A Graffiti bridge
— Andrew Scotson 2024
He is at the back behind the band when he is pointed out to you, they tell you tolook for that wild hair and his moustache that makes you think he wants to look a little older. Is he 18 yet? Maybe, anyway in those leather jeans and with that jacket undone so that in the centre of his chest you can see black hair growing free. His hands play the rhythm easy and you can see his fingers look quick bitten but obviously know their way around his slightly low slung guitar. He sits alone in the break with a coke and a coffee, a cigarette and a notepad. You can see him scrawling quick lines that look like some kind of doodle infested poem or maybe the beginnings of a symbol covered song. He is crossing out now and his elbow catches the half empty cup and there is a quick curse which makes the older men laugh. You can see red colour come to his cheeks as his eyes drop to the now soaked page and if this is musical prowess then it is well hidden indeed.
One voice
— Leela Gautam 2024
A long journey.Just one voice in the car,Hers, from the front,Clear, confident, persistent.He listens carefully,Fully focused,Does her bidding.I sit, mute, redundant,Role reduced to passinga snack, a tissue, a drink.Time was when I tracedthe map on my lap,Time was when he’d ask me to sing.No map now. Singing days, done.Age has lost the key to my voice.I cannot sing.He does not disagree!I take a break, I doze.Then we hit a roadblock,No warning; she stops speaking.A truck has spilled its cargo. A long wait – he switches her off,Turns to talk. I feign sleep!
Bing Crosby dreams of snow in the Antipodes
— Daphne Milne 2024
At this time of the yearthe horizon disappears —heat haze or it may be the seaboiling distantly away Sunshine shorts and cold stubbieswell oiled bodies lie comatosebrown and crisp as turkey skin33º is not plum pudding weather Christmas musak in the storesplastic reindeer everywhere On rooftops life size Santasgradually deflate — luckyto reach Christmas dayheat sucks all the air from them The lorikeets are back — squabblingin the fig tree outside my bedroom windowwaking me at dawn to leavepurple ‘messages’ on my white car In this hat-wearing country we walkon the shady side of the street
Images of Nature
— Rustin Larson 2024
Glacier blue lake in the mountains of Banff.A large walk down an orange forest.A bead of dew on the tip of a blade of grass.A large walk in the green of summer.A mossy, muddy hand giving a treeto a clean hand. A waterfall like the white hairof Angel Rapunzel. A golden sunrisewith a retriever and casual backpacker.A lavender evening at the end of a dockin the lake district. The sun setting insidethe branches of a baobab tree. Beadsof moisture on a froggy leaf. Yellow gorsein bloom by a gravel road under a cloudy sky.A rotted black tree fallen over a frothyswollen stream. A ten mile lawnleading to an empty cottage. A womansaluting the sun on the edge of a mountain-reflecting pond. Gushes of snow meltthrough companions of hawthorns. MountFuji framed by cherry blossoms and a river.A long wooden walkway between a swampand mulberries. A salad of inedible leaves.A poem written beneath a woman who sleepson a mossy log. A cupped hand filledwith tigers and egrets. A cave floodedwith water and sunlight. A columnof carefully stacked stones.
Another New Year’s Jazz
— Rustin Larson 2024
We stood by the pond’s ice skin, saxophoneof Zombie Girl, the pianokeys of the sidewalk at sunset, the snareof tires through snow melt, the bassof a barking dog, a black dog, the windchattering like sparrows, sky languageof curiosity. Happy New Year, mighty languageof floating luminaries, newspaper balloons, phonebooth calls of melting snow on glass.Woody Woodpecker plays his laugh on piano.The hound dog sheriff plays basson confiscated inner tubes snaredand snared again on meat hooks,smiling the wind outside her apartment.
It’s the sky again
— Judy Dinnen 2024
We’ll bring the sky with usthe still and the ragingspace for leaf and wing. We’ll bring the sky with us;the space for magpie and jaysuggests old myths each day. We’ll bring the sky with usgrizzled shreds of mourningas the misty time is dawning. We’ll bring the sky with us,the sky when she’s angry,for your soul when hungry. We’ll bring the sky with usan evening of shocking red,a counterpane that bled. We’ll bring the sky with usshe holds the silver moon.In silent awe she croons. We’ll bring the sky with usWe’ll bring long miles too,mischief, game and smiles. We’ll bring the sky with us,poem, prayer and promise too,spool, stool and surprise.
