Yesterday’s Donuts – Sasha Newbury

a town where empty souls roam the streets

My name is Sasha, I’m a 25 y/o Copywriter living in London. By day I work in Advertising by night (and usually lunchtimes too) I find myself lamenting through poetry. It keeps me sane. It keeps me happy.

Yesterday’s Donuts.

So far south

it feels like the end of the world,

discarded ideals and beer-battered aspirations

litter the shore line.

Yesterday’s donuts sunbathe with

tomorrow’s comedown – still warm and wet from penetration

and washed away with Glen’s

–

so far east

the sun barely reaches.

A town filled with aged people

haunted by ever-present problems

that linger at every shop door.

You shall not pass

without the guilt of privilege

weighing – gently ebbing

–

so far detached,

this isn’t home anymore.

Not even the ghost of puberty past

or rosy mist of reminiscence

can fool me now

–

-but I’m tethered anyway,

–

to a town where yesterday’s newspaper

gets printed with regret

and fingered with greasy intent –

where the self-perpetuating cycle starts at 15

with a broken condom

on a dusty sofa

at a shit party

with your brother’s friend Dean –

a town where empty souls roam the streets

at the ripe age of 23.

–

They’re starved of purpose –

and dehydrated by the sea

Sasha Newbury

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Salty Tea – Jessica Levett

I make friends with the dolphins and the leggy octopus

Salty Tea

I am a monster,

I have eyes but I don’t see what you see,

I see things from beneath the sea,

Drowning bodies and shipwrecked tea.

–

I live my life,

Jumping from crate to crate,

But as the waves push back I’m merely jumping in the same space.

–

With nobody around me,

I’m the only one of my race.

–

I make friends with the dolphins and the leggy octopus.

But I couldn’t swim nor hide as well as they could.

–

I have two arms and two legs,

With some sort of a body and face.

When I look down at the water,

All I see is a trace.

–

So empty,

So plain,

The artist gave up again.

I don’t even know my real name.

–

You see I’m lonely out at sea,

but at least I have my saltwater tea.

By Jessica Levett

Age: 18

Two Photographs – Sue Byrne

The photos surfaced today

Sue became interested in writing poetry in 2016, after her husband died of cancer. She joined the local Maggie’s creative writing group. In 2018 she became joint Writer in Residence and she has had some success with her poetry. She has had poems selected for “Our Beating Heart” (erbacce-press); an insect anthology (Emma Press); “Missing Pieces” (Maggies’anthology); “Write like a Girl” anthology (a project about 5 women writers in Nottingham).

She has joined several other writing groups and she has extended her knowledge of poetic forms. She enjoys sharing poems and writing with other like-minded people.

Two Photographs

Both taken by the other

on Sheringham beach one October.

I’m sitting on the sea-wall

overlooking a grey-blue scape.

You’re on a boulder

surrounded by the shingle-shore.

–

I’m wearing my pumpkin coloured jeans.

You’re wearing black. No change there then.

Behind me, wooden groynes gradually

disappear into the sea.

Behind you, a glimpse of infinity.

We share the sound of the waves.

–

Six years have gone by.

The photos surfaced today.

We were looking at different futures,

faces hiding the pain and fear

that was to come.

And we didn’t speak of it.

Susan Byrne, 14th October 2018

Amphibian – Laura Boyle

I’m an amphibian, cold-blooded; I just forget it sometimes.

I am a seventeen-year-old student, journalist, and aspiring poet. I use poetry to explore the full range of colours and sounds of the human experience; I delve into the topics that scare me most. I hope my poem finds a home in each reader.

Amphibian

Healing is a lake, and it’s a cold November day.

I feel the sand part beneath me as I stand on that border,

That static purgatory of liminality makes me shiver

Preemptively; I can’t dive in.

–

I feel the water steal the warmth of my brave toes;

Frightened, I recoil like a grasshopper, springing back onto solid ground.

The perpetual, vast wetness is the stillest whirlpool I’ve ever seen.

Still,

The anchorage of hope tugs me in,

Unwilling.

–
The torso is the worst part;

In feverish anticipation of the icy pain that begets the numbness,

I hesitate, searching for hands to pull me in.

The only hand that grabs back is my reflection.

–
The sky fills my ears and the clouds enter my lungs as I reteach myself how to

Breathe.

I’m an amphibian, cold-blooded; I just forget it sometimes.

–

I’m spinning upside-down in water or air,

Head hit by an asteroid, feet throbbing, disoriented.

Am I flying, or am I simply surrounded by the damp, frosty reflection Of the blotted sky?

–

I wish I could jump in the cerulean water head-first,

But for now, I’m taking tentative steps into the unknown,

Drowning until I believe I can swim.

Healing is a lake, and one day I will be the Loch Ness Monster.

Laura Boyle

The Mermaid and the Concrete Sea – LW Hawksby

I turned my fins to a few different jobs

I have recently become a 1st time published memoir author and started entering my poetry into competitions. I love writing about the outdoors including the sea. The reason I wrote this mermaid poem was because I still feel ” a fish out of water” in Big Glasgow.

The Mermaid & The Concrete Sea

I left the sea and shore far behind to head past the head-land to the place they call the city land.

Wispy, young and full of childish angst, I wrapped my fins up tight and stoted angrily off into a 90’s October night.

No one held my hand as I fell into a town so grand, it took my breath away and I wished for water and waves and sand so bad I almost didn’t stay.

But I did. Of course I did.

A fish out of water, the big metal monster below my feet scared me half to death so I stuck to the streets. Walking here and there and everywhere too fearful of even a bus leaving me somewhere.

I turned my fins to a few different jobs- a nightclub (oh a nightclub!), a restaurant and bar and still to this day have never learned nor needed to, drive a car.

