At the harbour, necking iron cranes pause to raise their sullen heads as I pass, uncertain how I’ve gotten this far.

Umbrellas of light gather the mist close, watching the city crawl forward, reluctant, coffee stained.

It lifts its gray skirt above the shadowed buildings, allowing me to descend into the grind.

Gerry Stewart

A Breath of Garden for Dinner

Grind thyme and lemon with salt to the kitchen’s hum, kettle and pot, children’s voices asking the eternal what’s for dinner.

My cool palm carries the scent deeper, kneading the day’s weight, its push and pull, into the dough. Staccato knife on wood, carrots and fingers still engrained with soil I tended. A step back to the pinched stem, heel to shovel, cutting the earth, to bring forth music.

Gerry Stewart

burnt toast and full bookshelves withheld sleep tastes of pennies as night rusts to dawn dust maps my wanderings through the house a milk moon and stars poured over pages crumbs of memory crunch underfoot tick of titles down the spine like counting breaths wool filling my eyes give in

David Cattanach

Days of Autumn

Autumn - leaves strewn form patterns of shape and colour.

Light winds create a murmur Of falling colours, leaving branches bare. Chimneys smoke again and the sweeps roam.

On back door step are boots brushed clean once they were Laden with clay earth.

Ancient fires lance the villages, Potatoes removed flake their skins in the hardened hands of Blacksmiths, Carpenters and Journeymen.

An odour of camphor rises from the overcoats of priests who make their rounds under the glare of returning full moon.

Cordite fizzles in a crackered air kids tremble at the fire’s edge small hands grip the skirts of mothers sparks of energy fly into the night sky.

Over barbed fence in silent flight the barn owl ghost white goes, twisting its head to look at the opening of a door.

On gathering cool nights frosted breath marks a music score in the dark, deep In the woods foxes howl.

Comforted by murmurs and stories the people retreat to wait the light after living through many nights. The dull sounds of drums Breaks through the blinding fog.

David Cattanach

The Last Bullets

The last bullets are for you

Plugging into the flesh

Running away That’s how the news reported

Mown down by the fire

The hot barrels smoking Feathers of passing birds

Floated down

Doors opened, shutters untied

Flags were raised Dogs ran from the houses Children brought out kites

They had passed through Armies of the desert

Leaving scent trails of gasoline Plumes from the burning rose

Were they gone forever

The heavy boots of soldiers?

We walked with soft shoes

Ploughing our fields, agriculture returned

Soon we had cleared the mines

Setting down feasting blankets

Swimming in the warm waters

Of rivers that seeped into the horizon

The dust clouds of their heavy machines Had settled long ago and now swallows came With swift flight Over the golden ears of corn

We thought that our windows Should be opened To the morning call Of larks

That we could melt the last bullets And form them into weather vanes They would spin attracting light From every rooftop

Mandy Willis Festival

I’m surrounded by vibrant colour. Laughing, cuddling, swaying, smoking, toking, floating youth. All fresh, with faces radiant, turned in praise towards the stage. Selfie sticks and mobiles raised.

The searing sun sparkles its approval. I scuttle beetle like, body craving comfort and shade. Beats pulsate and match my racing heart as I negotiate wristband chips, apps, taps, a bewildering virtual maze.

The music starts, imagination fires and all unite, arms aloft, voices chanting, good will emanating out in waves. An app should be invented to bottle this generation.

To make us share their upbeat, compassionate, environmentally responsi ble, rainbow celebrating, open minded, curious gaze.

For these festival goers have inherited much. We sway alongside and subliminally say “over to you.”

“Work hard, own less, pay more and get on with it”. “You’ve our earth to save”.

Mandy Willis

Saltwater Shells

Wandering at Pevensey I noticed scattered mussel shells flattened, made smooth by weather and sea.

I picked them up one by one as my mind meandered, brimming. The nestled grey shells, with their blue arcs rippled in symmetry. Their luminescent pearly glimmers reminiscent of promise within.

A few I held tight until they grew warm, so I kept them. I touch them often when feelings storm. Their solid presence soothes. A talisman between past, horizons and me.

They once thrived in the saltwater that makes us, that constitutes our tears. Clinging resolutely to rocks as they were beaten by current and flood. Resilient in their clustered groups. Now crystallised, a condensed ethereal vibration of life and its gyration.

They hold echoes of waves and marching feet. Their marbled gloss and shimmering depth glimpses, subliminal murmurs. Proof that as the future tosses all about in its swell, slowly rock, shell and sand evolve.

I’m cocooned in the present, merely a miniscule grain holding tight to my shell.

Mandy Willis

PAUSE

The moon aligns and my blood starts to boil. The rusty engine splutters but forgets how to spark. Instead dread and anxiety ignites as I sweat, rumble and roar. Stomach swells as water relocates. Part drought, part hot lava spores. Hair sprouts, curls, turns brittle, silver streaked. Future’s possibility and promise not fecund. As time races, swirls simultaneously forward and back.

A tipping point. A defining cliche or wisdom’s kiss? An unnamed land avoided in thought and voice. As if we all decide ourselves or have a choice. Expected to just join ‘my kind’ on the side-lines rendered invisible, even blind.

Men constructed to mature like priceless wine. While we are undermined, pushed into the declining line. Can we just stay here without needing to pretend? Ignore plastic solutions, judgments about vanquishing wrinkles. Instead take pride in history’s crinkles. Or do we keep pouring money into the youthful cure?

I say stop the current pressure to all stay young. Press pause on societal fears of us aging. Changing. We can leave growing children behind, embrace our time not build a shrine. Let’s play now. Our way, MENO mosso….

