The Christmas Market

Her mother doesn’t want to linger here –
cheap stuff from South America
at cruelly inflated prices.
Disgrace.

But Nuala won’t be dragged away.
There are wooden frogs that sing
an ugly croaking song. Their coats
are bright, bright green with yellow
flowers on. Rattles you can shake
to make the sound of thunder;

sticks you can upend and rain
comes hushing through the air.
Nuala turns them round again, again.
How do they work?
A little magic, smiles the man.
But Mum won’t buy.

He hands to Nuala a fragile reed.
Inside it is a twig: he shows her how
to blow and move the twig about
so out come bird-notes,
sweet and pure,
like nothing she has heard before.

She cannot put it down.
Her eyes have grown so round
her mother can’t hold out –
it may be a disgrace but
this is Christmas
and the vendor knows.

Mum opens her unwilling purse
and off they go,
Nuala filling the air
with forest sounds
of emerald and scarlet birds.

Gill McEvoy’s recent publication was a Selected Poems (Hedgehog Press, 2024). She was one of the winners of the 2024 Cinnamon Press Award and a pamphlet Summer to Summer, Looking will be out in 2025.

White Wedding

On the way to the registry office it snows, flecks of white like spittle hitting the steamed-up bus windows, I worry the petals from my wedding posy. On the back seat, the wedding cake, white Royal icing, the plastic figurine, the bride and the groom, white piped edging. The baby in my arms, crying.The baby in a long white nightie, knitted white booties. It snowed when I was in labour, snowed and snowed and snowed. The staunch matron in herstarched white uniform telling me I was a silly girl, that a baby couldn’t possibly save me. The weeks before I sorted through the baby clothes, donated from the church good doers, keeping all the white, discarding the pink and blue. The cold council flat not yet decorated, the bedroom, a white cot, walls freshly plastered. I spent an hour in Defty’s Haberdashery, staring at tins of paint I could ill afford. Sloe flower, rock salt, magnolia, alabaster, cornsilk, eggshell, wing of dove.

Rachel Burns lives in County Durham and is a poet, short story writer and playwright. Short stories published in Mslexia and Signs of Life anthology. She has been placed in poetry competitions including The Julian Lennon Prize for Poetry and The Classical Association Poetry Competition.

prayer of the suckling pig

oh grass      dandelion
sweet smellness      can i
mother      mother
i mouth your milkness
your warm
but      out-there looks so
green
could i      might i
grass
maybe dayafterthis
clover
the crate is tight      cold
my hoofs so      soft
mother      how long
to Christmas
i’m fourteen birdsongs big
oh      crate’s      opening
the up-there so
yellow-warm
shining
purslane      milkweed
thisday the grass

oh      mother?

Cindy Botha was born and raised in Africa and now lives in New Zealand where she began writing late in life. Her poems appear in magazines and anthologies in NZ, Australia, the UK and USA.