Forge Zine #3 (August 2019)

Prose @ForgeZine

Poetry

Crossword

Forge Zine

@forgezine

Local Writing and Art @ForgeZine

Wh

ere

August 2019

in Y

o is t h r k s h ir e is ?

#3

Co-editor's ramble & some of his work As Elle mentioned in last month’s preface, we are considering releasing theme-specific issues in the coming months. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. While we didn’t announce any theme for August, Issue 3 serves as The Holiday Issue, with our ‘Where is this?’ cover series moving further afield, beyond York, to the seaside (where we hope many of you have managed to escape). If not, maybe your favourite pub or somewhere entirely new. This issue combines a range of material, examining personal struggles, war, mythology, and more. We hope you find this work inspirational and that you think about submitting to us next time.

Thank you for picking up this copy of Forge Zine and helping to support independent publishing in the north.

Proceed with caution: Forge Zine refuses to shy away from vulgarities, obscenities, and any other unsavoury topics our contributors may discuss.

Keep from the reach of little ones (and those with frail sensibilities).

Scholar

Learn what you can from the books at your disposal and attain all else from that dogshit-smothered shoe sole pressing your cheek to the ground.

Paul Whelan. York, 2019

Tempestarii the sky, half blue, half white and half black leaks all across the moors, twelve thousand glowing teeth falling open to pierce the land. the mud crumbles and runs like water and all is cleansed at the jaws of the downpour. the sky blackens further and the clouds threaten to carry off the blue, but we know what needs to be done.

Water Beast

Look to the dark waters, To the bubbling just beneath.

Look to entrails spewed And lives stolen.

Search not for the beast And heed not its song. we hold up the stones and chant.

Look to a graveyard child Of blue lips and glass eyes, we burn the heather and the fern Unburied flesh and bone headstones. in a silver cauldron and chant Look to a silent necropolis, Guarded by reverse hooves, as we split the sky To the beast formed of vengeful foam, That creature of kelp weed and midnight and the white rain comes With calls of sweet promises plenty. no more.

James Rance

Look for a skin of liquid shifting faces And eyes of the blackest deeps, To a horse that runs the shores Or a goddess granting wishes.

Look for that pagan creature, The thief of reckless children And destruction of lusty men.

Then turn away and not return again.

Elizabeth Fitzgerald

Writer's Block: A Post University Monologue

by Vicky Booth I crave the familiar clatter of the keyboard. I’ve missed typing with speed, with urgency, desperately trying to pull my whirling imagination out of my head and onto the page. Late nights with a glaring screen, with characters and plots and complicated moments. I want to tilt my head and bash the top, a story pooling out my ear like ketchup from a near empty bottle. Right now I have that pain in my ear, like when the water rushes in when you’re submerged in the bath.

I am blocked.

As I type to you now, I am rambling. Scrambling to hear that comforting clatter, searching for something to come from this frustrated paragraph. I am desperate…

I’ve used up my ideas, I’ve hit my deadlines. What can I do now? Without the urgency and with my first moments in years to finally breathe, I worry if I have killed that spark which had me typing. As I type to you now though, I know that I have not.

Everything about me putting words on this page feels right, I feel as though I am doing what I am meant to do. It’s okay that it might take me a while to think again, to write freely with ideas that don’t have a deadline. Eventually it will come back to me.

As I am writing now, maybe I don’t have writer’s block after all, maybe I am just tired. I think I am, and I think it is okay to be. Eventually the writing will come back to me.

The Tommy* The Tommy sits on Flanders field wondering what this pointless war will yield.

Burning hot tracer fire whips like a hawk past his head; he feels deep in his heart a stirring of dread.

The trench is a gaping abyss swallowing all the Tommies like a great beast, like a death's kiss.

An explosion of shellfire lights up his weary face, covered in mud and fear he wonders, Is this the fate of the human race?

Will our legacy of war end? The broken human spirit we must mend.

Mike Weaver *The 4th of August 2019 marks the 105th year since Great Britain declared war on Germany in WW1.

Cryptid Crossword & July riddle answers 3

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“Bring us your folklore, your landscapes, and your rural slang.”

In celebration of GreenTeeth's first publication, we thought a crossword on all manner of strange and eerie folk tales would help us with the wait. Pondweed "celebrates everything from local legends to local landscapes, topped off with a healthy dose of rural language." It features some of our recent contributors, with the aim to "bring to prominence writers young and old, from all backgrounds".

GreenTeeth Press is an independent northern publisher. Their first anthology Pondweed is available for £7.50 from www.greenteethpress.com/ shop

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DOWN 1) Northern term for hobgoblin, namesake of ____ Hole, found between Ravenscar and Robin Hood's Bay, N. Yorkshire. (6) 3) City in West Virginia, where Mothman was reportedly sighted from November 1966 to December 1967.

