Three Drops from a Cauldron - Issue 18

Three Drops from a Cauldron Issue 18 August 2017 Edited by Kate Garrett Poems copyright © 2017 Individual authors Issue copyright © Kate Garrett

Cover image is ‘High Tea’ by Fabrice B. Poussin Image copyright © 2017 Fabrice B. Poussin

Three Drops from a Cauldron Issue 18 / August 2017 Tumulus by Simon Cockle Cornucopia by Karen Jane Cannon Lulled by Spangle McQueen Violets – withered all when my father died. by Bethany Rivers Spelling by Abigail Elizabeth Ottley Wyatt Anatomy of a River Goddess by Jane Burn Selkie by Samuel Kendall Lîr’s other daughter by Sharon Phillips The Ottermeat Gold by Paul Brookes Small Kingdoms by Kathy Gee advice from Ariadne by Mandy Macdonald The Frog Prince, High and Dry by Rob Evans DNA by Stephen Bone The Sneeze of the Dragon and the Kiss of the Witch by Rex Davies

Tumulus Run your fingertip across a map and feel the dead swell.

Search for the fallen star: it marks a grave, a tumulus.

Walk it for real and all you’ll find is the ghost of a mound, ploughed in thick with flints and roots; the grave goods robbed, spent with the wet flesh and hair years ago.

You might turn a bone, snag a tooth, or leave with an offering: a shudder that sets the flesh pricking. You can turn back now, but the mark was made.

Simon Cockle

Cornucopia You will find me high in the sky—a faint scatter of light on clearest waxing nights.

It's true I can’t heave waves with icy breath like Poseidon’s horses, or command tides, but I have suckled sons of gods, wet-nursed Zeus, highly prized. It’s true I’m never cast of gold, but I’m embossed on ancient coins— isn’t security what you desire?

Look up and draw me, trace my outline, find Neptune hidden in darkest folds. I hold Aphrodite with a mouthful of stars.

Although I’m faint, do not doubt my presence— constant from Bronze Age to present—you know only a Capricorn can make that vow.

Karen Jane Cannon

Lulled the giants are here they mollycoddle me cuddle me feed me a jugful of uncurdled milk they spoon pureed peaches into my gurgling mouth then sing lullabies to soothe me to sleep they promise me the world and everything that’s not extinct by the time I’m old enough to know the difference between a rhinoceros and a hippopotamus then while I dream they go and start a revolution to save the oceans the earth the skies they leave Argus Panoptes to watch over me and I am safe protected unaware a hundred cataracts haunt his dauntless eyes

Spangle McQueen

Violets – withered all when my father died.

She was born with the language of flowers though nobody believed her.

Kind of redundant in an age of reason.

A woman drowning amidst the beauty of summer. Not really. It was the water of their lies: dead men’s fingers; the long purples.

Everywhere she went that same image followed her, haunted her. On posters, stickers, paintings, photo-shopped pictures.

She read and re-read the play, saw many performances in French, Polish, Welsh.

The message was still lost. Something about rosemary. She had fallen in love once. It had cost her. She tried to make friends with the river: it was her only escape.

Bethany Rivers

*Title borrowed from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Spelling Words have their power but the words of a woman and an old, old woman at that have a power yet greater – so the Inuit say – than the green and tender words of the young.

When an old woman speaks may your listening heart hear her even in the shadow of the grave; may you not turn away from such rank and bitter herbs as the years lay lightly on her tongue.

A wound from a blade will heal with time but a hurt from a word still endures.

So said the old woman who survived the Great Flood so that her wisdom could cry against the dark.

Let us have both light and death, she said.

Let us make our bread from dry bones.

Let us not shrink from the Great Unknown.

Let the dead and their stories be as stars.

