Celebration
Overnight,
the dour hill
has been piped;
in its place,
a thickly iced,
shimmering slice
of pink-lit
diamond-cake.
And now,
drizzled
with a jewelled
tumbletrickle of sprinkles,
I can hear it
squealing,
unable to contain
its joy
at this surprise party.
Helen Laycock is a Pushcart-nominated poet and winner of Black Bough Poetry’s chapbook competition. Widely published, her work has also been featured at The East Ridge Review. She can be found on X @helen_laycock and Facebook.
December allotment
Raspberry prunings smoke
on a bonfire of calamities. Dioxins
spread across the allotment, curly kale
bleaches into pale-edged panic;
cold rain aggregates, freezes,
and each crystal
hisses as it hits the flames.
Alive in this liquid world as if
all solid ground were mud
and every footstep a black root-stem
stubbornly resisting into the new year.
Ruth Aylett teaches and researches robotics in Edinburgh and has been known to read poems with a robot. Her pamphlets Pretty in Pink (4Word) and Queen of Infinite Space (Maytree) were published in 2021. For more see ruthaylett.org
Debbie Strange is a chronically ill short-form poet and artist whose work has been widely published internationally. Her award-winning haiku collection, Random Blue Sparks, is forthcoming from Snapshot Press.