(13) 5) Celtic water spirit, capable of shape-shifting into human form. (6) 7) Puerto Rican cryptid, the Chupacabra, feeds on the blood of this animal. (4)

n rs i ! e r sw An embe t Sep

6

ACROSS 2) Title of Christina Rosetti's 1862 poem about supernatural fruit sellers. (12) 4) Creature from Greek mythology, said to lure sailors to their deaths through enticing song. (5) 6) Black Shuck, a legendary creature believed to be an omen of death, terrorises the countryside of this English region. (10) 8) Name given for Medieval corpses re-animated to haunt the living. (8)

Last month's riddle answers If 66 = 2, 99 = 2, 888 = 6, 00 = 2, 7777 = 0, 667= 2, 276 = 1, 833 = 2, then what does 2876 equal? Three. Each circle within a number is equivalent to one. For example, the numbers 9 and 6 are equivalent to one because they have one circle in them, whereas the number 8 is equal to 2 because of its two loops.

What room can no-one enter? Mushroom.

When is a door not a door? When it's ajar.

How many beans make five? Bean, bean, bean and a half, half a bean and a bean.

Static You do not first feel that spider That crawled into your skull, Static webs edging into your mind; Devouring the deepest corners, Your bed becoming a chrysalis; Stitches forming where thought once lay, The empty case filling up with static; Each breath a dagger in the stomach; Each day a little too much Tidal wave to swallow you whole, The static consuming, The spider so inviting, Finally you manage a word, a breath of hope.

The prison bars are open and someone listens,

Matter Then they speak, Their words another nail in your coffin, After all the static does not exist.

Elizabeth Fitzgerald

i wish i were small enough to float. but gravity won’t allow though it doesn’t Matter the size weightlessness depends on a lack of Matter and i want to have Matter not everything with Matter, Matters actually

nothing with Matter, Matters it’s the intangible— that without Matter, that Matters; i’m tangible i have Matter does that mean i don’t Matter? oh, I am small enough to float.

Angela Lavelle

The Last Waltz

Picture Jasper

In your last moments of life, they capture it in a series of photographs.

When I saw you up there, scuttling your Bioluminescence, I thought you were or “having had been” a bird tilting Back and forth. It seems that They knew you would die You are rather not, on tiles that in this car, Shouldn’t be as red as they are with your brains in my lap.

Or the inside of a stone that Seems to stretch on forever The seat was full of blood Endeavour, mile on mile on and red roses.

Mile of desert, dune on dune, You slumped so neatly beside me.

Hills with outlines black against The sand-coloured sky.

What else could you do but smile James Rance that was your final act of defiance.

You

Death smiles at us all, and, honey, all you could do was smile back.

Imogen Peniston

Reading, it is fun, It lets me relax.

Let's my imagination be free, My freedom.

Freedom shows me the dark, Shows how bad it can get.

How it can lead to impulsive decisions, It can hurt those unintentionally.

Can those who see me save me?

Those that hear me?

That can feel my pleas for help?

Can you also ensure that readings are always fun? You can.

George Whinfrey

Events in August Until 22ns Sept. Triumph of Pan. Castle 25th-26th August Ghost Hunt. Mercure Museum £think its included in admission Fairfield Manor Hotel. £30 price!

26th August Micklegate Soapbox Run Until 15th Sept. Sounds Like Her: Gender, £Free I think Sounds Art and Sonic Cultures. Castle 13th September Laugh Out Loud Museum £Included in admission.

Comedy Club. Paragon Street. £19.70 (Actually a really good thought provoking 14th Sept. Gin Tasting Class. 1 Clifton exhibition!). £55 per person 27th-30th August Rocket Steam Rides.

18th Sept Quilting. Wigginton Lodge National Rail Museum £Included? £12.50 per person (also 16.10.19, 24th August York River Art Market. Dame 13.11.19, 11.10.19) Judy Dench Walk. FREE 19-22nd Sept Chamber Music Fest £15 24th August Music Bingo Quiz at various locations in York Forty-five! Originals and covers 29 20-29th Sept York Food and Drink Fest Micklegate £1 per bingo card (Assuming Parliament Street) £as much 24th-25th August Birds of Pray. Barley as you eat/drink!

Hall £*shrugs*

Want to see your work here We welcome all forms of work, new and old (as long next time?? as it's not been published Find us on all the media of social! We're elsewhere!) Due to our more than happy to answer any questions size we can't take long or queries you have. And of course please prose or script (we hope this is a short term issue!) send us things to print!!

Everything from riddles, theforgezinesubmissions@gmail.com

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questions, snippets of work, flash fiction and absurd facts are theforgezinesubmissions@gmail.com encouraged!