Derek M. Ferguson – To Another Place

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Derek M. Ferguson
To Another Place

Remains of Blu-Tack clues
poxing its grubby white face

a plague that once informed the surgery wall
and those beneath, eyes dead ahead, in patient rows-

of old-world warnings of flu and measles epidemics
and, but of course, the need to give up smoking

I envy those in well-worn wait their coughs and aches
the doctor’s routine dispensation

in ten minutes very flat
I wonder when my poster will appear

Beware for Reproduction Kills
(please take your faulty genes and leave this place)

It started with a tremor in my hand
It’s Huntington’s* the doctor said alive at last

my brother and my father too
ahead, like madness in the missionaries

robed in our taint, to a virgin land
how would my journey be?

would I forget a friend
Do I know you?

or lose myself in landscapes?
or scream until they fed me pills and put me in a room?

When I got home,
I took the book of photos out

my father and my brother, black and white
but soon to be in colour

for they would welcome me
to each new day, over and over

always and always
the painful yesterday’s forgotten

I lit a cigarette and watched its disappearing smoke
and took another step
 
 
*Huntington’s is an inherited, incurable, progressive, neurodegenerative disease

Derek M. Ferguson – Into the Light

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Derek M. Ferguson
Into The Light

It had been a long time coming
a lifetime in fact
of shadow, soft retreat, words carefully chosen
of hungry eyes lingering a little too long

a small world of stolen consolations and smaller pleasures
Different times the youngsters said, words dropping carelessly
Easy for them, I thought as I pierced the cellophane dinner
the knife, its tip so close to where I thought my heart might be

And then I met him
no more a mean meal for one, but finally a banquet
now offered up on an exquisite plate,
its pattern of blooms spreading reckless joy

the idea of picking them took my breath
back to my alien place
to fill a solitary vessel to turn towards this sun
but die slowly from their wounds

Then the voice in me began
quiet to begin with
words elusive, places strange
slipping away, like the spring soil through my fingers

like the keys I could no longer work in the lock
like the names of the flowers I’d forgotten
now the voice was getting louder
It’s Huntington’s* the doctors scream

I flee back home and pull the drawbridge up forever
and leap the final yard eyes shut
and as the door is opened, the rush of light bursts out
My world, and try to catch its breath within the tremor of my hand

He looks into my eyes and says
We’ll go together and I will hold you
and then I know that this new land holds wonders too
and he is keeper of the precious memories

and when I lose my way and flowers begin to fade
he will reach inside me
then take the bloom into his hands, his world, my world
and tend it safe
 
 
*Huntington’s is an inherited, incurable, progressive, neurodegenerative disease

Barlow Crassmont – Delayed Symptoms

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Barlow Crassmont
Delayed Symptoms

