The garden had veil’d the pole; and into my night

I see my foe outstretched in the morning - the tree!

from ‘S’me Po’son’d Tr’e’ by Will Bleak

Issue One

January 2014

the hare on the cover issue

of/for/with/through poetry & prose

edited by Michael Egan submissions to veildthepole@yahoo.co.uk

V-1-2-14

editorial

It is January, there are no northern lights. It was December. It was yesterday. It is now.

Performance. Upon writing the words. And page. And in the midst of experiments. I listened to a podcast. They took their roles too far. Claimed words for hearts. I stole your name. I took away its meaning. Or gave it back to how it was. And other occurrences happen. The failure of time A dependency on foxes. Tiresome foxes. When voices happen through voices they sound off. This is better. Voice without voice. It’s February and don’t you feel it’s not yet February? They call it redux. They were paid in salt. Here is the castle and here are the seven streets. Jugglers row, they always row. A din. Up river. I can just make out Old Hall Street. And Lancelot’s Hey. Hey Lancelot. A ruddy pool. A russet stream. A reddish tide. Portal to concrete thought. Combination of words. If it happens it’ll happen in Caledonia.

Fairy hill of the Caledonians. Thanks Wikipedia. I climbed this hill. It was hard, man it was a hard climb. My legs aching I said to him/her let’s create a journal. And that’s profound. Some hate their audiences. Eyes are audiences. We are all word washing machines. Whirlpools. Word pools. And when it was done and issued and stained with ink I took a walk. It was January, all-freezing January. There were two cormorants. I thought they were frozen. Rewind. They were not there. Were not there. And the sky was golden but there was no storm and with it rain and with it rain. I saw the northern lights. I lied about December. It was yesterday and now is now. I veild the pole. Not me. I took out a letter. Deceitful. While away. I think my foe is to not. So I got it done. And here it is. Unveild. Pale with newness. Could fade. Could stop and fade. Review. Review. Review.

end begin

Den stole, veil’d the pole;

my night. My foe beneath

.

from ‘Who Poisoned My Tree?’ by Blakey Williams

Base Camp

Harry Man Alert, in the dark on Dartmoor wearing a pinnate whisper, a mare nods away from her colourless mane of breath we see but didn’t suspect and we work our way, stepping from moss to moss across grindles, rabbit droppings, through gossamer clutches of bird-widowed junipers that lean, lean into their sticks, the mist so cold it’s dusted to snow strafing the scudding beam of our torch. We had wanted to get to Sittaford Tor and secret a couple of twigs in the cairns. This day is all we have to do with it and decide to bed down for the night. The sleeves of our anoraks shrick, passing firelighters, vestas, and blowing a flame or two that feather, zenith, cup the base of the tin and beans for two fissure in the harried light. I pull at the disc of the black tent, unknotting the guide ropes from the spoon-cold pegs – our home were home an erratic of coal and prone to collapse in a less than gale force breeze. No blade of headlight pierces the trees and not a train skitters toy-like in the ridges to open up a sense of scale to the place. Instead, we finish talking and the snow takes over. When do you hear in your life stadia upon stadia of wet static in a dark so dark it has more than one depth, the mare that rips at the grass, and nothing but sand’s skate to water? For a souvenir I de-tune the radio sometimes and listen to the sister noise of the snow; that cloud of witness, those traces of the universe cooling.

One Table Over C.P. Cavafy (translated by Evan Jones) He can’t be more than twenty-two. Yet I am certain that, almost as many years ago, I held his body in my arms. It’s not the thirst for sensuality. I’ve only just arrived in the casino and have not had much to drink. I held his body in my arms. And if I don’t remember where – a small lapse is nothing. Now, across from me, seated one table over, I know his every movement – and see again bare the sweet limbs under his clothes.