Winter cage

Hello belly, baby maker stretched across – to the end of my hips, bio-oil slip greasy belly so boring to believe you consume time not yet past the preoccupation with the physical but blameless in your robbery and beautiful to breathe into

i will strangle you in a sweet sweat wrap wish you away with words and burn-baby-burn sit ups, then, think about feeding you hot chocolate; a detailed snowman, and watch him melt away in a January cup of milk

an ash cloud lingers in my throat, it’s there. just as I finish –nothing rids me of it not a big gulp of chalky water from my chilly’s

i go for the satsumas an alternating sweet segment on a roster, taking turns do their shift in my mouth popping under the pressure of my tongue

I take an old strepsil from a lonely ramekin picking away at the skin that sunk into its jelly, uprooting it from its five-year-friends that it shared in that dark corner, antihistamine & ibuprofen its only company now uselessly sitting between gum and tooth, its sugar burning my back molar

my hungry feet lick the concrete, out of necessity get to the pebbles so they can swallow the salt as my trachea squeals for new air

yes sir

he sits on the scaffold running his rough paint brush up the frame, mummifying a collection of cat hairs and looking at me.

it was early and I was yet to tell him our safe word was sparrow but I could not speak so I wrote it on a post-it and stuck it to the pane to this, he mouthed a word which looked like freedom with my face in the sun i danced for him he opened the window he climbed through. he asked me to boil the kettle, and leaned back and burnt his flesh on the steam.

his red soft wound pulsed and whispered not to look but my eyes were greedy

Candice Kelsey Dear Finger Monkey

Crawl into my hand, all four inches of you. All 1.4 ounces, climb up my finger. Let green eyes welcome you like the Kirindy Forest of your Madagascar home. You can be my professor, my Dr. Madame Berthe Rakotosamimanana. I will climb bread-leaved trees & find tangled vines for our sleep. Deforestation or not— solitary forager or not— you will not sleep alone. We can huddle, chase, bite, & grab each other while growing impatient for our honeydew larvae sugar snack.

Dear finger monkey, let me stroke your exaggerated lower jaw & congratulate your carving perfect holes in bark for safety. I will join you there. Take my jaw & open it: breathe your life into me, so we can no longer be endangered at best.

Candice Kelsey Ode to Maria Shriver

If only I had known Who you are Who your husband is What family you come from

I guess I would have acted Better that afternoon On Wilshire Boulevard At the beauty shop

When you demanded A walk-in appointment

Me just a twenty-one-year-old Receptionist from Ohio

Not used to your style Homeless-grunge-chic Or your attitude Entitled-bitch-sheen

I hope you like your cut

Considering

My manager stepped in To accommodate

& remind me that Here in Brentwood We serve the elite Celebrity clientele

I didn’t’ realize The richest of the rich Stuff themselves On free salon cookies

Stephen Smythe Filling Up

Kim lost her virginity, aged twenty-six, in a vegetarian B & B. Afterwards, as she lay there, Rob with his back to her, she concluded it hadn’t been worth missing breakfast for.

Kim had been ill with ME for several years and attended university when she was strong enough. She met Rob during Fresher’s Week. He was a mature student too, and also a virgin. They both lived in shared houses. Whenever they were alone in either of their rooms, she’d start to kiss him, but he’d stop her whenever he heard a noise from the stairs, or landing. There were always noises. ‘Let’s go away,’ Kim said. ‘W– why?’ ‘Why do you think?’

While he wavered, she booked a room with a North Sea view. When they checked in, the November rain was torrential. The night was a washout. In the morning, she woke up hungry and so did he – only he didn’t want a fry up. Her pleasant surprise was short-lived. There was to be no seconds.

After that, things went back to how they were. Soon, Rob was mak ing excuses why he couldn’t see her. With Christmas only a week away, Rob, red-faced and stammering, said it was best they ended things. He couldn’t say why. She couldn’t stop crying. That New Year’s Eve, Kim went alone to the same B&B. She put on her party frock, got drunk on fizzy wine, jived with pensioner guests, and in the morning devoured the Linda McCartney Full English.

Stephen Smythe Into The Blue

Dawn’s consulting room was in the garret of a Georgian building on a street of private practices. She was retiring in the spring – the figures added up – and she was ready. That December morning she had her first appointment with somebody whose company had referred him. His marriage had broken down and he wasn’t hitting targets. She sat facing him, the coffee table with its box of tissues between them. He was late-thirties, pale, dark circles beneath his eyes, his suit too big. She prompted him, but he answered in monosyllables and twitched. In session two, he demanded Dawn give him answers. His voice thick ened. What had he done wrong? Why wouldn’t his wife have him back? Dawn cocked her head to one side, then the other, as was her way. She summarised what he said, asked him what he thought, and passed him the tissues.

In session three, his head down, his tears forming a damp patch on the carpet between his brogues, he spoke about things he said he’d never told anybody; about that Christmas Day when he’d slapped his wife in front of the kids. How afterwards he’d begged her, said he wouldn’t do it again. And he hadn’t! There’d been the affair at work, of course, but that was two years ago and she’d forgiven him. Then, without warning, she ended it. Fifteen years married for nothing! Dawn looked out at the bare crab apple treetops, at the cloudless sky.

In session four, he was red-cheeked and ranting, selfish … heartless … bitch. Dawn squinted as the early winter sun shone in her face. She stood up and walked across the room. Instead of rolling down the blind, she pulled up the sash window, climbed out onto the ledge, and flew away.