The Harvest of Years
— Judy Dinnen 2024
Life began in the kitchenby smiles of a new home.I was blessed with a thimble,silver, ornate as a fairy, brought up with red brick promise,a kaleidoscope of rides and arrivals.I pricked my finger on a thorn,hidden midst the harvest of fruit. There was blood and tears, soakedinto the tapestry of melody and mischief.Sun, snow and rainbow all played inthe squares of our board games. Tunes whispered or shouted in roomsof confusion, resisting silence.A crab apple tree shone red courage,marking the charge of each year.
Vanishing point
— Julie King 2024
Could be that slow green light out in the fogAcross Long Island soundAt the end of the dockWhere Gatsby set his gazeTo Daisy for whom he builtA fortuneHopes and dreamsA lifeAnd caught in obsessionLost his own Could it be the placeWhere you cease to existLong after your death.The point where nobodySpeaks your name anymoreFor all are also goneWho remember youAnd you fade into a wisp.Forgotten. Is it the point whereThe male angler fishSwimming all his lifeSearching for a mateFinally finds herHangs on forever and loses himself completely.Eyes and organs disappearingAs he merges completelyTo become a part of her. Is dementia a slowly vanishing point.You recognise me but have forgotten context.Lost in the fog with only fragmentsMixed up and timelessIn the present only nowIt isn’t all bad.Your worries are goneYour childlike exuberanceIs beautifulAs you collect shells and pretty stonesThe slow creeping towards oblivion.Not obvious to anyone from a distanceOr even close up, your manners and politenessStill intact A decaying marriageHe, wrapped in layers of traumaAgain misreading the room,Her tone of voiceHowever carefulAn odd wordLeaves him mummifiedIn bandages that neverAllow healing to occur beneath.He retreats to his sarcophagusPortal to nothingnessShe is left behindSurveying nought but grave dust.The vanishing point of separation
Pausing at Humber Bridge
— Betty Hasler 2024
Driving somewhere else I came upon it suddenlysuspended glittering over the pewter rivercarrying distant traffic scuttling into the city where once I had arrived for the first time aloneheaving a trunk full of trepidationinto the clatter of a strange singing accent climbing to the room above the antique shopwith its joss sticks and dripping sink and fish suppersand my mother’s face turned to the wall mostly avoiding the university librarywhere shoes squeaked and whispers rustledand, biting a biro, I paused on page one of an essay dreaming of a night of pounding sound and sweaty sexto stagger vomiting onto the fish-littered docksidein a bitter dawn under screeching gulls watching the early Humber ferry on the hourturn and grind back empty across the estuaryfor there was no bridge to home then. Meanwhile there have been other bridges and other riversand the estuary tide has swept in and out twice a dayleaving part of me in debris beneath that bridge.
Gauze
— Johanna Boal 2024
The fine fibres covering my lower bodyhips and spine now loose with agethe once strong structures criss-crosslike a wire mesh used in monumentsfine buildings and bridges make towns.Hazy thoughts of walking down the aislealmost dancing, a ballerina’s tutuwedding veil packed and wrappedin the loft, fine tissue paper breaking up.The osteopath handles my muscle and bonesincreasing blood flow, plugging drenched painplacing the wounds in the gauze.
Pine Cone
— Susan Jane Sims 2024
Its base a mosaicin shades of brown and cream and grey;its centre, a universewe can’t quite grasp.Upturned, it’s a reaching out of cupped hands,an offering of hope,of love, from a well so deep.If Freya, my dancing, smiling granddaughterwere here I would offer it to her,named as she is for love,for the Nordic goddess of love;and as open as this miracle of nature.She would keep it safe,hoard it amongsther growing box of treasures.
About the editor
Poet, editor and artist, Susan Jane Sims has been running Poetry Space since 2010. She has three collections to her name and has edited or joint-edited many anthologies. Poetry Space is a social enterprise operating from Susan’s home in Beaminster, Dorset, where she is also a chef in the food and arts business she runs with her husband Chris (Tangerine Cafe & Gallery). She has been a poet in schools for many years, a judge in a regional heat of The Poetry by Heart competition and a Hawthornden Fellow in 2018. Susan loves nothing better than bringing people together with community events; her latest venture is a monthly collage group supported by Dorset START.