WRITERS’ BLOC JOURNAL
FAVOURITES
Editors’ Notes Dear Reader, As my time came to an end as the Writers’ Bloc Journal Editor, it became apparent how much each journal simultaneously became a part of me and also felt like giving a piece of myself away. It was an unmatched feeling that I, even in hindsight, can’t find a way to adequately describe. I’m hoping that Emily finds a way. As much as I loved being a part of the journal, I’m excited to see where it goes in the coming year. I’m confident Emily will make beautiful and exceptional journals for all of us to enjoy and I cannot wait to read them.
Sierra I am so happy to have completed my first journal, after Sierra handed me the baton (well, stapler). I reached my first hurdle with forrmatting, but reading through your wonderful submissions made it all worth it. I’m so impressed with the quality of work this society continually produces. I can’t wait to keep working with you all and see what other amazing pieces you come up with. I hope to do Sierra proud with my future journals; I have very big shoes to fill.
Emily
Contents Shared Burdens by Anna Walthew Hair by Frankie Rhodes What I see in the mirror doesn’t match the voice I hear inside by Olivia Platten Forest of Resonance by Andrew Rupp Revolutions by Tom Caffrey Second Favourite by Emma Fletcher Musing No. 4 by Isaac Boothman Afternoon Delight by Jonathan Simpson Time You Wore a Watch by Lucy Hurst Phone a Friend by Emma Thompson Red Rain Rumble by Will Britton Sonnet by Jessica Wood Assorted Haiku
Shared Burdens by Anna Walthew Content Warning: suicide/mental health issues.
The noose around your neck
Is around ours,
Necks warped and twisted
By fissures of molten tears
Erupting without warning.
She was an infected bullet wound
That gave you tetanus.
A black line that raced to your mind
And reddened your eyes,
So you saw only white.
You burned in the fire of Hades.
Capricious flames dancing
As a witch burned alive,
Found guilty of being human;
A verdict you couldn’t live with.
They can't point fingers
At the void where you were,
And their hands are lost
In old handkerchiefs,
Saturated with their tears.
Your mother prays,
And empty hymns
Reverberate around the church.
You choke on religion
Even now.
We pull back the soil,
Tucking you up with the earth,
Kissing you with impotent words.
Burying you under the rope
You carried so diligently in life.
Hair by Frankie Rhodes it's not healthy
it's not clean
things like that just shouldn't be seen
not on a lady
not on a girl
how'd you expect to get on in the world?
looking disgusting
looking like that
yes, men can do it
(but we won't talk about that)
even my best friend
turns up her nose
cover your arms up
wear longer clothes
it's unprofessional
shouldn't be done
haven't you heard of a razor blade, hun?
when Madonna does it
it's brave and it's chic
but when I step out
it's as if I'm a freak
don't women want to be oiled and smooth?
ready for lovers to make the first move?
and don't we enjoy getting rashes each day-
just like pillow-fights, gossiping, and unequal pay?
a few months ago, girls grew out their hair
but it was a spectacle, just like a dare
like running a marathon, shaving your head
was approached with the same old fear and dread
as if it's a challenge to try not to shave
if it's completely natural, why is it brave?
When hair has been part our lives for so long
but deep-rooted misogyny tells us it's wrong
so it's not a protest, and it's not a game
a bid for attention, or gesture for fame
it's...not being fucked to spend money and time
to get rid of the hair that I'm proud to call mine
it wasn't a protest, but that's what it's become
a thing that I do- that I'm proud to have done
it's built in my heart and the way that I feel
and if Madonna can do it? then what's the big deal
What I see in the mirror doesn’t match the voice I hear inside by Olivia Platten Content Warning: gore/mental health issues.
Sometimes I think that this is okay, but on occasion I see myself in a very lonely place. When I cry it feels like birth. I feel every flutter of my lungs as they fill up with wind, and I pour it out into the air as a gush. Whatever is inside of me wants to get out. As soon as I get out of bed I start swimming, and I swim and swim until the day is over and there is no more air left to scoop up and my muscles spasm into collapse. Sometimes in the lonely place my skin is so smooth it melts off of me like butter in a pan. I can drape clothes over it and it’ll smile a warm and milky smile back to me, the moon taking shape in the glass stretched out in front of me. On occasion it cuts to look at it, the deep slice of a paper cut on the delicate skin between thumb and forefinger. It fills me with sorrow and I’m desperate to suck the pain out but only manage to numb it into a dull little sting. It holds itself tightly together, bound up with string, which makes it very difficult to swim with any grace. When I cry it feels like an abomination; somebody bursting out of me and my guts flying out to follow them unintentionally. Scooping up the red fissures and blossoms reminds me not to look in the mirror. I am meticulous and careful because they can shiver and crack or splinter when naked and exposed. Sometimes when I reassure them my voice catches my eyes in the glass as it leaves my mouth, hooking into them like fishing poles. Blood squirts out but sometimes I think that this is okay.
Forest of Resonance by Andrew Rupp Music of the trees
Drifts as though from nowhere
To everywhere
A melody from on high
It is a rhythm, pulse, timbre
Leaves beautifully cascading
Surrounding me
Harmonizing with everything
The wayfaring seeds
Breeze to new lands
Peaceful, composing
Sprouting, settling, lyrical
Conceiving radiant arpeggios
Rooting me again
In doing what is pure
I am reminded of what is divine
Second Favourite by Emma Fletcher She was always tree number three. Standing at the back of the stage, nervous fidget, waiting all that time to say a single line. Some things never change with age.
Now she’s no longer ten, but waiting again for that spotlight to fall. Watching it pass her by, landing on the other guy, not noticing her at all.
