It’s a fine piece of short, sharp poetry which instantly creates two believable characters and a tense drama in a few lines. EXCELLENT
You loved the story behind the poem. You loved its mystery. You loved the characters of the two sisters and the strength of their relationship. You loved the ‘the rhythm, the voice, the ending’, the fluidity and simplicity of the prose. And it is for these many reasons that Eve Chancellor’s ‘Two Girls on a Greyhound’ is the IS&T Pick of the Month for March 2023.
Eve Chancellor is an English Teacher in Manchester. She has previously studied in Liverpool, Melbourne and Glasgow. Her short stories are featured and forthcoming with East of the Web, Reflex Press, The Ghastling and Sixpence Society Literary Journal. Her poetry has been published in multiple journals, including: Apricot Press, Celestite, Dream Catcher, Green Ink Poetry and Hyacinth Review.
Two Girls on a Greyhound
The older girl turns her face towards the window. Hides
behind her curtain of long brown hair. Her sister is asleep.
They are never going back there. Stepping off the coach,
the seat of the young girl’s jeans is stained with blood.
Her sister takes off her sweatshirt, ties it around
her waist. The older girl takes her sister to the restroom
to get her cleaned up. In the mirror, she thinks of cutting
her hair. She could be a dancer. Call herself Roxanne.
Sniffing, her sister comes out of the cubicle. We need
to change our names, the older girl says. I’ll be Lola.
I want to be Catherine, the younger girl replies.
Like Catherine of Aragon: the Spanish princess,
who became a British queen. She was a survivor.
I’ll call you Cate, her sister says. It will be our secret.
They try on their new identities for size. They could be
anyone. Do anything. Go anywhere. Two girls, on the road
and it feels essential that they keep on running, running
Other voters’ comments included:
In seventeen lines, Eve’s use of precise language and short, clipped sentences, she has created a feeling of urgency which complements the unfolding drama sense of displacement. ‘Going on Journeys’ and ‘playing with identity’ is a modern phenomenon, but the narrator uses historical names to suggest that our future can be created using our knowledge of the past.
Sparsely written evocative coming of age poem by gifted poet
Poignant and poised.
The author seems to “know” teenage girls seems authentic and it hooks me in .. my imagination is triggered to consider what came before and what next .
Stunning prose and concept!
Mystery. Situation could be one of many circumstances.
For the story, the moments and the line breaks.
I loved the story to this piece- the rhythm, the voice, the ending. One to read over and over
Gripping plot and made you wanting to find out more.
This poem felt relatable and full of possibilities. It paints a beautiful picture of what sisters could be to each other.
It’s such an evocative title that gives so much context. Then I love how the two girls pick a new name, especially the younger one picking such a strong one – and they choose them quickly as if they’d already thought about this.
I like that it gives space for our own ideas. There is togetherness, a sense of optimism, moving, holding hands and running.
The ominous tone is haunting but speaks to an inner resonance and stoicism that most little girls have to imbue themselves with in order to survive.
The poem is deeply intriguing. It thoughtfully provokes so many questions about what has happened to the girls, and what will become of their futures. Everything seems uncertain except for the bond between the two sisters.
Love the fluidity of the writing
I believe it is an outstanding piece of work. Personally, I appreciate the juxtaposition of the simplicity of the poem and the complexity of the story portrayed.
I love the simple prose that suggests so much more than it explicitly says and the lovely depth of characterisation in such a short piece.
The relationship conveyed between the two girls is beautiful and so succinctly captured.
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THE REST OF THE MARCH 2023 SHORTLIST
content warning: gynaecological examination
Naming of Parts (after Henry Reed)
Today we have naming of parts.
Yesterday we had no idea they would need to be named.
Two students avoid my gaze, peer between my raised knees at my pubis.
Gloved doctor raises his weapon. And starts.
This is the speculum. Jaws screw open like so. Invented by a surgeon working on enslaved women in the Deep South, 1840s. Barely changed.
May be warmed under a hot tap, if necessary.
Water runs. A giant willow weeps over a chickweed pond outside the window.
Now we part the labia: Latin for lips.
Warm, necessary.
Inspect for abrasions, swellings, sores.
Introduce the speculum.
Ah.
Ah Autumn. Willow flares in gust. Yellow/orange/red.
This is common. Vaginismus. Involuntary tension of the Kegel muscles.
Arnold Kegel, American. Pelvic floor mainly. Should subside. In a minute. Or two.
While we’re waiting, note these little pea-size lubricating glands, just inside the labia. Not functioning at this moment. Can you name them?
Excellent. Danish chap. Caspar Bartholin. Shakespeare’s time. Sometimes develop cysts.
Think we’ve waited long enough. Pass the gel.
Willow bows, time stops.
Establish insertion.
Fists ball, roots bind to earth.
Crank open jaws.
Willow gapes, spurting starlings, startling clouds.
Visually inspect the vagina. Interesting name, Latin for sheath of the sword.
Lips. Sword?
Just to point out on the way
on the way the starlings are swirling, skeltering upwards,
spuming dashes of lost ones the wayward the small
small lacerations on the vaginal wall, normally due to coital injury – or birth, foreign body.
A normal battlefield.
You’ll see them better on the colposcope. Pass me the light
light, shafting through clouds, knifes between willow and
sky. Starlings sheer sunwards.
Turn on the video capture. The patient may prefer the screen facing away from her.
The patient may prefer to soar through light on a
starling’s wing.
Ah. Now we see the cervix. Latin for neck. Quick swab. A weak solution of acetic acid makes any abnormalities easier to detect. Yes vinegar.
He pauses, stares, blinks.
Re-checks the monitor. Tenses. Sighs.
