Category: Longform

Snigdha Koirala has previously been published in The Inkwell and Unknown Magazine. Born in Nepal and raised in Canada, she is currently living in Scotland, where she is pursuing an English Literature degree at the University of Edinburgh. 

 

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R

 

Arms bending, there was dirt
stuck to the inside of your elbow.

My thumb itched to trace
its spirals over you,
to fold your blond paper skin
into the damp pocket of my coat,
and hear your knees click flat against the
bridge of your nose.

But your limbs–untied–
swinging around skinny metal bars,
and your blues under chiffon lashes
s p r a w l i n g
through the place,
looking for something,
through and around me,
like in that theatre,
your air filling up
all the spaces I could feel–
I lost and lose control,
dizzy,
heavy,
foggy breath–
I imagine–
along the lines of your hands,
over the crooks of your bones,
your veins–

I imagine–
settling above that piece of dirt,
coaxing it into the calm,
blowing it away–

I imagine

seeing you bare.

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Snigdha can be reached via email, koiralasnigdha@gmail.com.

 

John Lysaght is a writer of fiction and poetry from Long Island, New York. John began his formal writing while attending the University of Scranton, graduating with a BA in English and Latin in 1968. Mr. Lysaght has had a rich work history as a teacher, counselor for at risk youth, therapist, social worker and probation officer. His work has appeared in Esprit, Poets’ West, Avocet, The Greenwich Village Literary Review, Nomad’s Choir, Calliope’s Corner, and October Hill.

 

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First Snow

Autumnal caravan
Palette of browns
Draped with fleece, with flannel
Of spiced cider and maple syrup
Haystack and harvest,
Turns and fades
Into memory.

Aloft,
Vanilla pregnant puffs
Birth virgin downy hexagonals
Dressed in white lace–
Angel-crafted from above.
Alabaster-jeweled
Geometric masterpieces
Flutter as they parachute
Downward to join their brethren,
Snow man antecessors
Decorating the landscape face below.

Solitary galosh imprints
Mark where I’ve been
And question where next to go.
With upturned face
And supplicant palms
I catch in an instant
Transmutant wonders
Returning to origin
Replicating the continuum
Of renewal.

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John can be reached via email.

Yael Veitz is a New York-based poet and editor of Clio: The Journal of the Brooklyn College Historical Society. Both her historical interests and her poetry reflect a geographically diverse background, an insatiable wanderlust, and, occasionally, her love for her cats.

 

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Hebron

 

City of earth, of sleeping souls
Holding our shared ancestors as if in a cradle, under the mountain steps.
Do not inter the living.
Do not crush your inhabitants under broken cobblestones, blanketing them with thin,
White dust as they sleep.

You bury. It is your calling. You deaden their hearts, let them cast stones at each other
At the bus stop.
The flimsy fence between them, strewn with garbage, becomes another monument
To the dead.

You are all gravestones. You are cracked walls, broken pavement, warning signs and
Scarlet declarations gashed into centuries-old walls.
I slog up your steps,
Sneak into both halves of your great tomb, and feel the great sleep coming over me.
Eyelids heavy with weeping,
I almost curl up on the carpet at the mothers’ feet.

If the city has ears, they must be here, in the women who carried me.
So I murmur to them.
They incline their heads to me–Sarah, Rivkah–toss their soft braids over my shoulder,
Their ears a great desert expanse,
Their wombs puckered, leathern.

I try to tell them.
I try to tell them about the stones, the swastikas;
About the thick glass between our two halves, and the bullets that put it there;
About the girl who slashed her wrists to ribbons, wound those around her throat.

I try to tell them–Sarah, Rivkah–
Beg them to shake the earth,
To level the trenches,
To forget old jealousies.

But my words come out in squeaks–only one word, many times:
Just please, and please, and please–

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Yael can be found via Facebook.

Cinzia DuBois is an Edinburgh-based poet whose writing is intrinsically influenced by philosophy and classicism. She performed some of her poetry for the first time at A New World!?, an event co-hosted by The Ogilvie and Interrobang?!, in April of this year; though new to the poetry scene, she hopes she will have the opportunity to publish and perform her work in the future.

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Caustics

 

Where did you find her?
For a moment I felt rare. Diamond in the rough.
Enchanting,
A golden tree root protruding from the earth,
Bodying a phloem of sapphire drunk on liquid silver
Melted by rhythm.
Somehow I was noticed
In the depths of this dark harpsichord echo chamber
Where minds met lines
met tongues
met hearts.
All feet were paddling together in a concrete pool,
Observing lost lines of poetry
Floating upon the surface of regis rugs.
Until this moment I had been drugged by my invisibility.
Addicted
To the security of being
nobody.
Vacant-body.
Just another space-taking body.
Where did she find me?
Ambling apathy at the base of a pearl coastline,
Shifting broken glass beneath her feet, their polychromic splinters scratching at her skin.
I owe my survival of these decades
To the art of submersion.
Refined drowning. Close enough to the surface to still be present
So no one notices how deep you are.
Close enough
To catch drowning sailors,
guide them back to shore,
but never let them take you.