Stephen Smythe A Woman Like You

‘What would it take,’ I said, as we swayed on The Haunch of Venison’s sticky carpet, ‘for a woman like you to love a man like me?’ The music playing on the jukebox was the B-side of a B-side, but holding her made it the sweetest sound. She smelled of snide perfume and sweet perspiration. Her eyes were green and bloodshot, her auburn hair lacquered up into the beehive of her youth. She winked slowly as she pulled away and held up her fore finger to show she wouldn’t be long. She eased between tables where drinkers gawped at the muted TV showing the three-fifteen from Kemp ton. If anybody in the pub was winning, they weren’t celebrating. The heavy curtains were drawn, the clock above the bar stopped, and only the live horseracing said it was daytime. She stood between two drunks on bar stools. One tried to paw her, but she swatted away his hand. She shouted up three sambucas and plonked one in front of the other drunk, who was wearing a dogtooth cap. He didn’t acknowledge her. She returned with two shot glasses holding them pincer-like without spilling a drop. She necked them both, licked her lips and kissed me. She tasted of liquorice and desire. ‘Come home with me,’ I said. ‘Baby, I’m yours, but …’ she turned her head towards the bar, ‘… we need to bring him, the one with the cap.’

‘Why?’

‘He’s not good for much, but once he saved me.’

‘I dunno.’

‘It’s nowt kinky– he can kip on yer sofa.’ ‘But– ’

‘I can’t leave him.’ ‘Um– ’

‘Shush,’ she put her finger to my lips and smiled, pink lipstick on her front teeth.

I slipped my arms around her waist. She put her head on my chest as we danced to a different song, even though somebody had unplugged the jukebox.

Barbara Mercer

The box

Eventually she found a cardboard box large enough and of sufficiently robust construction. She positioned it against the walls in the corner of her kitchen, there seemed little point in heating rooms she wouldn’t use. She added a seat cushion from an armchair, a couple of pillows, a blanket and a torch. Latest book in hand she climbed in, arranged herself with her back against a cardboard wall and started to read. At first it was just a couple of hours of an evening, then she added her duvet and slept there, eventually if she was in the house and not cooking, eating or in the bathroom she was in the box. She would try to stay out of the box for a while every evening, eating her food slowly or doing a bit of cleaning but the box would call to her, and finally, thankfully, she would climb in.

At work she found herself contemplating the space beneath her desk, pondering whether there was room to sit and work there with her laptop on her knees. She felt that it was possible but that it might be frowned upon. Instead, she began to build a wall of files and folders, document trays and boxes that had once contained reams of paper.

Slowly and methodically, she added one item after another over a course of weeks testing to see if and when her boss might challenge her. No specific objection came but the company issued a clear desk ordinance demanding the removal of any items except the basics from desk tops at the end of the day. Then came dark talk of hot desks, of not owning your workspace. They found her, after lunchtime one day, laptop on her knees, under her desk, hard at work, muttering to herself quietly.

Signed off work she was now free to spend all day in the box. She’d found some stick-on battery-operated lights and between these, her tablet and a flask of coffee she could spend hours of uninterrupted box time. But work wanted her back and signed her up for therapy. Initially she met a therapist online, but this was less than helpful so the company paid for someone to visit. At first, she just let the counsellor in the door and got back in, closing herself off, leaving them to have a conversation with her boxed voice. After a few weeks they could speak with the box lid unfolded, then she would get out for part of the conversation. Even tually they talked about invisible boxes, their permanency and portability. The original box left, squashed, with the recycling. But she is always in her unseen box, it surrounds her, she’ll never leave.

Darren J Beaney

The real Barbie

Barbie settles her tired arse into the depression of her old, battered arm chair and momentarily feels a connection, knowing when she eventually gains the enthusiasm and energy to stand again, her saggy leggings will be covered with cat hair and cookie crumbs. She rests her bulbous ankles on a dainty foot stool and glances at the black & white portable TV, just viewing enough to feel jealous of the unblemished image, still crisp and clear. She sighs, all too aware she is the fat lady singing her way through repeats of her own crappy soap opera. Her worn-out thinking is inter rupted by an echoing clatter emanating from the kitchen, pursued by a string of profanity. Barbie knows dinner will just about be bearable, maybe a happy meal?

She pictures Ken breathing heavily as he bends to clear up microwaved debris, battling his beer belly. She believes he is perpetually one large scotch from a coronary and imagines him grimacing, holding the small of his back, as he slowly straightens. She reminds herself she loves him. His rolls of elastic flab, roughly sculpted double chins, and his rouge drinkers’ nose. She still adores his prosthetics and cute toupee. She sighs, oh how she regrets, deeply, toying with his affections and feelings. Is so, so sorry (but will never tell him) for the affairs. Hates herself, with a vengeance, as she recalls her least favourite episode – the one where Ken discovered her deep in carnal knowledge with GI Joe and Action Man. But, despite remorse that leaves a bitter taste, she cannot help a crooked grin. Her warped smile makes her dentures pinch the inside of her mouth, she groans and heaves her arthritic joints from the furniture, reaches around to the seat of her leggings to fish panties from her crack.

She looks into her dusty mirror and sees a dull far-off expression, ‘is that the real me’ she mutters to herself and looks down to see her shape less boobs escaping south. She wishes her mammoth crow’s feet would scuttle off. She wants more than anything to simply stretch out her aging arms, flap her disco wings and fly back through time to see, once again, the reflection of her perfect plastic smile.