Alexandria 31 BC C.P. Cavafy (translated by Evan Jones) From a small village a pedlar arrives on the outskirts of town, dust-covered from his journey. He touts through the streets: ‘Incense! Mastick! High quality olive oil! Perfumes for the hair!’ But the great clamour of music and parades overpowers his voice. The crowd shoves and drags and jostles him. And when no longer completely bewildered, he asks, ‘What is this madness?’ someone answers with the official line – in Greece Antony is victorious.

from ‘Crabtree’

Tom Jenks

Crabtree, priapic in carpet slippers

in a walk-in bath he will woo and win her

with the songs of Peter Sarstedt, liniment

and “irony”

There’s the newly deaf dolphin SJ Fowler there’s the newly deaf dolphin mothering me again – refusing to acknowledge that it can hear just a little but faint sounds the moving of the (human) age upon its person admiring a tail tethered over with music that isn’t just thinking about itself so much that it ended up worrying about what was on its way out and ignoring the water everyone and their mother was swimming in which choppy with blood but everyone thought was cranberry juice good for the kidneys

Fifth Letter to Greta Chapman Garrett Kaufmann just an ear of corn, Greta, to tell me who my father was to grow and get farmed another song in the snow, Greta my garrison tune my walled-up whistle and on the Ohio River I saw Louisville shining deep now it rolls, Greta deep like your humming that June miserable in the darkness no more neat night, quiet lights, all flights I’m not eating sugar no more, Greta I’m not watching Christian Bale movies no more not since American Hustle he was too like my father, Greta too like my mirror I’m not paying any attention to Syria no more, Greta I give up Greta, give up there are more chairs abandoned than bodies to fill them legless barbershop chairs school stools rotating a kid in a mask shaving his face with a knife isn’t all of existence riding the tail of a comet to earth they’re bastards and they breathe nitrogen I’m a bastard and I breathe oxygen breathless in Austria in the mid-90s I met my father he was done with soccer done with Sturm Graz and my not-mother my not-brothers can’t look me in the eye I’m a kid in the snow again, Greta hold the corn and peel the corn tell me all of my layers I’m in Evansville, Greta, and you’re showering so I can see you water skin-dancing and all of you steam-touched turning to the opened window I don’t need to come home to be with you, Greta.

Over time Daniel Bevan The only time anything was released When pushed Forced

opened display knowledge secrets hiding In his hand he held a wealth of information varied sometimes delivering

on its promises the guilty only speak Once broken

Night Cap with Marc Chagall (for Robert Hampson) Robert Sheppard Earth-bound bodies tumble blind through photophobic cellphone voices scattered between the severe skeletal parallels as elastic pleasure A green cat licks your drunkenness the Professor plays Common People on his iPad the poem on permanent alert notes ‘her arms must have grown to accommodate those tats’ His eyes slip down his face ogle from his chin upside down from the Ginnasium to last week’s poem dogs slip behind the bar sniff into the toilets ‘to find Frank Zappa/ perched on the crapper’ You lift from a concrete floor the soldier’s hat after an explosion touch your skull his face swivels clock-face dizziness nodding at the drunken landlord jiving with Wobbly Bob you shout ‘every Liverpool pub exists to end up in a poem’

The Dull Bulbs Rob A. Mackenzie Conversations huddled like dull bulbs along the winter vista: snow and cloud, grey faces in the grey river, the coats, earmuffs and arguments over nothing. Along the winter vista, snow and cloud made you long for warm days without earmuffs and arguments over nothing, for love that felt real again and even made you long for warm days without regret at having to share them together. For love that felt real again and even felt like a feeling, you’d weather years, regret at having to share them together notwithstanding. The new woman’s eyes felt like a feeling. You’d weather years of routine for just one second more. Notwithstanding the new woman’s eyes, conversations huddled like dull bulbs of routine. For just one second more: grey faces in the grey river, the coats.