‘Jill’s mother died.’
       The bleak news doused their shouting match better than an extinguisher. ‘She texted earlier. ‘The words wormed themselves from his throat laboriously, like jagged eels.
       ‘W-what?’ Mari’s hand was an arachnid of flesh and bone over her gaping mouth. ‘Are you serious?’ Porter nodded. ‘Why did she tell you, and not me?’ If only he could answer, instead of shrugging nonchalantly. The disappointment caused Mari’s eyes to bulge and, eventually, redden. Once the first whimper sounded, rogue tears followed.
       ‘I’m sorry.’ He placed his arm on her shoulder, and she soon forgot their previous argument. The embrace was as warm as any they’ve shared in a while. When she buried her head against his chest, he knew disaster had been averted, at least for now.
       What could he do? Stuck between a rock and a hard place, he refused the slightest graze with either. When faced with insurmountable odds, the smart play was to fall back, and concede to untruths. At least then his personal failures and disappointments were not front and centre. It was now time for the latest fiction, for the band-aid he’d employed was merely temporary.
       ‘Jill said she wants to be alone,’ Porter whispered. ‘No calls or texts.’
       ‘R-really?’ Mari’s body quivered, and she stared without blinking. ‘Huh.’ Porter, however, was a step ahead. ‘I have to go. Doctor is waiting.’
       ‘Doctor?’
       ‘Just a check-up. Haven’t been in a while.’
       And there it was. A seed. Just what he needed to say, and what she needed to hear.
       For the effect to be complete, he’d disappear for a while, and return with slumped shoulders. He could picture it: pouting his way to the fridge, cracking a beer, then placing it down, unable to drink, his hand over his face, the prince of melancholy. Sensing his sorrow, Mari will approach with mixed emotions. On one hand, she’ll be fuming about the earlier lie, for by then she’ll have gotten the truth from her friend. On the other, she’ll be doubtful about his possible prognosis, for it may, just this once, be authentic.
        ‘Hey,’ she said when he’d returned. The aftermath of laborious sobbing was discernible in her shaky voice. ‘How’d it go?’ His shrug was apathetic and distant. From a corner of his eye, he tested the temperature without looking at her directly. Maybe she still doesn’t know, he thought.
          ‘I talked to Jill,’ Mari’s intonation rose as her body stormed at him. ‘I can not believe you’d lie about th—’
       ‘He found a tumor,’ Porter said, his sight never leaving the floor. ‘Prostate.’ Of the few talents he possessed, acting was not among them. Yet he gave it his all, for nothing less would suffice. Hiding his face, he wept like an unfaithful worshiper on judgment day. He held this semblance extensively, without a false note. Endurance was gonna get him through, if only he could stretch the act. Feel it, believe it, BE IT!
       And he did. When Mari wrapped her thin arms around him, their grasp lingered between a passive hug and a passionate caress. She suspected little, and their intimacy felt righter than rain. If Porter could’ve stopped time, and stretched the stillness of this moment into eternity, he would have. The endlessness would be burdensome only in the beginning, but with the onset of years, the passage of time would speed up; himself and Mari would ultimately perish, her never being the wiser. Yet the uncomfortable reality required new periodic fallacies, as the morning needs the sun.

***

Several weeks later Porter rose with noticeable gunk in his eyes. Not even his toxic breath could have masked the awkwardness he faced while standing over the toilet. His urine flow was interrupted multiple times, and he struggled mightily to empty his bladder. When he caught sight of Mari’s reflection in the mirror, eyeballing him like a skeptic in hiding, Porter was spooked.
       Why does she look at me so?
       He squeezed, he pulled, he twisted; he did all he could to milk the slightest drop, and by the time the burning sensation dissipated, he was already dreading his next toilet visit.
       Mari’s calmness was as palpable as a frosty peak in wintertime.‘I’m sorry I doubted you,’ she said. Her newfound benevolence caught Porter off guard. He was used to her bickering cries, her screaming, her disapproval of most everything he did; but not this. The weirdness was palpable, and it stung like a rogue hornet. Such an unexplainable oddity called for a new untruth. He had to bail himself out-but all he drew was a sea of blanks. It was Mari who spoke first.
       ‘I talked to Jill. Her mother died last night. This time for real.’
       ‘R-really?’ Porter asked.
       She nodded.‘You’ve become quite the prophet. Who knew.’
       Porter opened his mouth, but could utter nothing. The unsaid words retreated back into his throat, where they lingered extensively. His hand, in a defensive reflex, enveloped his privates. Porter wanted to speak and mask the awkwardness, but the lump in his throat was nearly as big as the one on his left testicle.     AQ

Ben Verinder – I am pouring you into other people’s eyes

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Ben Verinder
I am pouring you into other people’s eyes

right now, or they are listening
to a channel I cut out of you.
We are indivisible as waters.

My life I owe you more than once,
as when I leapt without arm bands
into Butlin’s pool and sunk,
watching the sun in stereoscope.

Time bubbled slowly up
until the burst of you in shorts
and Rolex Oysterquartz,
light ribboning your skin,
your effervescent arms.