As the tides came and went and the year’s span round the moon, I settled down but only a little. Just enough to appear normal. Just enough to find some breathing room.

My fins fell away and I grew hooves for feet. Hard, strong and road worthy I became a city-maid. Strong, wise and sturdy. Gone is the wispy mermaid of Mull’s delicate rockpool and here is a mother. Three young mer-men all doing well at gritty but fine Glasgow schools.

LW Hawksby

30,000 Steps – Connor O’Sullivan-Day

Boy you’re like a Rubik’s cube – Showing me all you colours and sides

My name is Connor O’Sullivan-Day. I am 22 years old and I love travelling, writing and a combination of city and nature, although I am a city boy at heart.

30,000 Steps

All of the hours fly by
It’s never felt so natural like this time. My night is in your hands –
I wanna get lost with you
Explore every single avenue.

–
We could get lost in Finsbury Park Stay here till the air gets dark.
Boy you’re like a Rubik’s cube – Showing me all you colours and sides, There’s nothing that I want to hide.

–
Found myself smiling at your name Wanna scream it from this train.
You walk me to my stop –
Please keep me out don’t let me go, Don’t make me end this night alone.

–
You quickly pause our conversation
To tell me about your dream in the middle of the station. And it feels like the stars were made just for us
We’re on our way to nowhere
But with you it feels like somewhere.

Connor O’Sullivan-Day

Chameleon – Sophie O’Neill

How similar we are to chameleons

My name is Sophie and im currently studying a performing arts degree which has expanded my passion to write poetry. I go by the basis that I write how I feel without guidelines and hope something resonates with the people reading it.

Chameleon

I used to think to myself on a saddened day

How similar we are to chameleons

How our minds work parallel to their traits

We mold our self into the world

A defense system when we feel at threat

Yet we convince our mind that’s our true self

When the real identity behind us

Is the one who doesn’t change its colors

When approached by the terror

We call society

–

I used to think to myself on a saddened day

Trapped in my mind parallel with society traits

Succumbed to sink into the chameleon way

When I pretend I’m not myself

It stops me feeling this way

Sophie O’Neill

The Truth Illusion – Lisa Winship

I awake, see truth is an illusion

I love creative writing, especially poetry, but I don’t always have the confidence to ‘get them out there’. So, having you read my poem would be amazing! It’s about the illusion of truth we create for ourselves, especially now with social media allowing us to create personas that may not reflect who we really are.

The Truth Illusion

I’m a visionary

Yet I’m sedentary

The richest soul in stolen rags

I’m a wit, don’t fit

As I inhabit

Spheres of influence, I degenerate

I influence, degrade

And agitate

I am beauty in all its fierce repellence

Full to the brim with style and inelegance

My captive audience

Hundreds

Yet none

I sleep, held by contended dreams

That haunt my mind

And steal my streams

Of consciousness

I awake, see truth is an illusion

No one on this earth knows the depth of my intrusion

I can create in my madman’s workshop

A truth for myself

Until the truth is forgot.

Lisa Winship

The Clickety-Clack of Needles – Tracy Davidson

your needles, throughout my childhood and beyond

Tracy Davidson lives in Warwickshire, England, and writes poetry and flash fiction. Her work has appeared in various publications and anthologies.

The Clickety-Clack of Needles

I’ve kept back from the scores of charity bags

everything you ever knitted.

–

Even the really old stuff

I can’t remember you ever wearing.

–

Even the really naff stuff (sorry mum!)

I can’t believe you knitted in the first place.

–

The aesthetics don’t matter. Whether

I’ll wear things doesn’t matter.

–

What matters is the work you put in

to them, the hours, days, weeks

–

and months you spent sitting

on the sofa, clickety-clacking

–

your needles, throughout

my childhood and beyond.

–

I don’t want strangers rummaging through

your precious woollens, buying them

–

only to unpick them for the wool

or to re-use the buttons elsewhere.

–

I look at them and see you as you were

when they were made, healthy and happy.

–

I will treasure them, along with

those memories of you.

Tracy Davidson, Warwickshire

Virginia Creeper – Laura Turner

a sea of coloration radiated from the dark

It is a homage to my S.A.D. and the necessity to find glimmers of light in the dark during the changing of the seasons.

Virginia Creeper

Weighed down with bags of shopping,

Heavy thoughts and weather grey,

I trudged on like a zombie

through the car-parks empty bays.

–

“Get home” was my drab mantra,

Through the autumn cold I traipsed

When, my footsteps turned a corner,

Changed my mundane worlds landscape.

–

At the library’s rear pathway

There, my breath caught at a sight,

Which swiftly helped to lift me from

My peevish, sorry plight…

–

….as a sea of coloration

radiated from the dark,

draped lavishly emblazoned

across the library wall’s car-park.

–

Golds, yellows, ambers, reds

And other warm, rich flames,

Shone brightly from a leafy bed

Of Virginia’s full flushed veins.

–

I saw a bench fortune had placed

Across from my sweet treasure found,

As though it knew, this sweet spot graced

To stun spectators homeward bound.

–

I do not know how long I sat there,

Drinking in your beauties bliss

The grey and cold of my prior mood

Replaced, instead with your warm kiss.

–

I thought of you again that night,

Resolved the next day to return.

But, When I did to my soul’s plight

I found your beauty had fast burned.

–

The winds had stripped most of your splendor

All scattered below where you’d plumed.

Car wheels and rain had turned your tender

leaves to mush, which once so bloomed.

–

But, for a moment I did mourn

The transience of nature’s way.

As I knew, your flames would be re-bourn:

Ignited in next year’s display!

Laura Turner