Swing Beam Assembly
Take eight each of hex bolts
washers, locks…
it’s important
to fasten these tightly.
There’s a spanner you can borrow.
Set the beam
so the edge with holes faces up
without holes faces down
secure the rails. And now
screwdriver for leverage
turn swing hangers into pine.
Turn until you can’t turn it
because your wrists are hurting
until the connector
is screwed fully into the wood
until the parts
all seem firmly connected
until you feel the hardening of skin
a burning on your palm
just below the index finger.
Set them upright
monuments to play
against an orange sky
‘til it’s time for tea
and slippery yellow plastic
statically charged, to flow
like water, down.
Lastly, the swings.
It is most important to check
you have done all this correctly:
Measure the angle
of the setting sun
look out for long shadows
check the temperature
of the concrete path
feel for chain
through the plastic sheath
press it, strong blue putty
it should spring back slightly.
Check the sound
of metal against metal
woodchip crunch underfoot.
If you have done all this correctly
the motion will be
perpendicular to the beam
and tangential
to the clouds.
Elena Brake is an artist, poet and mechanical engineer in training. She grew up in the small market town of Axminster. Elena’s poetry is driven by curiosity, bringing technical learnings from mechanical engineering to observations of the natural and built world, with place and memory woven in. Her debut poetry collection, Woven Paths, was published in September 2025 by Shoals of Starlings Press.
Gone, Not Gone
The moon February 1973 lit a path to a pair of 12th floor
castaways sailing a balcony raft on Essex Tower, Penge. We drew
old maps and new and logged the stary welkin. I was bold Captain
Bookworm, you, 2nd Captain Snowflake-Melts-on-the-Tongue.
Digging deeper into smuggled pillows and blankets we sailed on.
I saw a shot-down angel in a falling star, silver clouds as a levitating
basking shark above the Crystal Palace transmitter. The headlights
on the move were angler fish, verified in a pre-loved Brittanica, a
tome of red leatherette, an essential guide for children lost at sea.
Among the talk and laughter, the gull cries from Mum on a bender.
Oh my sad captains, toilet roll telescopes at your eyes, lookouts for
witches and hydra which kept you – keep you – from safe harbours.
Karen Downs-Barton is a neurodiverse writer from a multiracial, working-class background. Her collection, Minx, is published by Penguin and her pamphlet, Didicoy, Smith|Doorstop, was a Poetry Book Society recommendation. Her poems featured on Radio 4’s The Verb, at Ledbury Poetry and Edinburgh International Book Festivals, and is widely anthologised.
Note: This poem uses a ‘Spare Rib’ form I created in response to legacy anthologies that don’t offer space to diverse voices. The bold text are titles from Worlds: Seven Modern Poets, ed. Geoffrey Summerfield, Penguin (1979), an anthology without female poets or those of diverse backgrounds.
William Brown Remembers a Seaside Holiday
For Peter Scupham and Richard Riding
I built a sand castle and knocked it down,
I paddled a little but soon got bored,
I stared out to sea with a squinting frown,
I polished a pebble to add to my hoard.
I lay on a rug for a minute or two,
I itched with impatience but held it in check,
I sucked a boiled sweet, then for something to do
I buried my father up to his neck.
I crossed my eyes till the beach was a blur,
I measured my life with ice-cream cones,
I prayed for the miracle to occur,
I stood like a shell in a circle of stones.
John Mole lives in Hertfordshire where for many years he ran the Mandeville Press with Peter Scupham. His most recent collection is Keeping in Step ( Shoestring Press, 2023 ). He has received the Gregory and Cholmondeley Awards, and the Signal Award for his poems for children.
Longing for green
We dive in, follow the Strawberry Line
from Yatton to Winscombe,
land of the summer people
home to water voles, marsh harriers,
red admirals & muntjac deer
who show their shy faces
through bramble hedges
bowed with blackberries,
tunnels of green, welcome shade,
wild pickings for our son
his fingers stained purple,
as he pockets acorn cup-launchers,
blackbirds scudding by
while grazing cattle sit or stand,
bruised arcs of wild damson frame
neat rows of orchard fruit
nature’s plenty, spread like a blanket,
we follow rhynes & ditches,
bullrushes, sedges, grasses
moving like waves in the wind
pushing us along, our son
learning all the colours of green,
why this keeps pulling me home.
Eleanor Holmes (previously Eliot North) is an ND mother-doctor-writer of prose & poetry. She lives in Valencian Country, Spain & works as an NHS GP. Widely published in print and on-line, in 2025 she has poems out in Alchemy Spoon, Write Out Loud 20th Anniversary Anthology, & Kaleidoscopic Minds Vol. 2.