Abigail Elizabeth Ottley Wyatt

Anatomy of a River Goddess Her hair was living algae Her song was rinsed with salmon spawn She had a number of breasts She suckled an infinity of mouths Gave much of herself Nurtured many that needed to be fed She sat for a while out of water A typhoon of gnats wove a whirlpool above her head Sat with otters on her lap like oily cats Sometimes it was sun and sometimes rain In winter she looked to her roof of crackled ice Her neck was a swan’s Her eyes were numerous yet still not enough to watch Her legs were eels Her hands were the claws of a crayfish She could survive beneath the surface She had the use of human breath She managed to live on everything and her world was one of ultramarines and strange collections of yellow foam and stilled pools and there was no one lover not when there were so many things to love She did not have wings She had fins

Jane Burn

Selkie Mid-March each year flippers glissade to land and elephant seals sunbathe as one blubber in throngs for their catastrophic moult.

Once they get halfway slipping out of themselves, zippered suit swaddling seal coats peeled and ebbed away, the handful of selkies amongst ranks begin to rear from unstuck bookbinding glue swiping at barnacles whilst confused pinnipeds stare.

Drowned seafaring souls risen from an undersea womb with the malaise of waking life hands ripe for harpoon cannons and hakapiks. Brushing off the eye-holed white sheet of a ghost past evanescence.

The choice now between soft sea bed or the unfitting Procrustean to patter through this present knowing of the inevitable return to that past or bury their sealcoat in hourglass sands; view the world through a fisheye lens once the marine life lay decapitated.

Samuel Kendall

Lîr’s other daughter (after the traditional Irish tale, The Children of Lîr) I’ve always said that Aoife tried her best, but the twins’ grizzling would have turned a saint into a sociopath. As for Aodh and Fionnuala, they sniped at her all day, so she and I made common cause: I’d had enough of being the plain plump middle child.

Look, I was never even given a proper name: a nursemaid called me Pudding and it stuck.

I ask you. Aodh and Fionnuala, Fiachre and Conn.

And me. Pudding. Hardly euphonious.

Not the sort of name that fits one for a place in legend: it’s not surprising I was written out.

It’s a matter of public record that our stepmum turned my sister and brothers into swans.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have told her what they’d said, but that’s spilt milk - the woman snapped.

My real surprise was when she explained it would be impolitic to make me an exception.

I’ve wondered, since then, how it might feel to be a swan and remembered my thrill when my sister and brothers thought I’d won. Then the moment they stretched their great white wings and left me behind: a plain plump pigeon, unable to keep up.

Sharon Phillips

The Ottermeat Gold One Eye an two mates, Mud King an Clever Sod stroll Dearne River an Clever says “Am reight peckish” “as tha ever ad Otta? Reight nice.” an he waits by bank, rags one stones its head an skins it. meks a fire side river, cooks meat.

Soon arrive at fellas house, who says “That were ma son tha et.”

Small King says “That’s ma changeling son’s pelt on thee shoulder” an chains One Eye, Mud King and Clever “If one o’ thee can pay ransom, I'll let thee all go.” King says.

“I’ll sort it, lads.” agrees Clever.

Clever knows a rich lad called Careful works winding wet o’ River Dearne.

Sat by weir side he waits and waits.

Clever crouches wi net by weir.

Sudden brahn fleck flitsup “Let me go.” cries pike fish caught. “an Careful what will tha gi us for freein’ thee?” asks Clever.

“All ma gold.” cries Careful. “an finger torc rahnd thee tailfin, too.”

“Aye, that an all.” and Careful shows Clever where his gold is hid.

Fetchin’ rich ransom back in otters pelt to Small King, Careful slips Clevers net,

curses all who use his finger torc.

Seeing rich otter pelt gold packed Small King releases One Eye an Mud King, forgets his grief Brothers Hugger an Counsel say “Dad can we av share o’ this glitterin’ pelt?” “No.” says small king.

Hugger steals finger torc .

“Giz a hug, Dad.” an as his Dad does Hugger slips knife between his ribs.

