We stayed up all night and it was mental
Umeboshi made our heads
go fizzy like we’d opened eyes
and ears and mouths and fed in packs
of pink space candy. Then it was light.
I walked across the Backs with Chris
who knew the way and fancied me.
The static in our heads went hiss
and flick just as we saw the geese.
They stared at us across the grass,
our acid skin shone white. Their wings
hinged up and they began to spit.
Our black hole eyes were wide and still,
the dawn sat wet on each last blade
of grass, as we fizzled out the game.
Natalie Shaw lives and works in London. She has a kind husband and children of varying size. Her pamphlet Oh be quiet is published by Against the Grain Press.
Forty days of fasting and those mushrooms you found under a rock
You were a found poem, a stolen song,
dying on the desert floor,
a revenant sea gone to dust,
home to scorpions and erotic dreams
of cold, beading water across the map of a beloveds’ skin,
your magical mind telling you stories
beneath a carousel of pale, carved horses.
Bees and Bells
Humming, Pealing.
Out of the haze, a firebird in silk,
carrying a posy of night blooming flowers,
silver robe and white sand shimmer,
a necklace of souls reciting their sins.
Flaying wit of dark eyed bright
smiled at your hallucinating head,
from a fashionable bag of stretched, ancient faces
drew honeycomb and crown of thorns,
slipped the robe from smooth brown shoulders,
whispered to your groaning form
“time to talk of pleasure and freewill”.
Mick Corrigan’s poems have been rejected by most of the finest magazines around though some of his poems have also been nominated for The Pushcart Prize (USA) and The Forward Poetry Prize (UK). His debut collection, Deep Fried Unicorn, was released in to the wild in 2015. His second collection when completed, will be launched on an unsuspecting public like a clown fired from a cannon.
A Gallon a Day Keeps the Doctor Away
Charles J. March III is an asexual, neurodivergent Navy hospital corpsman veteran from the South Side of Chicago. His work has appeared in a myriad of places. Links to his pieces can be found on LinkedIn & SoundCloud.