Fat Dandy Luke Wright Humungous hocks in mole skin trews the backcombed locks, the whiff of booze his shirt is ruffed, his dinner’s starchy Pavarotti meets Liberace chomping through a mega bucket. Exercise and diet? Fuck it! Russel Brand, but way less bandy here he comes now - FAT DANDY. Plumes of perfumed floral silk his doughy skin as pale as milk he lacks the peacock’s usual grace with Playdoh flesh pressed through white lace. He’ll chase the dragon, but that’s all he’ll chase a pie in his pocket, just in case. If only Maccy Dees served brandy wobbling and gobbling - FAT DANDY. A fella built to do the haka's never dared to look so dapper. Fabulous! His signet rings are slick with grease from chicken wings! Why should runts have all the fun and slobs get all the sticky buns? He’s red faced as a Tory grandee touch more slap though * burp* FAT DANDY! Fetch my hairspray - call a cab. Five a day? How fucking drab My button hole? I think a rose! Someone order Dominos! (Then onward to the Hellfire Club) Quentin get some crisps in love! Is that blancmange? By Christ I'm randy Mwah mwah... Nom nom nom! FAT DANDY! Each sin-strewn night a romp in pomp a jingle-jangle Cuban stomp sleeve garters ping and buttons pop yes, three cheers for the fast food fop. A man who knows his inner worth has nothing much to do with girth. a brazen mix of heels and candy drum roll please - FAT DANDY!

Liquid

Melissa Lee-Houghton All that day I felt so elated it was as though the sky would come down and consume me as though I were liquid, just drink me up into the clouds. All day I dreamt about Peaches. Real peaches in my suckling mouth, with their pleasure saturating my throat. When I was fifteen a girl with a learning disability took me to a rock overlooking a campsite for boy scouts. She laid out a picnic. Half way through lunch she took her top off and let me rub peach juice all over her nipples while they hardened in the sun. Peaches wouldn’t tell me where she lived so I couldn’t find her as I would have liked to do, to surprise her one day, with flowers I guess. Not chrysanthemums, mum hated those. Not roses, like the Queen of Hearts; a sentiment painted over. I’d plant a cherry blossom tree in her garden and those two weeks in spring would be mine. I thought of a gift of chocolates, women like chocolates, but not my Peaches. She ate glass noodles and vegan sushi and drank black coffee twice a day, was lactose intolerant and although she didn’t work out she was naturally slim. She was ideal. That’s how I felt about her. I zipped up my coat and laced my shoes. She said she needed proof. So I took the train to meet the artist I found online; she painted nudes. I’d looked at them and liked the way the skin was so translucent and the backgrounds soft as pastel. The sun broke days of rain and misery in two. I thought of her blond hair and how it would shimmer if she were in the seat next to mine. I was worried about showing anyone my photograph of Peaches. I was worried this artist would want her too and would find her. Peaches was so beautiful I wondered if she knew her, if she’d painted her before. Small world, my mother used to say. That always terrified me. I only care about anonymity. And Peaches; and her white teeth as though she’d never succumbed to sugar. My hands were shaking as I knocked. The artist came to the door in a bright red jumpsuit with lipstick and jangly bracelets, smelling of metallic flowers with some sort of oil burner fragrance. I was afraid she’d touch me, and she did. It felt like someone prodded me in the bowels hard enough the make me bleed. I didn’t like her, so I didn’t laugh when she laughed, and she laughed at everything. She smoked too. I told her I didn’t want smoke on my painting. She laughed and laughed. Then she changed to one of those electric cigarettes, said she liked the cherry flavoured ones, blowing out thin steam. I wondered if she was high on something. She went to the door to see the postman and they flirted for a few minutes; I heard him say something about having a big one for her today and I looked at my watch ticking for sixty seconds before it became unbearable. She asked me for my number, I told her it didn’t matter. Then she asked for my email. I didn’t want this woman to contact me again. I showed her Peaches. I said I wanted a full body nude, holding some peaches. She said, it’s only a head, how can I paint a body? She laughed again. She asked me if I could take a photo of her whole body, maybe reclining on a bed or just sat upright in a chair. As if Peaches were some vice girl. She patted me on the shoulder, said she’d paint her portrait, and paint peach blossom in her hair, maybe her hair in plaits. Pretty as a peach, she said. I went deaf. I said loudly, if I come here in exactly a week’s time at the exact hour, will you be waiting for me with this painting? I saw her nod vigorously; I choked on her laugh in my belly. Peaches wasn’t online when I got home. I felt so sad that I would have a lovely present for her, and I couldn’t tell her. If she’d only tell me where she lived, I said I’d send it with a courier if that pleased her. She said I was just like all the other men, just after one thing. Peaches, I told her, Peaches, I am more special than any other man you’ve ever met. I love you. Peaches started posting comments about a new man in her life. I figured she was trying to tell me something. Granted, her English was atrocious but I knew when it came to it it wouldn’t matter. The Sunday after I first visited the artist, I zipped up my coat, caught the train.