Kate Lunn-Pigula

Poke

Amy liked to prod at situations. She was a stirrer. I remember when Grace, our flatmate, got a third for an essay she’d been stressing about, on The Winter’s Tale. We kept trying to change the subject and Amy kept changing it back, saying ‘I think you are upset though,’ over and over until Grace burst into tears. Amy stopped then, looking smug. She pretended that she was helping. Once, on a night out, I heard her say ‘she did call you that,’ before the person in question was in a massive fight. But I wasn’t affected by her behaviour until she started working at the ice arena with me.

I didn’t think that working with Amy would be a problem. She didn’t need the money, she said she was bored. Grace and Rach were home with their families for the summer. Amy wasn’t leaving until August. Her parents were on a cruise, apparently. I couldn’t stay with my parents. The ice arena was stretched over the summer, with less students around to squeeze cheap labour from, and a lot of people wanted to come just to feel the cool on them. I’d been working there for nearly a year, so I was seasoned. It was all temp work, you could choose what you wanted to do, be it concerts, ice hockey games or various relaxed skating sessions.

I spent a lot of time cleaning up spills. But I didn’t mind, because the shifts fitted in with my studies and I liked a bit of consistency in my life. On her first day, we were cleaning up after a children’s party and she said, ‘God! Doesn’t it piss you off?’ ‘What?’

‘Cleaning up all this crap, vomit everywhere! It’s disgusting. They think we’re their maids or something.’ She made a melodramatic retching noise. I noticed beads of sweat on her forehead. ‘They’re only kids, getting too excited at a party.’ Still, no difference.’ She was staring at me, like she was studying me. I felt my heartbeat quicken and I fumbled with some paper cups. ‘Nothing annoys you, does it Bonnie? You don’t get angry.’ She stopped scraping vomit into the binbag. ‘Why is that?’

I shrug. ‘I just don’t, I guess.’

I didn’t like losing my temper, but why was that be a bad thing? Before she could prod at me further, our manager, Sharon, came over and asked if one of us would be able to help out behind the bar. Amy jumped at the chance. She didn’t mention my anger, or lack of it, for the rest of the day. I hoped she’d forgotten about it.

The next day, Amy and I started at the same time but we weren’t time tabled together. I was in the bar, serving overpriced coffee and watching people with laptops pretend to work.

Sharon strode over to me, blunt brunette fringe and wearing a bottle green tabard. She put her hands on her hips. ‘Have you seen Amy today?’

‘I came in with her, but I haven’t seen her since then,’ I said. ‘Why?’ Sharon pursed her lips. ‘She isn’t where she’s supposed to be.’ My stom ach dropped. I apologised and mumbled something incoherent. ‘Ok,’ Sharon sighed, and walked away. A ruddy-faced man, or patron, asked me for a vodka tonic. It was 10am and he had sweat stains under his arms already. I said, ‘of course.’ I smiled benignly as I appeared to be measuring out 25ml of vodka. In reality, I was panicking about losing my job and my flat and thus being unable to finish my degree. ‘Make it a double, love,’ said the patron, conspiratorially. His voice was too loud.

I laughed and said something like ‘must be a good day’ even though I felt like I was going to be sick. I tried to calm myself down with breathing exercises I’d learned. I remembered not to jump to conclusions. Amy could have caught a stomach bug from a small child. I did that in my first month. She could have been helping a customer – or patron – though I doubted it.

I opened a bottle of tonic water and placed it next to the man’s glass of vodka. He enjoyed the brief moments of being the centre of my atten tion. He wanted to add a tip, just for me. I added the amount he wanted to tip into the machine and I smiled and said thank you, how kind, even though that wasn’t how the tip system worked here. I could reign myself

in, be civil. I’ve hidden my feelings for most of my life anyway. On my mid-afternoon break, I decided to go to Sharon’s office. I wanted to know if Amy was ok because I hadn’t seen her and I hadn’t received any texts. I could hear that Sharon was in a bad mood before I saw her. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were going to Brighton?’

She slammed the phone down, put her fingertips to her temples and slumped on the desk in front of her. She made an ‘ugh’ sound. I won dered why she worked here.

I was the only other person in the office so I had to ask, ‘are you okay?’ ‘I’ve got no one to be Little John tomorrow lunchtime.’ Little John is the mascot of the ice hockey team that plays here. ‘Tom is back home in Brighton, apparently. Amanda refuses to do it now and Harvey is… I don’t know where Harvey is. He isn’t answering his phone.’ ‘I’ll do it,’ I said, eager to prove that I was dependable. ‘Are you sure?’ she looked me up and down. ‘It’s fairly demanding.’ She looked at me like she’d misjudged me. She seemed to be calming down. ‘Let’s see if the outfit fits.’

She led me down a corridor to a small dressing room. She opened a locker. The light grey body, clad in a green hockey top, hung on a cheap black coat hanger. The grey bear head, with its cartoon eyes and green feathered hat lay below its big furry feet. It looked sinister with nobody inside it.

I tried it on and watched myself in the mirror. The kids liked him and I could see why, he had charm. Sharon watched me with an anxious face. ‘So?’ she said. This’ll be fun,’ I said, feeling terrified. She almost smiled.

When I was leaving, back in my human clothes, I noticed that Amy’s coat wasn’t in the staff room, so maybe she had gone home ill. I had forgotten to ask Sharon. Amy might have fallen asleep or something, I imagined optimistically.

When I got home, I found Amy on the sofa eating a takeaway pizza and staring at her phone. A reality TV show shrieked across the living room. It was hotter inside than it had been outside. . I opened the living room window..

‘You ok?’ I asked. Amy didn’t look very ill. She was wearing a white summer dress that looked similar to the one that I had been coveting. ‘Yeah, fine, you?’ She stuffed a pepperoni slice in her mouth. An inevita bly grease soaked hand grazed the sofa. I shuddered. We won’t be getting that deposit back now. I hated fully furnished flats, but I couldn’t afford a sofa.