I have found more certainty in catching caustics
Than sincere sentences.
There are no falsities in the kisses which seal envelopes of light.
Diamonds of fluorescent turquoise tattoo themselves upon my sunken skin;
I am made mystic.
My thighs, wrapped in a faux sailor’s silk,
Feel uncomfortably thick. Painfully closed.

No man would risk his life drowning for this.

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Cinzia can be contacted via @Cinzia_DuBois on Twitter and C. A. DuBois on YouTube.

Eilidh G Clark is currently working towards her Creative Writing MLitt at the University of Stirling. In her spare time, she writes book reviews under a pen name for a national newspaper and works part-time for The Red Cross.

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Procrastination

 

Cardboard daylight
Prods me through vertical blinds.
I am slumped on an un-reclining recliner with
Warm-breath-blowback burning my cheeks.

My toes curl like a fist on the carpet, as cold as the kitchen tiles.
I cannot move.
There is a pork and apple loaf
Baking in the oven
Two hours too soon
And a laptop on standby.

I am waiting,
I have been waiting for years,
For that phone call, that chance,
But it will not come
Not in this bitter, cold, dark afternoon,
Not in this room.

I need to put the light on
But I won’t;
The dogs will think they
Can go out to play and I can’t bare the dampness, the half night day,
That is turning all the orange brick brown.

I am writing, or at least I am typing, anything except
What I ought to write. But I will wait a wee bit longer. Until I am
Kicked up the arse by the artificial light of night, when the start of time begins to run out.
It’s going to be a late one,
Writing by light-bulb and shaded by undusted cobwebs.

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You can find Eilidh on Facebook here; more of her writing is available on her blog.

Nandini Sen is an anthropologist who runs the virtual book club ReadinGLa(d)sses. She was one of the storytellers for Edinburgh City of Literature’s Story Shop 2016 at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and had an article published in the Anthropological Journal of European Cultures in November 2016.

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With a Different Stroke

 

1

We smelled the forest under the bare sky,
Weighed the warm wooden furniture at the coffee shop,
Stood in the road and walked away.
I knew that if we met again
In an unknown twilight zone we would begin
And end whatever we were whispering,
Talks of castles, cathedrals, hills and glens.
I felt numb as I watched your cold, wavering car
Fading away at the turn of the road.

2

Reality and dreams mixed;
We cycled down mystical paths
And got off at the foothills.
You invited me to your home against the smooth, green terrain.
We entered the quietness without knocking on the door.
Once again we met
When evening set in Edinburgh;
We were ready with our intimate talk of the town,
Awaiting your entry.
The clock chimed five,
And we began our journey over the deep River Forth.

3

We sat and played bridge around the old oak table.
Hamish and Heather were absurdly quick and clever;
My partner and I could hardly twist the cards.
I never regretted those wonders emerging from their wins.
Sometimes we listened to Tagore’s solemn songs;
They mingled with Robert Burns’ poetry, while
The middle ground Beatles and Floyd
Hammered a rhythm in our brains
To the beat of the TomTom.

4

The everyday monotone engulfs us;
We go to Scott’s monument and catch the fresh air,
Enjoy our usual trance out of single malts,
Return home by ten.
We sit down for a couple of hours watching Trainspotting,
And shudder from a feeling of ennui.
Let us once again go
Smell the fresh, green forest.

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Nandini can be reached via Facebook through ReadinGLa(d)sses.

Gary McKenzie is currently studying English literature at Stirling University. Gary has performed at various events in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and has also set up spoken word evenings in his hometown of Alloa. His work been published in Poetry Scotland, AfterNyne Magazine, The Grind, and South Bank Poetry.

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20 Lambert & Butler

 

The 6 AM darkness is painful
An unrelenting reminder that you should be somewhere else
Somewhere warm and safe. Not here and not alone.
Your morning cough now takes longer to shift. It belonged
To a winter cold two years ago and has since taken up
Permanent residence. The rattle and wheeze takes hours instead of minutes
To prepare you for the rest of the day, it is only when dusk falls do you feel anything close
To yourself, or at least the memory of.

The clock on the wall marches routine into a calendar, pages that have been silently torn
Without your permission now lie muddied across the damp pavements.
Will it ever stop raining?
Up and out onto the streets, the lights give the town a fake tan.
Still, it is your favourite time of the day, quiet.
Hopeful.

You cough, light a fag, cough, blow out the smoke
With less and less conviction.
It is quiet.

Every morning during the week, you open the door
Hear the shop bell, now buzzer,
Announce your presence.
You wipe your feet on the cardboard box that is used as a doormat
And a sigh involuntary escapes, it echoes round the shop.
A sigh heavy with anger about where life has refused to put you.
The counter was once wood, it is now cheap and throwaway plastic.
Fake.
That would not have happened when you were a boy
The old man kept the place immaculate, and now look
Look around at today.

