Jesus Spends Some Time at the Circus Freak Show

He feels at home with the others.
None of them cast stones.
All of them grow flowers.

Jesus climbs the few steps to
the pool, pauses on the edge,
looking down. This time
it’s just for his friends.

He puts one foot on the water,
then the other. Sinks
slowly. They gasp.
He winces like a pro,
then smiles suddenly, and crying PSYCH!
he bobs to the surface
walks, does a little pirouette,
in sync with himself once more.

They applaud, ask questions.
A bit of stock-in-trade, he says,
humbly. There used to be quite
a vogue for it.

I wish I could teach you, he says,
wringing his scarred hands.

You already have, they say,
and pass him a hot, hot coffee,
extra sweet.

Pushcart- and Forward-nominated Jennifer A. McGowan is a disabled poet who has also had Long Covid for over three years. Despite this, her sixth collection, How to be a Tarot Card (or a Teenager) was published by Arachne late 2022. She has won a number of competitions, and placed and been commended in many more. She’s a re-enactor, prefers the 15th century to the 21st, and lives in Oxford.

Note: This poem was first published in Still Lives with Apocalypse, which won the 2020 Prole pamphlet competition

The greener grass

Alison Hadley, Louise Everett, Sandra Smith and me
were the gang, but when we played levitation, we needed five.
Eager Mary, with her darned socks and uneven hems
didn’t mind being the corpse. She lay down
on the red patterned carpet and we knelt, two on each side
she looks dead she looks dead we intoned the incantation
she is dead she is dead she is dead she is dead.
When we lifted her one finger each, it was easy, like always.
Then we felt the weight rise from our fingers
and looked up. She was hovering near the ceiling
by the fly-blown lampshade, smiling broadly
in a way I’d never seen before, she even looked pretty.
Don’t let her go, Alison shouted, but her ankle
slipped from my grasp like a wet potato. She giggled
as she blew us a kiss and swam towards the open window.

We said she’d gone to the toilet and never came back.
The hunt went on for days, weeks, years. I lay awake
wondering if she was happier wherever she landed.

Judith Shaw’s work has been published in a variety of magazines including The Frogmore Papers, Consilience and Black Iris. It was included in the Live Canon 2024 Anthology as well as Ten Poems about Getting Older by Candlestick Press. She is currently Poet-in-Residence for the Cuckmere Pilgrim Path in Sussex.

play time

the girls’ playground sloped at such a degree
fear trickled from the underarms of rival
over from Middle Park to beat us at netball

when not handstanding against the wall
during break we linked arms and stomped uphill
chanting who wants to play then downhill join
 
on the end until ten or more of us teamed up
in a streamer a wave of laughter    the last ones
swung around and running then uphill again

and always the Alpha girls decided who
would be eagles     who would be babies
destined to be kidnapped to cower or creep

free to imagine themselves rescued
or eaten up by the outside toilets under
a corrugated roof the secret eyrie a nest

of babies crouched in a whisper out of sight
of the netball court quietly terrified of games
or dinnertime waiting to be let in at the bell

Robin Houghton is the author of four poetry pamphlets including Why? And Other Questions (Live Canon, 2020). She co-hosts the podcast Planet Poetry. Her first full collection, The Mayday Diaries (where this poem first appeared) , is published by Pindrop Press in 2024. robinhoughtonpoetry.co.uk

To Oz and Back

Over and over, you are Dorothy
or Glenda the Good,
me the Wicked Witch of the West,

or the unreformed wizard working
his fake-magic to frighten
little girls, men of straw, of tin.

How I coveted the ruby slippers,
craved the click-together
of kitten heels, the chance to wave

the magic wand, to wait for a tornado’s
lift and suck to blow
me home again over wheat fields, farm

beasts, munching. Oceans away, my prairie
has dissolved; mutated
into a river’s meander, the brood of drizzle,

and spring’s grim silk, mud. But you,
deprived by distance
of my purifying badness, the orange grove

afternoons of our childhood where I
scared you to death,
and your tears were part of the game.

You are still there, exposed in your goodness,
dust-bowl dry –
no winners, no losers – a draw.

Wendy Klein won 1st prize in the South Downs Binsted Poetry Competition and found a home for her pamphlet Having her Cake in 2025.  Her chances of success are somewhat limited by the fact that submitting and promoting her work are her least favourite tasks.