Counsel says “Otter pelts rs nar bruv.”

Hugger’s eyes now a snakes.

“Giz a hug, Counsel.” Counsel flits Hugger’s hunger hoards huge gold, silver on Glittering Heath burns all who would have it.

Paul Brookes

Small Kingdoms Once upon a time, men planted trees on roundabouts to make unnatural more natural.

I’m sure they never thought the trees would grow so military, never thought the trees would take each circled island as their own.

Their trunks are close as palace pillars.

Branches cross the tarmac frontier.

Now the servitude of birds is theirs.

First one nest in the highest branches, then another ... and another and today I’ve counted seventeen.

Each ruling tree is armed with a pointed head, black eyes alert for death below. A vigilance of feudal rooks now lords the land, collecting tax in gifts of road-kill.

Kathy Gee

advice from Ariadne never let go! here, let me tie the thread around you you will need both hands for fighting whatever is there when you get to the core a chill emanates from it, a cold mist a premonition rolling and roiling along the passage, a clammy cloak of terror but no sound. you may find this odd. for where is the old dance?

Mandy Macdonald

The Frog Prince, High and Dry Ten years spent here, yet still it is not home.

These strangers are respectful but I feel their dry eyes watch me when the rains come; when harsh voices revel in the storm’s wheel with half-remembered songs that slow my blood and fill my head with visions that reveal another world where cool water was good in better days before her warm lips cursed my ways and tore my body from the flood.

The ache of early morning is the worst thing about this place, waiting for the light, knowing the lake outside could drown this thirst.

I lie beside her, feeling my strange, tight skin rasp against the dryness of the sheet.

I itch to be elsewhere and have to fight my feelings of revulsion at her heat.

I hear my cousins calling from the mist, mocking my crippled webless hands and feet and, oh, I wish my life could be unkissed.

Rob Evans

DNA After I softened into flesh and blood, I put my hectic past away.

Forgot about marionettes, donkey ears, lie detector nose. Became a chip off the old block, made carpentry my trade.

Won for myself a mannequin wife, ringlets like blond shavings.

Knocked up an ornate rocker for the bambino we craved.

But it splintered our hearts – perhaps too much sap and sawdust lingered in my DNA – when stiff as a board, a dolly made of deadwood was all that came.

Stephen Bone

The Sneeze of the Dragon and the Kiss of the Witch Kids’ version: In the olden days the people knew the might of a king by the number of dragons he possessed. No one argued with a king who had lots of dragons, well not for long anyway…

But keeping dragons was a difficult business, especially when, as often happened, the dragons caught a cold. It can be very damaging to your castle when your dragons, suddenly without warning, exhale yards of flaming, sticky dragon-sneeze.

But King Llewellyn had been caught like that before and after the loss of several towers he kept his dragons in another valley where they lived in holes in the cliffs between his castle and the sea.

This action prevented further loss to his property but caused him to worry: If his enemies attacked his castle, how quickly could he get word to the dragonmaster to bring the fiery beasts to his aid?

The King’s wife had an idea: an enchanted, battle-proof knight who would fight any enemy and cross to the other valley to summon the beasts.

The knights of King Llewellyn’s castle were brave young men, sworn to defend his realm. They amused themselves by performing acts of bravery, often walking the towers and battlements blindfolded to attract the attention of passing witches. Witches love to fly, with or without broomsticks, and if you stand on a high hill or cliff or tower and you look down, that lurching feeling in your stomach, that is a witch passing through you and so you feel their exhilaration. And if a brave man is kissed by a witch, he will never be afraid because he knows wherever he is and whatever befalls him she will find him and take him away to be with her forever, living from one exhilarating kiss to the next, always falling, falling in love. For the witch is a most faithful women to the bravest and the truest.

