Twelfth Night
the weather through the draped window
dreich
the fire spits
and greetings cards make a merry flame
as I the audient
listen to the sermon of the grate
that a living room is empty
unless you let in a little light
Gareth Writer-Davies is from Brecon, Wales. Shortlisted Bridport Prize (2014 and 2017) Commended Prole Laureate Competition (2015) Prole Laureate for 2017. Commended Welsh Poetry Competition (2015) Highly Commended in 2017 . Pamphlets Bodies (2015) Cry Baby (2017) Indigo Dreams. Collection The Lover’s Pinch ( 2018) and pamphlet The End (2019) Arenig Press
Light
You say let’s fill this house with light.
With my own flickering low, I nod,
wrap the stairs in stars,
coax flames from the hearth.
It feels like resistance to be so bright,
after Samhain, before Mid-Winter.
At this worst of times,
this is the power of light.
Josie Moon is a writer and community arts practitioner based in NE Lincs. Josie writes and publishes poetry and children’s books and is currently working on a novel. To find out more about Josie visit https://josiemoon.co.uk/
Skating
I watch her
skating straight out across the ice
remembering to power from her thighs
taking a furious ‘here to there’
zagging a line.
No laying down of tight circles,
no figures of eight
dizzying on her frozen pond.
So much she wants to
outrun
leave behind.
I swear I see thoughts
thrown out above her.
I watch them dropping slowly
through the fir trees.
Sometimes I see them right up against the sky
she can make them touch that blue.
One day I will have gathered them all;
she will let me skate beside her
take her hands
show her how to spin.
Sue Finch lives with her wife in North Wales. She likes all kinds of coasts, peculiar things and the scent of ice-cream freezers. Her first collection Magnifying Glass was published in Autumn 2020 with Black Eyes Publishing UK. Twitter link: @soopoftheday
Geese
Observing the stars,
the way the moss grows
at night,
you have something more to say, but
out of the crevices of evening
over the house spreads
the goose fanfare
circling the heavy sky
and all around us, all around
in the tumbling darkness
believe me when I say
for all we love
hesitatingly
with our muddled hopes
they are singing
of everything we are reaching out for.
Sam Garvan has work published in anthologies and journals including, most recently, Acumen, Impossible Archetype, Black Bough, Thorax, and Interpreter’s House. He has a Ph.D. from London University and works for a London beekeeper.
Note: A cento constructed from lines found in Miroslav Holub’s ‘Poems Before & After’ (Bloodaxe 2006)