List Poem Between Christmas And New Year

The grey parrot has still not been found.
A perfect green square lies in the dust.
I slept way too long, woke up far too late.

The tops of the new buildings are in mist.
I like the idea of a balcony above the traffic.
It is unclear which train is leaving first.

Passengers are wearing face masks again.
There are more fresh graves in the cemetery.
I don’t know who any of these people are.

This is a Central Line service to Loughton.

Rupert Loydell is the editor of Stride magazine, and contributing editor to International Times. He is a widely published poet whose most recent poetry books are Damage Limitation (zimZalla 2025) and The Age of Destruction and Lies (Shearsman, 2023). He has edited anthologies for Salt, Shearsman and KFS, written for academic journals such as Punk & Post-Punk (which he is on the editorial board of), and contributed to books about David Lynch, Brian Eno and Industrial music.

New Year’s Eve in Brissac

The village is made of darkness and wood smoke
and the hunting owls sounding from the garrigue.
Street-lights go off at eleven, there’s not one person out
under the programmed flicker of Joyeuses Fêtes.

Indoors the tele shows Champs Elysée crowds,
packed orange faces blossoming between floodlit trees.
Projections sprawl over the Arc de Triomphe:
huge clocks, multi-coloured unfolding cubes,

while we all nest in our stone houses for réveillon,
the staying awake, with oysters and langoustine,
and our small river trickles out of the hill breathing mist
like forgetfulness for all that’s gone wrong.

Orion leaps across the midnight sky, its cold burning
immune to our resolutions, our casual wrecking.

Ruth Aylett lives and works in Edinburgh and her poetry is widely published in magazines, both online and in print, and in anthologies. Her pamphlets Pretty in Pink (4Word) and Queen of Infinite Space (Maytree) were published in 2021. For more see ruthaylett.org

Belonging

You felt the warmth on entering the house
they were all there, as you’d thought they’d be:
the tree in the corner of the messy room
remnants of Christmas, cheap wrappings
Santas mocking crib figures, twinklingly.
And seated round you the people who
have shared your past and your present
and they are talking, all at once
jostling to tell the same story
in a different voice or tone-
jokes that are not funny and exclude
the outer circle, no spite intended. Games
you dread, because the noise will rise
to shouting without anger, joyful
competition. Each year begins like this,
for you, this mass confusion.

Eithne Cullen is a member of Forest Poets. She writes stories and poems and has been published in magazines and anthologies. Eithne has self published two novels. Her first pamphlet: The Smell of Dust was published in 2021.  She’s a regular contributor to and page editor for Write On! magazine.