So the King’s wife found the bravest knight who had walked the battlements blindfold most and who had been kissed by a witch. And when King Llewellyn’s

enemies laid siege to his castle the bravest knight was wild, fierce, unstoppable by mortal force and will and fought his way across the valley, howling for his witch and leaving behind a path of blood, bone and broken steel. And he succeeded in summoning the dragon-master who set loose the King’s dragons that burnt all his enemies to a fine black ash.

And as the brave knight lay dying, his witch came and took him away to be with her forever, living from one exhilarating kiss to the next, always falling, falling in love. For the witch was a most faithful women to the bravest and the truest of the King’s men.

And King Llewellyn and his Queen and all his knights and all his subjects lived peacefully and brave young men standing on the ruined towers of his castle may still, to this day, feel the kiss of the witch.

Adult version: In the olden days the people knew the might of a king by the number of kingdoms he dispossessed of all their land, wealth and maidens. And though they thought him wrong, no one argued with a king who had lots of dragons, well not for long anyway…

But keeping kingdoms was a difficult business, especially when rebel sorcerers struck with their spells and all your dragons caught a cold. It can be very damaging to your castle when your dragons, suddenly without warning, exhale yards of flaming, sticky dragon-sneeze.

But King Llewellyn had been caught like that before and after the loss of several towers he kept his dragons in another valley where they lived in holes in the cliffs between his castle and the sea.

This action prevented further loss to his property but caused him to worry: when the rebels attacked his castle, how quickly could he get word to the dragon-master to bring the fiery beasts to his aid?

The knights of King Llewellyn’s castle were fierce young men, well paid to defend his realm. They amused themselves by performing acts of self-abuse, often wanking from the towers and battlements, ejaculating to attract the attention of passing witches. Like the rebels, the King’s knights believed that if a brave man is kissed by a witch, he will never be afraid because he knows wherever he is and whatever befalls him she will find him and take him away

to be with her forever, living from one exhilarating kiss to the next, always falling, falling in love. For the witch is a most faithful women to the bravest and the truest. But the leaders of the rebels had arranged for prostitutes to pretend to be witches and kiss their warriors who now believed themselves charmed.

And the Queen, like many wives of violent men, lied to the King, introducing her own lover as the finest warrior in the castle who had been kissed by a witch. So King Llewellyn believed that when his enemies laid siege to his castle, the wild, fierce, unstoppable mortal force of his bravest knight would fight his way across the valley, howling for his witch and leaving behind a path of blood, bone and broken steel. And he would succeed in summoning the dragonmaster who would set loose the King’s dragons that would burn all his enemies to a fine black ash.

But when the rebels attacked, the Queen’s knight failed the King, falling easily in battle, his heart full of lies. And when the King’s dragons finally arrived at the height of the battle, the rebels, believing themselves to be under the protection of witches, threw themselves into the dragons’ mouths. Their sneezes thus constrained, the dragons blew off all their own heads.

And King Llewellyn’s castle fell and he was thrown from his own battlements to die in the field of flaming dragon flesh. So this is the story of Camelot and this is the story of Troy. And history is written by the victors.

Rex Davies

Biographical Notes Cover Artist Fabrice B. Poussin is the advisor for The Chimes, the Shorter University awardwinning poetry and arts publication. His writing and photography have been published in print, including Kestrel, Symposium, La Pensee Universelle, Paris, and more than 200 other art and literature magazines in the United States and abroad.

Writers Simon Cockle is a poet from Hertfordshire. He writes as part of Poetry ID, a Stanza of the Poetry Society. His poems have been published in iOTA, Prole, The Lampeter Review, Algebra of Owls and the London Progressive Journal, amongst others. He was invited to read at last year’s Ledbury Poetry Festival as part of the Poetica Botanica event. He teaches English in a local comprehensive school, and has a wife and daughter who nod reassuringly when he reads them his poems.

Karen Jane Cannon’s poems have appeared in a variety of print and online journals, including Acumen, Orbis, Obsessed with Pipework, The Interpreter’s House, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Three Drops from a Cauldron, Prole and Popshot.