Ben Verinder – Spirited away

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Ben Verinder
Spirited away

I like to think that instead of the hospital
they brought you to the bathhouse as a river god,
over the cross-hatched yellow bridge
in the electric-blue lamplight, through the atrium,
past the flowers and the screens, that the bannisters
were not chrome but vermillion, the polished floor teak,
ceiling studded with gold. You smelt of algal bloom.

That they scrubbed you, faces masked to ward off bad spirits,
used all the good water and the best formulas on you,
kept a weather eye on the thermometer, that when they reached
into you they extracted the fouled ropes and bent metals
of your second marriage, very many empty bottles
and all the splintered relics of your childhood.

Charlotte Murray – Ursa Major

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Charlotte Murray
Ursa Major*

She’s unsure which one of them turns her.
Only that it happens in the flailing lumber
of feet engorging into paws, skin translating
into pelt. Suddenly, she’s just running,
rather than running away. She carries her weight
with pride, gratified to be the largest creature
in the forest. Her bulk makes skittles
of grown men. She has become the reason
mortals are told to stay on marked trails,
to return before darkness wraps its fur
around her starlit hunt. To take lessons
in how to avoid provocation, how to play dead.
How to still their heart like an unwound clock
and pray their pursuer loses interest. It strikes her
that learning to elude the wrath of a bear
is much like being taught how to be a woman.

It’s sixteen years before she encounters a man
who does not freeze or run from her.
A sullen, chisel-jawed youth, he does not waver
even when she hauls herself up into a majestic pillar,
holding the sky aloft like a boulder ready to be thrown.
Ears twitching, she cocks her head. She could crush
his spear-thrusting arm, shake it free from its socket
like spittle. But his eyes, his eyes make her hesitate,
until recognition lurches her away, branches crackling
like surging wildfire behind her. He tracks her
beneath cypress and olive, long after the goatherds
have retreated at the echoing bellow of her maw.
He faces her down on the teetering edge
of a ravine raking its talons down the land.
He squares his feet, raises his spear. She flattens
her ears, scuffs the dry slope with her great paw,
knowing as she does so that she will not charge.
That’s all the time her son needs to steady his aim.
But what pierces her between the dark matt
of her eyes is not death, but light. Not the weep
of blood, but the timeless kiss of space.
 
 
*In Greek mythology, the constellation of Ursa Major is identified with the nymph, Callisto. After being tricked by Zeus and giving birth to his son, she was transformed into a bear.

Christian Ward – Cancer As Shapeshifter

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Christian Ward
Cancer As Shapeshifter

At first, it understood the unspoken rule,
presenting itself as the elegant fountain
pen of a dragonfly’s fuselage, the land-cloud
of a sleeping swan, a starling overconfident
in a peacock’s shimmer. Its childish side
played hide and seek with technicians
and consultants, slipping into my bloodstream
as a canoeing fire salamander blowing
wildfire kisses, a stick insect indistinguishable
from the dulled nerves, a slither of tinfoil
acting as a silverfish. Every susurration
gave it away. Its aggression manifested
as a laser beam of red monarchs burning
a hole in my spine. I carried the weight
of a hunting jaguar for months. As the treatment
progressed, spring-bright parakeets
did fly-bys, grasshoppers sang in the fallow
fields of my body, and hares made boxing
gyms of whatever grassy patches could be found.
Some nights, I dreamt my cancer revealed its true self:
the sickly childhood plane tree outside
my bedroom window, always peering.
An owl at its centre, flashing a scythe for a smile.

Clive Donovan – Butterflies

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Clive Donovan
Butterflies

Two butterflies at school in our class
were about to hatch in rather small
glass holding jars.
I had loved the task of punching
holes into the crisp parchment lids.
Others had assembled stuff for food and nests.
From eggs to grubs to chrysalises
(Oh, such a magic word: chrysalises!)
we had watched their captured lives,
crayoned pictures of their mysteries,
now we waited for that rapturous unfoldment.