Normalities plummet like a dying murmuration through
my Latin for neck.
For the first time, he looks in my eyes.
One bird falls earthward.
Barbara Crossley is an experienced writer and journalist who lives in the Peak District and is currently taking an MA in creative writing (poetry) at Manchester Metropolitan University.
*
Without you
I won’t believe in ghosts but
the day after they told me you
had died, I saw you everywhere
we had been. Not there
in that dark garden shed with me
as I built a gate, that startlingly
first bright day of early summer
but in India, that ochre evening
we cycled the temple’s ruins, thumbing
our bells and laughing
and in the tumbling flats and bars we drank
and danced our thirties through. Moving
images of dazzling colour, screening all I
ever knew of you in the rushing cinema
of memory.
How can you be gone
when so much of the world
contained you?
The dark shed.
The bright garden.
The gate unhung.
The world
somehow still
here and there
without you.
Paul Fenn’s poem’s have been longlisted three times in the UK National poetry competition and once in the The Plough poetry prize and he has most recently had poems published in IS&T, Allegro, Dreich Magazine, The Frogmore Papers, One Hand Clapping, Obsessed with Pipework and Dodging the Rain.
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If I was that woman
If I was that woman. If I was that woman
in the big house with the tall windows
like eyes staring across open farmland
where the late afternoon sunset glazes
the manicure of her lashes. If I was that
woman whose Italian soft-topped car
is poised in the drive dreaming of Alpine roads
with the crusted crests of mountains
luring her away to the Rivieras.
If I was that woman whose pampered
children never go hungry for a day
and always have the right shoes
the right phone the right head-held
-high attitude that executes the smoothest
sail across the sea of ballet schools and
auditions that allow them the propensity
to become physicians or photographers
with or without portfolio. If I was that
woman who uses her lip-sticked face
to grace the digital screens of Instagram
for a temporary career in Beauty. If I
was that woman whose husband was
Something in Hedgefunds or Investor
in the decimation of Rainforests and
Indigenous peoples for whom
the whole-scale production of palm oil
was Big Business
is that woman similar to the Mistresses
who sat on verandas overlooking plant
ations overseeing other women who had
the misfortune to be the colour of the
earth that fed them?
If I was that woman who silently accepted
the machinations and clandestine alley
catting of husbands in return for
entrance to a gated world of open doors
and holidays in the Babylon of Dubai
would my acceptance alleviate any
concerns for the silenced women who
have no say no agency apart from
the servicing of men? Would my conscience
be calmed over the death of coral reefs
or rainbow fish gagging in a sea of plastic
by contributing monthly debits to Water Aid
or the adoption of orangutans or large
-eyed Asian orphans? If I was that woman
dressed in a business suit looking down
on her sisters as she climbed up the path
to success. If I was that woman whose
head was knocked in hidden rooms
against the wall for daring to have an opinion.
If I was that woman who could not be a poet
because her words belonged in her mouth
and did not merit their passage
through lips that were reddened vulvas
only meant for the pleasuring of men.
If I was that woman instead of the woman
who sits weaving in the valleys of
Macedonia where the sun slowly burns
the mountain. If I was that woman who
even now is crossing the Mediterranean,
her arms in the cradle of God. Or the woman
who stands dreaming at the window
wondering what woman am I?
Maggie Harris is a Guyanese writer and artist living in Kent. Awards include The Guyana Prize, The Commonwealth Short Story Prize and The Wales Poetry Award. She has published 9 books of poetry and prose. Her most recent are On Watching a Lemon Sail the Sea (poetry) and Writing on Water (short stories). www.maggieharris.co.uk
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When You Leave, Two Are Leaving
One behaves like foreign media:
Only notices the events’ cracks, not the water drops hollowing the stones,
The ballet school the kids used to go to, its eyes gorged out
The dentist’s chair now in the middle of the street,
The song with plastic nostalgia, now real,
All the words we may use without care, for they no longer matter.
Mother saying she has lived far too long; turtle disagrees – it’s springtime.
Suffering too will get stunned.
The abyss of leaving – both directions – is just the first step,
The rest is trajectory, randomness of snipers, trains, rooms, kind strangers:
The flag on the balcony is a plant of mint,
The rest is perfumed dust – don’t breathe it now. Won’t breathe it again like now.
No one knows know we are all leaving, the sky we are looking at is tarmac grey.
Can’t remember the song; in the shoe-box I am bringing the turtle, chewing on mint leaves.
Massimiliano Nastri is a teaching assistant at Queen’s University, Belfast. He writes: ‘I keep reading the works of Zbigniew Herbert, Brodskij, Akhmatova, Vittorio Sereni; the witness of their resistance survived much worse than translations.’ He swims twice a week.
*
Diaspora
I lost both my lovely uncles
one after the other
to another country.
Jubilantly they had passed
their examinations
and once equipped with
white coats and certificates
they poised to join
the gloried institutions
only to find corridors that reeked
of church and pork
of estrangement and handshakes
panelled rooms where their name
stuck to the roof
of the English mouth.
I lost both my lovely uncles
one after the other
to another country.
Just when we thought
we had arrived home
our shrunken family once more
found itself huddled over
indecipherable letters
despatched from distant possibilities.
I lost both my lovely uncles
one after the other
to another country.
On high holy days I spread
my grandmother’s cloth
I lay out my mother’s silver
and I miss my lovely uncles
their blessings
and dreadful singing
their Jewish faces
blinking and flickering
in the candlelight
Jacqueline Saphra’s second collection, All My Mad Mothers, was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. This poem is taken from her fifth collection, ‘Velvel’s Violin’, which is due from Nine Arches Press in July 2023. She is a founder member of Poets for the Planet and teaches for The Poetry School.