I doubted my next sentence even as I said it: ‘did you come home ill?’ Amy shook her head. ‘Well, I came home,’ she chewed. ‘I was bored.’ ‘You were bored?’

‘Yeah they wanted me to clean the toilets and I was just like, ew! You know?’

I went quiet, I could see the visible grease smear from the pizza. That would never come out. ‘They’re short-staffed at the moment. It needs doing.’

‘Yeah but ugh I didn’t want to do it.’ Amy laughed at her phone and started texting away. I watched the reality show for a few seconds. American women were screaming at each other on screen. Their anger repelled me. No, I couldn’t be like that. I hadn’t seen this reality show before, but they were all the same. I went into my room. I had to get away from Amy, or I didn’t know what might happen. I didn’t like feeling like that, like being in a pressure cooker. I felt like I was a child again. I changed out of my work clothes. I thought about texting a friend and going out, but Amy would only tag along. ‘I’ve got a migraine coming,’ I told her. ‘I think I’ll just go to bed.’ ‘Oh ok,’ said Amy, visibly put out. I relished making her sad and hated myself for it.

I spent the evening quietly watching mascot videos on YouTube, practicing my thumbs up in the mirror. On our walk to work the next morning, the sun already as bright as if it were the middle of the day, Amy asked, ‘why are you so quiet?’

After a long pause, I replied, ‘I’m not quiet today.’ I changed the subject. ‘I forgot to tell you; I’m going to be Little John today.’ What?’ said Amy with a stupid look on her face. ‘What’s Little John?’ ‘It’s the mascot. For the ice hockey game.’

Oh my God.’

‘The kids love him and Sharon needed someone.’ I didn’t know why I was justifying myself to her. I looked ahead, into the wind, and it made my eyes sting. I hoped she wouldn’t think I’m about to cry or lose my temper. Because I won’t. But she wasn’t looking at me. ‘Well Dan isn’t going to fancy you now!’ ‘Dan?’

‘I think he has a thing for you.’ I didn’t know Dan might have a thing for me, that was interesting. ‘But not if you dress up like a bear Bonnie, it’s like you have no dignity at all. Like, do you repress all of your feelings or something?’

I did my breathing exercises. It was already humid, so the air felt thicker than usual. ‘Have I angered you?’ said Amy, a sinister smile on her angular face. I re alised then that she looked like an evil imp, particularly with her hair tied up. ‘You should stick up for yourself, you know, let it out.’

I took a deep breath. ‘No, I’m not angry,’ I said. ‘I’m not an angry person.’

‘I think you’re angry with me. That I’m not committed to this stupid job. Who cares about this job?’ she asked. ‘I do,’ I said. ‘God, you’re so lame sometimes!’ she said. ‘This job doesn’t matter. Our degrees are the things that matter!’ I didn’t respond. It didn’t matter to her, because her parents paid all her bills. I didn’t want to involve my parents. Well, my dad didn’t want to involve himself. Amy smiled. ‘I think I’m making you angry.You’re not an angry person, you said.’ ‘That’s right,’ I said.

‘Do you think angry people are, what? Scary?’ No,’ I said. ‘But they do scare people away.’

Later that morning, I was preparing myself, and the crowd, for the first friendly ice hockey game of the season. I’d been out for the warm-up and I’d been nervous but I’d enjoyed myself. The kids loved me! I waved a lot and did a lot of dad dancing and thumbs up. I wasn’t allowed to talk because I had a girl’s voice, Sharon said, and that would confuse the chil dren. I thought that they could handle it, but I didn’t say anything.

When the actual ice hockey was on, I was able to take breaks. During my first, Dan was helping me drink, holding a glass of water for me, which I drank through a long straw. I saw my drenched hair in the dressing room mirror and felt it drip down my back. But I felt strangely proud of myself. I had managed to successfully flirt with Dan, sweating in a bear outfit. And then Amy walked in and strode over to us.

‘God, you don’t care about humiliating yourself, do you Bonnie?’ I felt something flash through me, something unrecognisable that I hadn’t felt for years. I felt like screaming at her, but that never helps matters. ‘What? Nobody can even see me. The kids love it.’ Amy rolled her eyes. ‘Nothing makes you annoyed or angry does it?’ I didn’t want to tell her that she was annoying me, so I didn’t. Best not to cause a fuss. I had no idea why she was needling me all the time. It was like she wanted me to lose my temper. I didn’t know why anybody would be like that. It isn’t nice when people lose their temper.

I thanked Dan for holding my water and got on with my performance.

After the game, the kids wanted to take pictures with me. I was buzzing by the time I finally finished and found myself back in the dressing room, where other members of staff were congregating. I took Little John’s head off again because I needed a drink. Dan asked how it had gone. He gave me the water and I was trying to hold it with my big grey paws. It was difficult and he said I looked funny. We were laughing about it. He took pictures of me so I could see how I looked. I thought that I looked ridiculous, but he said that I looked cute.

‘Hey Little John.’ Amy bounded up to us. ‘Good performance. Think you’ve finally found your calling.’

‘Someone has to do it.’

‘Ugh, I wouldn’t.’

I felt something flash through me, something deep and animal that I hadn’t felt for years. A shock of hatred.

‘Shut up, Amy. Just shut up, I’m sick of you constantly trying to get a rise out of me.’