The first one stirred and flickered at the
milk-break then, for half the morning,
in an unusual holy hush,
a soft rustle could be heard as
papery wings edged out.

Two privileged children were chosen
for the glad chore of release,
the rest huddled at the door
and up the creature flapped to…
a shout and a swallow’s snapping beak!
‘It’s Doing its Duty to its Young’,
the teacher implored the distressed pupils,
seeking to extract at least
some tutelage from tragedy.

The second one was nearly ready
for its passage into the world;
exploring its own new-form body,
wondrous wings a-drying—Oh, but see!
Look, Miss—one wing’s stuck it won’t
come free! Oh, what to do?
Let it go! Let it be! The communal cry,
the rush to the playground—it can’t fly!
Safe from swallows and vicious swifts at least,
it stalked in crazy circles, then…

Learning whatever cruel lesson of life this was,
the sobbing children waved goodbye
to the brave, inflicted insect
as it marched with its single wing away,
staggered through the locked school gates,
zig-zagged into the cluster of mums,
astonished dogs, toddlers, prams.
Handicapped, askewed, and bent,
our butterfly, unquenchably,
barging aside astounded traffic,
dogged as a warrior,
dragged and delivered
its unflinching self to destiny.

Ivy Raff – Mountain

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Ivy Raff
Mountain

I never axe-chopped any man in a shirt who carted off my children, called them
lumber. I never stuck sharp-tip poles in skins of campers, nor stuffed the dynamite
back in miners’ throats. You can keep it all. I live for the slow blank bristle

of every day. I live for the lover who sees the outline of me against gunmetal skies
of November & doesn’t seek to own me. Soon the creatures on my spines
will calm their skittishness, lose memories of hunting rifles, assemble

forever-nests for their babies. Soon brown bears will return
to paw my rivers for salmon & beavers will rebuild dams. I remember
those old fertile days. I remember them all the way from my beaten soils

to my summit’s mica glint. I remember them from brontosauri, wooly mammoth,
shimmer of water phyla across geologic time scales, fossil-imprint
clamshells in shale. I remember the sea blanketed me each night

for sixty thousand millennia. Do you remember your mother? I remember
when this place was an ocean & my peak was a baby, an island, a speck.
I remember being a rock. Old as the hills, goes your expression – honey, you don’t

know the half. You reach inside me & find copper. But it’s mine, that mine
you think is yours. My life is to grow iron inside. I need it
there more than you need your armour, your autos. My life is to live after

you’ve taken all that’s mine, after you’ve cleared my forest & picked my fruit.
My places are sacred. In the end you won’t have them. You call me a mountain.
I call myself nameless, majestic as the g?d the holy won’t pronounce. My life’s

pocked with caves. Come for a sit. Taste what it is
to be mountains, find space in your ribs. Find give in your spine. Find
your porous nature at my granite face. My life is to sit. My lover kicks up

or dies, that ephemeral wind. My life is to wait for him, greet him still
when he comes. Yearn with no passion, permanent peace.
I comfort the stars, never envy their burning.

Jennifer L. Freed – In a Time of Transition

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Jennifer L. Freed
In a Time of Transition

She’s been waiting
twelve weeks, watching
the news, wondering
if they’ll deny her
a passport at all. If they’ll refuse
to return all her documents.
If they’ve put her down
on some list. Will they knock,
someday, on her door? Stop her
on the street?

At last, the thick envelope.
She’s not surprised that the mark
for her gender still clings, unchanged,
to the day of her birth. But
here’s her new name, officially
recognized. Here’s her photo, accurately
reflecting the woman she sees in the mirror.

Tonight, her rooms are full of good friends
and good cheer. Of flowers, champagne,
cake. How delicately, tonight,
we step around what we fear.
How deliberately we hold on
to what we can celebrate.