It’s not that she’s unwanted. She’s just always haunted by how she could have lived it. The extra, the background character, not thought of until afterliving her life the second favourite.
Revolutions by Tom Caffrey It took me until the age of 12 to realise that the world didn’t revolve around me, and I'm still not happy about it to be honest.
Maybe the reason I liked to spin around in the playground was because I had some inkling of this impending epiphany and wanted to keep the world turning on my axis for a little longer.
Maybe the reason I wanted to be an astrophysicist was so that one day I could strap rockets to the earth and spin it in my direction again.
But maybe it's easier to walk to the north pole, stare at your feet and pretend.
Musing No. 4 by Isaac Boothman I am shaped like bones
I am shaped like a knife wound
I am shaped like the chime and stir of a trumpet at the back of the hall
I am shaped like hot chocolate at 4 o'clock on a bleeding day, like shaking silver, like thirty day old syrup
I am shaped like a bottle of wine huddled in the corner with a glass of vodka, like a filthy meadow, covered in buttercups and poppies, swimming with insects and birds
I am shaped like a breaking branch, a smiling river, iron red in the sunset beneath the trees
And in all these things
I hope you find me
Afternoon Delight by Jonathan Simpson The part of cushion assumed by lawn, the unexpected sun laid its blanket over the grandson’s skin. Gaze dissolved in sky, thoughts drifted through his sight with the clouds.
Garden embraced the daughter’s stroll and offered fruit tree. The ready leapt from their branches into imaginations of recipes they stirred. The sampled tastes unfurled and stood a mirror with the day in its grasp.
Touched, the kettle whistled the time for the grandmother’s tea.
Time You Wore a Watch by Lucy Hurst It was time, on my eighteenth birthday,
to receive a watch.
Its strap hooked onto me
buckled one, two, three.
I look at its face
more than any other.
It was time, on my nineteenth year,
to watch
the warm September day
creep into my calendar.
No hands of the clock
could predict the hours
I’d spend ignoring
my watch, replaced
by the hands I’d come
to know as yours.
They slip through the mark ‘12’.
Within minutes,
I am in love
with the way we chime.
We tick each calendar month.
Mornings become our evenings,
Your AMs become my ‘I ams’,
my hours become ‘ours’,
and evenings are counted in
the ding of our wine glasses.
I loosen the hooks of my watch.
It was time, on my twentieth birthday,
to awake to the familiar
bleep bleep bleep of your alarm.
(Again), (and again).
The face of my watch
gathers dust.
I feel the minutes rush by.
Quickly, I am a ‘late’ person
as the only face I wish
to gaze into
is yours.
The clock has ticked
around you,
as time disappears
with you.
Until‌ it is time, on my twenty-first birthday,
to wear a watch again.
Phone a Friend by Emma Thompson You’ve been gone for an hour. You’ve been gone for an hour now. The weight of you is missing from my thighs. The sensation of you, smooth like silk: a ghost between fingertips. My first thought is to call you, throw out that life line, bring you home. It’s only when my friend, Kat-with-a-K, answers, asks what the fuck I’m doing, I realise you, cat-with-a-c, don’t come loaded to my contacts book. Cats don’t own phones. That would be silly. You don’t have the thumbs for it. I like to think, if you did, it’d be one of those old Nokia bricks. Even if you knocked it off the table to spite me, like that tea cup nan left me, we’d still find one another. Nokias don’t shatter the way ceramics do. I’d be 4G, you’d be GPRS, but our signals would meet at the nexus point between Felis catus and Homo sapien. Somehow the call would connect. I’d text you, tell you about my day.
You’d respond with lol k don’t forget my kibble. I’d make you my lock screen. An adorably feline mood board for all to see. Yours would be your favourite box— my foot a supporting role in the top left corner. You’ve been gone for an hour. You haven’t checked in on Facebook, so I don’t know where you’ve been. You haven’t posted on Instagram, so I don’t know what you’ve eaten. You exist, here or there, not everywhere all at once— the sum of you strewn about like so many bits of broken pottery. I think I’m jealous of you, cat-with-a-c. Your smug face knows it as you walk back through the door.
Red Rain Rumble by Will Britton I don’t think to stretch beyond this pane of glass That stretches between the world and I, Oscillating between you and me. I don’t think to look out. The world is within.
Reflected back are the vague curves and planes of your face, your jaw, your hair. It is enough to look at you within, Within the warm bus, sweat-sticky from walking and smiling, Perspiring and rain drying. Peeling away layers of grime and scarves and joy. I am enthralled by the gesture of shapes within, Within, we are not Without.
A thousand red rear lights outline your silhouette as the motorway rumbles, Grime and rain illuminate you with each passing streetlight, Like an intermittent halo. Blinking you in and out of sainthood: Within and without.
Sonnet by Jessica Wood Death, cease your pride; though some have called you Mighty and infamous, you are not so. You are slave to Life, and further in lieu, Slave to all women in their golden glow. Each child can replace you, each birth a taunt, For you can take some but not them all. The women look on, carefree, nonchalant, Knowing their children you will not befall. See, oh Death, your failures cavort and play, Dancing and laughing long into old age; Though the steed beneath you may stamp and bray, there is nothing for you but foiled outrage In the grand scheme, Death, your role is so small. You can take one, but you can’t take us all.
Assorted Haiku Lottricia Millett red-roofed rectangles roll down steep green hills, halting on brown cliff edges.
i sip a heart from my hot chocolate in a pub flushed with body heat.
sunshine and sky, eyes filtering through rayed lashes. butterflies in flight.
a troop of queasy daffodils collapses beneath a stop sign, baffled.
Isaac Boothman If this time was lost,
Would tourists buy these ink-stains
And call them rapture?