She was commended for The Flambard Poetry Prize2014 and has an MA in Creative writing from Bath Spa University.

Spangle McQueen is a happy grandma and a hopeful poet, living in Sheffield.

Bethany Rivers’ pamphlet, Off the wall was published by Indigo Dreams Publishing, July 2016. She loves cats, thunderstorms and the smell of snowdrops. She mentors the writing of novels, memoir and children's stories.

She also runs poetry inspiration retreats. www.writingyourvoice.org.uk Abigail Elizabeth Ottley Wyatt is a teacher turned writer. Born in Essex, she now lives in Penzance in Cornwall with her partner, David, and Percival Dog Esquire. When she is not writing or performing her work you will most likely find her either walking by the sea or hooking rag rugs. The author of Old Soldiers, Old Bones, her poetry and short fiction have appeared in more than a hundred magazines, journals and anthologies.

Jane Burn is a North East based artist and writer originally from South Yorkshire. Her poems have been featured in magazines such as The Rialto, Under The Radar, Butcher's Dog, Iota Poetry, And Other Poems, The Black Light Engine Room and many more, as well as anthologies from the Emma Press, Beautiful Dragons, Poetry Box, Emergency Poet and Kind of a Hurricane Press.

Her pamphlets include Fat Around the Middle, published by Talking Pen and Tongues of Fire published by the BLER Press. Her first full collection, nothing more to it than bubbles has been published by Indigo Dreams. She also established the poetry site The Fat Damsel. She was longlisted in the 2014 National Poetry Competition, commended and highly commended in the Yorkmix 2014 & 2015, and won the inaugural Northern Writes Poetry Competition in 2017.

Samuel Kendall is a masters student at The University of Sheffield, studying English Literature and Creative Writing. He has previously been published in Three Drops from a Cauldron and Route 57.

Sharon Phillips is retired and lives in Dorset. Her poems have been published on websites including Ink, Sweat and Tears, Algebra of Owls, Snakeskin and Three Drops from a Cauldron.

Her blog can be found here: outtograss.wordpress.com.

Paul Brookes was poetry performer with "Rats for Love" and his work included in "Rats for Love: The Book", Bristol Broadsides, 1990. His first chapbook "The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley", Dearne Community Arts, 1993. Read his work on BBC Radio Bristol, run a creative writing workshop for 6th formers broadcast on BBC Radio Five Live. Forthcoming this summer is an illustrated chapbook called "The Spermbot Blues" published by OpPRESS. Kathy Gee lives in Worcestershire and works in museums and heritage. In 2016 her first poetry collection, Book of Bones, was published by V. Press – vpresspoetry.blogspot.co.uk/p/book-of-bones.html – and she wrote the spoken word elements for a contemporary choral composition – suiteforthefallensoldier.com Mandy Macdonald is an Australian writer living in Aberdeen, trying to make sense of the 21st and earlier centuries. Her poems have appeared in the anthologies Full Moon & Foxglove (Three Drops Press), Outlook Variable and Extraordinary Forms (Grey Hen Press), Aiblins: New Scottish Political Writing (Luath), A Bee’s Breakfast (Beautiful Dragons Collaborations), and

elsewhere in print and online. She writes in the strong hope that poetry can change the world, even just a little.

Rob Evans is an aerospace Engineer who lives near London but who works all over the world. When not flying or working, he spends his time writing poetry and sometimes reading it to hushed and not-so-hushed audiences. He is a one-time UK All-Comers Poetry Slam Champion but has since clawed his way back to some kind of respectability.

Stephen Bone’s work has appeared in magazines and anthologies in the U.K. and U.S. First collection, In The Cinema published by Playdead Press 2014. A pamphlet, Plainsong forthcoming from Indigo Dreams Publishing 2017.

Rex Davies is a poet in the autumn of his years. But that was always his favourite season. Careful what you wish for...