Finally,’ she said, though she was less confident than before. There were about ten other staff members winding down and they were all watch ing. I saw myself in the mirror, a bedraggled 20-year-old woman’s head atop a grey cartoon bear’s body, little white tail poking out of its green shirt. But this time, my face looked distorted, I didn’t recognise it. ‘I’m sick of your smug face, you don’t need this job! You don’t take it seriously.’

‘It’s dumb! I thought it would be fun-’ And then I, with my big soft grey paws, spat the straw out of my mouth and threw my drink into Amy’s face as she finished her sentence ‘work ing with you.’ The water arched in slow motion before landing on her shocked face. I walked away, unable to meet anybody’s eyes. I imagined how I appeared to everyone around me; a lumbering bear with a hu man face, listening to the hush that followed my attack.

Bruce Meyer

Torpedoes

Years ago we’d visit Liz’s folks. The visits were difficult. Her mother and father lived in Hell. Parts of Hell could have been a form of punishment, but other areas were okay.

Liz grew up in a cluster of houses built in the Thirties with green lawns flowing to the street. Getting there was hell. We’d cross the border from the safe, pastoral quiet of Windsor by the Ambassador Bridge and drive through Detroit. Liz grew up in Hell Michigan. I would have said it was no hell. It failed to charm me the first time I saw it.

“I had a happy childhood in Hell,” Liz always insisted. The road to Hell was being paved every year. Signs hung from the lampposts on Michigan Avenue. “Don’t get out of your car.”

What the signs meant were don’t even think of slowing down or lower ing a window to ask directions. People in that part of Detroit could smell weakness. They are sharks.

I walked in on a robbery in progress at a gas station. The bulletproof glass cubicle where the cashier sat was wide open. One man had a shot gun to the head of the cashier and another, standing lookout, leaned on the doorframe and tapped the business end of his sawed-off in his left palm. He was, how shall I say it, calm and polite.

“If I were you, I’d get in my car and gas up somewhere else.”

I thanked him for his kindness, but I turned and asked, “How do I get to Hell?”

“Look around, Bud. You’re standing in it.”

After circling the downtown several times, and driving past King’s Bookstore twice, I pointed out Tiger Stadium to my son and said they had good red hots there although the team was no hell. They did have a pitcher who was showing promise, a guy named Denny McLain who eventually won thirty games in a season, but fire and brimstone couldn’t help the Tigers out of the basement. “It must be hell to be in last place for so long.”

Liz pleaded. She wanted to get out of Detroit and go straight to Hell. I didn’t mind the experience, nor did my son who saw a different side of

life and possibly death. We slowed at the robbery station. The hold-up men had departed. They must have filled up for free. A nozzle lay on the ground. The attendant was gone. “I want to go to Hell,” Liz said.

We found our way out of the labyrinth. I had a dream once when I ran a fever. I was asked about the afterlife. The answer has stayed with me. Hell is a question, an equation that can’t be solved. Purgatory is how the question is solved, and the answer is Heaven. Dante could have saved himself a lot of time had he realized that.

Liz’s mother, Helen, met us as we pulled into the driveway.

“I should have told you about the detour. Eventually, you’ll be able to get to Hell sooner, but for now, the area around the Ambassador Bridge is a bit tricky.”

Liz’s father Hal was watching the television. He’d spotted a stain on his trousers that likely happened during lunch and without looking up he kept scratching at the spot on his elastic waist khakis, and said, “You made it.”

“Were you expecting we wouldn’t,” I asked? He simply laughed, though it wasn’t a chuckle or a belly laugh but more a breathy huh. Hal could take all the fun out of fun. I sat and watched the television. It was overbearing. It was a court. The host was more in terested in hah-hahs than jurisprudence. I couldn’t help be feel glad not to be a plaintiff. Noise. People jumping up and down with pitiful glee. The court was out of order but it was part of the hell of daytime television. Dinner was equally silent until Robbie asked Hal about the war. I had told Robbie repeatedly not to raise the subject with his grandfather. Hal had a terrible time, Liz told me.

“What was World War Two like for you, Grampa?” Hal’s hands began to shake. He set down his cutlery and wiped his mouth on a nap kin. There was a long silence. I told my son to eat his green beans. Hal turned to me and shouted. “Leave the goddamed boy alone. Can’t you see he’s curious and wants to know? If I don’t answer his question the story will die with me and my shipmates.”

There was a long silence. I wanted to ask for gravy or for someone to pass me the pepper but both were right in front of me.

“Well, son, I served on the U.S S. Indianapolis. Ever heard the story? We delivered some secret cargo to an island south of Japan. Our mission was top secret. We didn’t know where we were. The Navy kept our whereabouts top secret and the person who knew where we took r&r during our voyage back. He probably figured our mission was ac complished. We were also under radio silence.”

“I was sitting in my anti-aircraft bay, having checked and cleaned my guns when I looked overboard and there were these straight white lines as if someone had drawn chalk marks on the ocean. I shouted, ‘Fish! Fish!’ and everyone thought I’d seen flying fish, fish that leap so high out of the water they look as if they have wings. I should have shouted, ‘Tor pedoes to starboard.’”

“A Japanese sub caught up with us and put two fish – our term for torpedoes – into our side even though we had asdic and radar and extra plating. It was such a fine, sweltering July day, the operators probably knocked off to have a smoke.

I sat there and watched. There was nothing I could do. I knew what was about to happen. People see traffic accidents in slow motion. I felt paralyzed, and kept shouting, “Fish! Fish!,” but no one understood what I meant. I should have shouted ice cream. That would have gotten some one’s attention.

