Lucy
In the painting, she’s a young girl
with flowing chestnut hair. Her tunic
veils the swell of adolescent breasts.
Around her shoulders lies a russet velvet cloak.
In her hands she holds a plate
on which lie two eyes. Two fried eggs,
they gaze up at us mournfully.
When she said no the suitor
chosen by her father, she was sentenced
to be ravished. Divine forces put a stop to that,
stopped ravening wolves straight in their tracks.
They tried to burn her then, gouged out her eyes. The flames went out,
leaving pale wisps of smoke. Finallly, they pierced her heart,
killed her with a silver sword.
But she ended up with the last laugh.
This valiant girl, face pocked with empty sockets,
is known as Lucy, deliverer of maidens,
patron saint of light.
Susan Castillo Street is a Louisiana expatriate and academic who lives in the Sussex countryside. She is Harriet Beecher Stowe Professor Emeritus, King’s College, University of London, and has published two collections of poems, The Candlewoman’s Trade (Diehard Press, 2003) and Abiding Chemistry, (Aldrich Press, 2015). Her poems have appeared in The Missing Slate, The Stare’s Nest, Ink Sweat & Tears, Nutshells and Nuggets, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Snakeskin, Literature Today, The Yellow Chair Review,York Mix and other reviews. She is a member of three poetry groups: 52, Goat, and High Wealden Poets.
Palestine Sunbird
He has a quiet belief in angels,
sees them carry souls into the ether
their great wings barely ruffled by the air.
Each dawn, he watches them approach across
the sands, hovering on iridescent wing
as they shimmer in the heat, their brilliance
reflected in his eye.
Evenings, he suspends his tiny body from a vine
while beetles measure out their battlefields below
in clicks and spars.
He dreams he’s not alone
but flies great tree-scapes in the sky with others like him,
funnelling the long salt wind, its rush of phosphorescence,
through his hollow bones.
But he is old, knows that one night as he sleeps,
the angels will embrace him, lift him from his brittle form
and steal him, float him far into the ether,
each neat, green feather tucked
into a final jolt of light.
Jane Lovell lives in Rugby, Warwickshire. Her poems, which have been published in a range of journals including Agenda, Poetry Wales and Mslexia, focus on our relationship with nature, from a flea wearing tiny jewelled boots created by a Russian miniaturist to a circus elephant butchered during food shortages in post-war Vienna. Threads of folklore and science run through her work.
Scan
Alien inside, spooky grey on the screen
All squirming bones and hollow eyes
Growing in the dark
Stamping out a space for itself
In the warm igloo of my insides
As my neck lies twisted towards the monitor
It rolls away, turns a bony back to us
The scan lady laughs, freezes the moment
The cold shoulder
I recognise instantly the child of my lover
Jessamine O Connor is a poet, and facilitator of ‘The Wrong Side of the Tracks Writers’ and ‘The Hermit Collective’. Award winning and widely published, she is judge of the ‘New Roscommon Writing Award 2015’ and soon to be ‘Featured Poet International’ for Muse-Pie Press.
Dawn Chorus
He saw me in a late night shop
buying Marlbro Lights.
I only remember his beard – nothing else,
I didn’t think about how he looked
at me.
He asked me out for dinner –
what went through my mind was did I look
like I needed feeding
or just like someone who’d say yes
to a chicken dinner.
I didn’t know then, that to all men
a seventeen year old girl is beautiful –
even with ample flesh, spiked purple hair
and art school clothes.
I can’t remember a single thing about him,
just the taste of the chicken fricassee,
the cushions of the limousine and the dawn chorus,
before light
as he drove me home.
Jessica Mookherjee was raised in Wales to Indian parents, lived most of her adult life in London and has recently moved to Kent. She studied biological anthropology and now works as a consultant in public health. She has recently had poems accepted by Agenda and Antiphon.