The new owner behind the counter seems to have grown old without you noticing
He knows what you want, but you still say it anyway
20 Lambert & Butler, a bottle of ginger, and some chewing gum to help
With the dryness that arrives before lunch.
You used to get change from a fiver, now you add coins to the ten pound note.
Look around at today.

The morning exchange, the usual reply
‘Aye im daeing fine’ is disavowed by your own breath.
That heavy sigh is still heard, it has seeped into the walls
Screaming with all the rest. You both face each other
Like guard and jailer, never saying what is raging inside.
The weather, you talk about the weather
And how this damp chills you to the bone.

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Gary can be reached via his email address, garymckenziepoetry@outlook.com.

Andrew Blair is a writer and performer living in Musselburgh, with credits in Gutter, Valve, and Umbrellas of Edinburgh. Along with Ross McCleary, he has put on award-winning and five-star Edinburgh Fringe shows, and produces the Poetry as F*ck podcast. His debut collection, An Intense Young Man at an Open Mic Night, is out later this year through House of Three Press.

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View of the Sea

 

Top deck,

Trundling along the coast;

Specked with light, the sea

Awaits. It

Makes me feel peaceful,

A pleasant melancholy,

Even though I do not know why.

The sea is of the same stuff

As seventy-one percent of the Earth’s surface.

This figure is rising.

The sea is coming for us all.

The water

Is going to win.

Still,

It makes me feel peaceful.

A pleasant melancholy.

*

 

Leaving the House on December 27th

 

This is not my house.
A short walk away
There’s a loch, and see
–A short walk away–
There’s another;

No one is fishing on them,
Thus
Rendering both lochs
Poetic.

This stillness, so enhanced
By hiss and rush,
This hiss and rush of water
And, in the distance, time;

I want to compliment it further, but
There is this system, playing
Catch up to win.
The ship comes in
That will take me home,
Back to my own house.

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Andrew can be contacted via Twitter, @freelance_liar.

Samantha Emily Evans is the Marketing and Publicity Assistant at Red Hen Press, bookseller at Flintridge Books, and person who writes at her desk.

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Pomegranates in the Parking Lot
(or, Eating Alone on a Thursday)

 

Black eyed bean chili on my glasses,
Fingers stained, it is on me, in me.
Whole grain bun, cheese,
Mustard, pickles, a veggie patty.
‘Big O Chili Cheeseburger;
I smoosh my dinner
For an audience of commuters
Sat outside Orean’s The Health Express.

Other comrades smile at me,
The damzels in determination.

I do not eat alone,
Another full moon already
Faded in a still blue sky.
The palm trees lean in.

I do not eat alone,
Colonel Sanders sits across
And we talk about when
He was more than fried chicken.

I do not eat alone,
Dr. Claude Matar inc.
Promises me personal training for $29.95
And a new life after 50.

We can live forever these days,
Yet there is still no answer.

I do not eat alone,
The children in the McD’s Playplace answer the question
With their laughter.

I do not eat alone,
How many drivers
Have stopped for a moment
Tonight, a passing.

I do not eat alone,
You, reader, are here,
I am talking to you.

I tell you about this moment,
And you tell me to
Stop biting my nails,
And I do, before
Scratching the mustard from my skin,
Getting back in the car,
And continuing the answer.

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You can read more of Samantha’s work at www.literarypixie.com.

Louise Peterkin is a poet who lives and works in Edinburgh. Her work has featured in publications such as New Writing Scotland, The Dark Horse, and The North. In 2016 she received a New Writers Award for Poetry from the Scottish Book Trust.

Hammer is Louise’s homage to the film production company famous for their gothic horror features, and for the strangely, deliciously cosy feeling they bring…

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Hammer

 

Nothing can hurt you here,
where the mummies crumble like Stilton.
These are the icons of fear:
a chapel, a tavern, a castle risen
o’er dark Germanic forest,
dense as frightened hair.
Each prop: a cipher. A dripping
candelabra.
Shrouded in blankets on the sofa.
Nothing can hurt you here.

Nothing can hurt you here,
where the credits trickle down the screen,
bright red, a pallet of blood,
a spectrum of dread.
But the staked heart froths over
like raspberry Cremola Foam,
the test tubes in the lab are hot-pink, cerise,
the colour of sweets.
This is Victorian England in nuclear fall-out.
Nothing can hurt you here.

Nothing can hurt you here
where the carriage hurtles towards sunset.
The hooves, the neighing, the swaying
of the awful cargo.
I want to hear Peter Cushing,
his diction like needles, or the bones of china dolls.
If the doorbell rings I’ll fashion a cross
from a mop and a broom.
A local wench screams. Her bosoms
Heave like a soprano’s.
Nothing can hurt you here.

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You can reach Louise via email, louise.peterkin@ed.ac.uk. More of her work can be found here.