Then, just forward of my gun bay, there was an explosion followed by a second blast down the hull. The Indianapolis shook as if it was that pep per shaker in front of your Dad he keeps staring at because he’s looking for a way to change the topic,”

“I’ve never told anyone what happened next. We began to list to star board and our bow began to sink, and even though general quarters had been sounded, most of the guys were below decks playing cards, eating in the mess, or taking forty winks in their bunks. The announcement came from the bridge: abandon ship.

I didn’t know what to do, so I lit a cigarette until we began to roll over like an old dog. I could see the bridge and the stack pointing to the

horizon and decided I’d better get in the water and be free of the ship because when a ship sinks, the suction pulls everything down with it. Oil was burning. I swore I could see a third fish aimed at our midship. I tossed my butt in the gun bay and leaped for my life. Then I swam like hell. I turned and heard screams coming from the midship where the third torpedo hit. Men who’d lost an arm or a leg were begging for help as the Indianapolis slid beneath the waves.”

“For the next four hours I swam as far away as possible until, exhausted, I lay on my back with my arms and legs spread. I floated. The last thing I remember was staring at the sun until I was almost blind and thinking, ‘This is how a sailor dies at sea. I said God I’m all yours. Send me to Heaven or send me to Hell. I’ve made my peace. I die knowing I loved and was loved. I was certain I heard my late mother saying, ‘Not now, dear.’”

“Out of nowhere, a raft bumped into my head. In it were three guys, mangled, burned, all dead. I hauled myself into the inflatable – that’s what we called them – and tossed the three bodies into the ocean, saying a prayer for each as they sank in the depths. When they were in the water, their arms raised as if they wanted to hold onto life. Each had a look of astonishment on his face. I can’t forget that.”

“ I don’t know how long I floated. I was thirsty. I kept thinking about what I’d give for a cold beer. There was a bar down the street from my home and I loved to go there on summer afternoons because the place had air conditioning. Cool air and a cold beer were all I wanted. Schlitz. At that point, any brand, freshly pulled from the bartender’s pump would have been a gift from heaven.”

“ I was half asleep when a voice called from the water. He begged to join me in the raft. I said ‘Sure. I could use the company.’ He’d been floating on a plank for three days and as he handed it to me, as he climbed in he got a sudden look on his face that wasn’t shock or surprise but exclama tion as if something startled and surprised him. Then he was pulled back into the water. After the Indianapolis sank, the survivors were picked off one by one by sharks. I never saw him again as he disappeared in the depths but an arm floated to the surface. I spent hours clubbing those

damned fish as I fought for my life.”

Robbie spoke up. “What happened next, Grandpa?”

Hal fell silent and stared at the food. “See what’s on tv, Helen. I’m fin ished here.” My mother-in-law took my grandson into the kitchen with the promise of milk and toll house cookies. I sat there not knowing what to say. Under the circumstances, nothing may have been the best thing I could say.

That evening when I thought everything had settled down, I asked Hal what brought him to Hell. I knew the story but I wanted my son to hear it.

“Your grandmother,” he said .“I fell in love with her. I used to make jokes when we were first married about her cooking coming from Hell’s Kitchen because she burned everything. I’ve spent the better part of my life in Hell. My happy Hell. Hell is the stories we keep.”

I was wakened in the night by the sound of someone shouting. “Fish! Fish!”

It was Hal. My wife said he had nights like that since the war. “In his mind, when he had his terrors, he was back on the Indianapo lis and trying to warn his shipmates about the torpedoes. The hard part for him was the futility, that moment when he knew the inevitable was going to happen and could do nothing about it. Old friends said the war changed him. He understood helplessness. Hell is about being helpless.” I lay in the dark and thought about the endless horizon of the Pacific, the loneliness he must have felt, and the luck that he, of all people, was car ried away from the cluster of survivors and picked up by a Catalina flying boat. When he got back to Hawaii, an officer told him he had his nerve breaking off from the main pod of survivors. “Are you aware that while we were saving you we could have saved ten others? What makes you so special?”

Luck is what leads one to Hell. He asked Helen why he was so lucky. Hal’s life in Hell was happy and non-descript though he couldn’t abide the sight of blood, fire, or the ocean. He tried to go lake fishing once but broke down because he was terrified he’d catch an arm or raise the souls of the dead he tossed overboard.

David Cattanach

The Creative Spirit

This is a challenge for in the spirit of literature I will attempt an essay on the relationship between practitioner and imagination. The person I have chosen for practitioner is Eric Satie, can I bring him to life? He walked across two centuries, the nineteenth and twentieth, setting music alight. Goggle has a happy way of giving brief descriptions to difficult subjects, in the browser I have searched for Joe R Lansdale, Amanda Palmer, William Faulkner to date I have only been in the presence of one. We had an audience with Amanda Palmer in York, where we stayed over at an Ibis Hotel, and searched the Shambles on a wet night, waiting for the concert doors to open. The Shambles was quaint and Dickensian with little effigies in windows and fine cheeses slowly matured. Amanda was on form with a Grand Piano and drank often from glasses filled with red wine. Her big voice reached across the aisles. Satie could have been a similar presence with a Grand Piano with his girlfriend Suzanne Valedon swinging from a trapeze that hung from the rafters. Would giddy Paris ever reach into the English theatre?

