In Autumn & one other by Kate Garrett

Issue 3

In Autumn

trust descending, I wriggle
beneath the radiation

behind a star intersected
by the earth

truth will disfigure the walls,
wipe out dishonour

with atomic hypotheses
from their eyes

through the labyrinth
despair, sparkling pure,

clutches vapours
delights my blood

don’t name the day
of my anxiety

their pleasant world
remained unchanged

Source Texts:
Victory Unintentional by Isaac Asimov (in The Complete Robot)
Things Behind the Sun by Nick Drake (from the album Pink Moon)
The Burrow by Franz Kafka (in Metamorphosis and Other Stories)

Cacophony

The humble dreamer, wounded unto death
by elves of a malicious disposition, knew
there was wizardry in it, but did not fear.

She came in through a knot-hole in the wall
in the small village where I was born, sunbeams
bursting through the gloom of the forest

like the songs of Bohemia – I have heard
them singing their fairy songs. Go, and beware:
dance into the next country, the train will soon

be leaving. Memory-fragments cling to me
like a madman, this dizziness resulting in nausea,
thrown off the rails. Don’t try to understand.

Source Texts:
Modern Man in Search of a Soul (Chapter I: Dream-Analysis in its Practical Application) by CG Jung
The Forest in Folklore and Mythology (Chapter V: Mythical Denizens) by Alexander Porteous

Kate Garrett writes poetry and flash fiction, and edits other people’s poetry and flash fiction. In real life she lives in Sheffield, England, and lives here on the web: www.kategarrettwrites.co.uk

Love’s Plagiarist: a found sonnet by Liùsaidh

Issue 3

Let not my love be called idolatry,
Love is my sin, that my dear virtue hates:
His eyes I love, yet they do pity me.
Should God forbid, that made me first his slave?

How careful was I when I took my way?
What potions hath he drunk of siren tears?
I ne’re survived that well-contented day,
When his soul check’d me, that I came so near!

Who will my verse believe in time to come?
For as this careful housewife runs to catch
Him, who hath the pow’r to hurt and will do none.
Lord of my love. I serve in vassalage!

Sweet love, renew thy force, be it not said
That spent with toil, I faltered in thy bed.
Source text: All lines in this sonnet have been adapted from the index of first lines of a volume Shakespeare’s sonnets.

Liùsaidh is a poet and author from the West of Scotland. Writing from a crack-ridden council estate, the poems are always strange. You can find them online and in print, most recently in Unlost Journal, and The Ghazal Page.

 

Quest by Anne Lawrence Bradshaw

Issue 3

Take the narrow road
to the deep North,
where Greenlanders guard
a magic mountain
in a thousand acres
of their lost world.
Dark places hide here,
memories
where things fall apart.
Never forget: you
are the outsider.
Set aside any great
expectations
of walking home
a hero, as if
Homer’s Odyssey
were some inherent vice
or true vocation
mapped out
like an alchemist’s spell
you must follow.
You are leaving
human traces
paring down
your earthly possessions
in pursuit of
all the powerful,
invisible things.
In the heart of darkness
you will find your awakening
and the red shift of dawn
will lift birdsong,
sudden and unexpected,
through the sky’s
painted veil.

Source text: A selection of titles from the author’s bookshelf.

Anne Lawrence Bradshaw graduated in English Literature in 2013, returning to study after a twenty year hiatus. Her work has been recently published in Orbis, Acumen and Artemis (UK literary magazines) and several ezines. She is Writer Liaison at Ember (emberjournal.org/) and lives in Northumbria with one husband and 2.4 children. Occasional tweets emerge from @shrewdbanana but she’s usually too busy watching the grass grow.

Without Roof (remix) & one other by H.G. Heath

Issue 3

Without Roof (remix) ft. Kinereth Gensler

Two white ducks at nightfall
She gets halfway across a bridge
and turns back.

What will be brought for you?
Eve’s fruit-guilt.
She is pushing off
to the playground with her feet,
swinging up on her bike.

So, imperceptibly, we come to the end of loving
the grape vines are bare,
no figs or date palms grow,
the world distorts
turns flat
upon reentry

Huddled on this far shore
we salute
your fortuitous drowning.

Source text: Kinereth Gensler, Without Roof (Cambridge: Alice James, 1981)

Out of the Rain (remix) ft. Glyn Maxwell

who waits in oaks
and ashes for that time when with my eyes
hurt on a text, I watch exactly what I want to watch
From by this swimming pool, the World
Unity Organisation

Workers squat and bandage, knot, explain,
or build, out of shot.

So just
guess what I saw: not the dust
or the wide jammed road, not that.

We are underwater here, the cold
Progressors from elsewhere,
with hurt mothers, the elderly and me here.
But hell, we have each other, and the beer.

Source text: Glyn Maxwell, Out of the Rain (Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe, 1992)

H.G. Heath is a remix poet from Pennsylvania. His work has been featured in several periodicals, and his debut collection of poetry “m o p e: a Remix of Frank O’Hara” will be released this fall from a…p press.

Heady Legends by Kayla Allen

Issue 3

The sun has begun its downward plunge
toward the bay’s far
shore, and golden twilight is unquestionably
for lovers—you with blackberry smoke
in immature lungs, me with frosted pink lipstick.
We’ll drink to that paradise blue, that moon for
the misbegotten. There are second acts;
wherever you go, my mythical
figure, don’t go too far off.

Source Text: Amtrack Arrive, July/August 2015

Kayla Allen is a senior at Northeastern University pursuing her BA and MA in English with minors in history and musical theatre. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of 308 Press.