I have researched the term ‘imagination’ - an enhancement of life in certain directions. A gulf exists between inner experience which does not reach reality against external reality which evades your inner life. This quote is taken from “The Sources of Artificial Imagination and the Sources of Supersensible Knowledge”. With this dry assessment let us now look at Satie. He was born in Honfleur, France, a place I have visit ed, a place of uniform greys exaggerated by roofs with slate renderings, similar to the Lake District but sitting on a flat coastline. It’s uniformity could have inspired Gymnopedies, the composition a precursor to later artistic movements, minimalism, repetitive music and the theatre of the absurd. Eric Satie may have looked at his blank music score and thought I cannot notate this my work very well, and some very poor student would have written his compositions down. A teacher Emile Decombes called Satie ‘the laziest student in the Conservotoire’. Refer ring again to Google The Writing Cooperative relates:- “Understanding your Creative Engine - the 8 types of Imagination”. Under 3 it talks

about Imaginative Fantasy, a moment of inspiration and you go off to ex plore wherever the fantasy takes us. There is Satie repeating his musical phrases, waiting for some marvellous Eden, that never quite comes into view, but his only solace are the repetitive greys of his home town, Hon fleur. This is my take on his initial compositions. His way of explaining an interior world to an external audience.

Lets widen our mirror, Gymnopedies was intended to reflect on a festival in ancient Sparta at which young men danced and competed against each other unencumbered by clothing, and the name was a droll reference to Satie’s gentle, dreamy and far from strenuous exercises. But let’s remind ourselves of the paintings now in the art galleries, reflect ing the times. There were new ideas of some elysian fields where men and women were uncorrupted and they were often painted in all their bareness to explain some sort of innocence. Satie was a contemporary he was giving musical form, an alternative physical experience, it was his own personal take, his working of the imagination.

We were lucky to see The Parade composed by Satie with modern sets originally designed by Picasso. In the gods at the Paris Garnier Opera House the narrow seats were uncomfortable, but the modernist designs were designed for this opera, and Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes had trod these very boards. The visual experience has to be viewed against Satie’s then preoccupation with the Dada movement, Jean Cocteau and others. It was composed during the First World War and the chaos must have entered into the libretto I wonder what he would make of Covid 19? This current chaos would surely stir his imagination, mainly because we do not know what will happen after it has run its course. He had for a period, to earn a crust, working in cabaret theatres, Le Chat Noir (the Black Cat) for one, in and around Montmartre. It was an extravagant time even Einstein says ‘ Imagination is more important than knowledge’.

Memory Reconstruction, another of the 8 types of imagination, memo ries are sub-conscious stored bits of information. Imagination often fills

in the gaps. It’s the colour of Satie’s life that informs his music. Every day he would dress in one of 7 identical grey corduroy suits and, bran dishing his umbrella, would walk to Paris to drink coffee at his favourite cafes. It brought to mind the modern artists Gilbert and George don’t they wear matching attires but I don’t think they would walk a distance to reach the bright lights. Satie only ate white foods - eggs, sugar, scraped bones, fat from dead animals, veal, coconuts, chicken, cotton salad and certain fish. Would this put to shame the varied diet of a vegetarian? I don’t think it’s a balanced diet but then he is friends with Tristan Tzara and Jean Cocteau!! In Paris I have enjoyed Terrines (of exotic meats), kidneys and various small birds but not the famed Ortelon that Mitter and consumed on the eve of his death. Satie’s diet and manner perhaps explains monotony and repetition in his music, his dress regime demon strates a particular rigor.

Satie died in 1925, in his apartment were found two grand pianos placed one on top of the other, the upper instrument used as a storage for letters and parcels. Some of his compositions were stuffed in the pockets of his suits. In a filing cabinet he maintained a collection of im aginary buildings, most of them described as being made of some kind of metal, which he drew on little cards. In local journals, he offered some of these buildings e.g. a ‘castle in lead’ for sale or rent. Other artists with imaginations have left behind bewildering rooms. These rooms have become gallery installations, some of a permanent nature. We can think of Francis Bacon or Brancusi. I’ve even seen an invented city of Prague that inhabited the mind of Franz Kafka. So I would say that imagination works in ways not immediately apparent in the jumble of life. My par ticular excitement are in the plain pages of notebooks, the variety of pens and the voices of writers. Music is getting strange these days, 6 minutes of birdsong on Sunday mornings at a specific time for Radio Three listeners!! To which is strung composed pieces written, often decades removed from the present day, and we can only imagine why they were created?

Flights submission guidelines - Issue Eight, March 2023

Flights is open for submissions for ISSUE EIGHT until 18.00 on 18 Feb ruary 2023. We accept submissions of poetry, flash fiction and prose. We have no preferred genre, form or style but will never consider work that is sexist, homophobic or racist

We aim to publish our journal quarterly (March, June, September and December) and all work submitted will be considered for the next issue that has available space

For poetry, please send no more than 3 poems totalling no more than 150 lines

For flash fiction, please send no more than 3 pieces each to be no more than 500 words

For prose, please send no more than 2500 words

Please try to submit previously unpublished work. We will occasionally accept previously published work if we really like it, please tell us when submitting where and when the piece was first published - if we use it we will credit the original publication

Unfortunately, we do not accept simultaneous submissions as we do not have the time to read work that may be withdrawn to be published elsewhere

All submissions should include a third-person bio (no more than 150 words) we will use it if we publish your work. Please include any social media handles so the we can promote your work upon publication

Please send us your finished work as we do not have time for revisions. We will send you a proof of your work before we publish it and we will be happy to correct any errors that we may have made, but will not make any revisions that you may wish to make

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We are now a small publishing press and hope to publish an annual selec tion of poetry in a pamphlet - Take Flight. Publication in Flights may lead to an invitation to be published by our small press

We aim to nominate for literature prizes (Pushcart and Best of the Net)

Send your submissions to: flightsdragonflyjournal@gmail.com

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Explore our website to find out about the other exciting things that Flight of the Dragonfly are involved in.

Flight of the Dragonfly are

Barbara Mercer & Darren J Beaney

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