On the way there I realised I’d lost Peaches’ photo. I began to cry hot tears. I walked to the artist’s house streaming with tears and despair. When I got there she invited me in, handed me some tissues and unveiled the painting. It didn’t look anything like her. Not how I remembered her. She asked me how I met Peaches. I said Peaches met me. I said she had contacted me on a website, the likes of which I didn’t go into. She said, did she say she was a model? I said, yes! She said, did she tell you if you buy her nice things she’ll give you nice things back? I nodded. The artist showed me a copy of her photo; I’d forgotten she’d scanned it in. She said she thought the image was of a catalogue model. I didn’t let her touch me though she touched me anyway. I thought she might want to take me upstairs so I paid her £100 and left, clutching the portrait, covered by a bin bag, and caught the train home, in the rain, wet hair, wet glasses, holding in my incredible urge to piss.

Nobody was taking her away. Mum started to lose her memory ten years ago, when I was forty one. She flooded the bathroom twice, drank bleach, wandered to the park down the road inviting all the hoodies for a cup of tea at ours. She’s grabbed my bottom, she’s said the filthiest things, swore more than she ever swore, downed a bottle of vodka, and always, when she was still capable, she’d ask me when I’d find a girlfriend and settle down. My mum is a nice woman but now she barely talks. She raises her eyebrows at me sometimes, as if to say, okay, okay, I get it, I’m not really a mother anymore. I’m sorry, that’s what she’s trying to say. I’m sorry. It gets lonely. I had a search around on the internet. I spent all afternoon looking for Peaches. I typed in her full name, Peaches Claudia Verona Muniz. She had another profile, and another, and I found her picture again, the same one, with the same smile and same white teeth, I found it over and over again. Like an insult someone repeats so many times it fails to hold weight, I felt myself stifling a wave of jarring pain, shouting at the top of my lungs, and it dissipated like ice on a windscreen with hot water poured over. I thought I was spitting blood. I think I scared my mum but she couldn’t say, so I went downstairs and made her a cup of tea, the first one of which I spilled down my front, scolding, but I barely cared. I saw myself in the clock made out of a mirror. My eyes looked tired. I looked, as my mother would say, like death-warmed-up. On a violent impulse I tried to stab myself in the heart in the kitchen, but the heavy knife was too blunt and it hurt badly. It drew blood which was hesitant to run but soon mixed with the tea in a pure red stream down my shirt. I looked out of the window at the garden with all the ripening fruit, which I spent hours upon hours for no-one to enjoy and I saw it flooding with blood. Coming, raging. The blood came up behind the window. I thought the pressure would break the glass and I wanted it. I threw the knife at the window and as it smashed I fell down and cut myself on the glass. Blood rushed in, gushed all over the kitchen, and I felt its warmth. I swam in it. It filled my mouth and flooded the living room too, soaking the already red carpet. I thought of the artist in her red lipstick and her laugh, and I laughed and laughed and laughed. I heard my mum laughing too, for the first time in five years. When the whole downstairs was saturated I slipped around but managed to carry my mother up to her room, into her bed, and she fell asleep straight away, her little mousy snore full of life, warming my spirits. I wiped her feet but still they stained. I put her little bed socks on. I went to my room and sat at the computer and typed in: blood-stained man seeks catalogue model with no soul. Immediately, there were ten ‘likes’ and one friend commented, I didn’t know you were into that shit, bro. Peaches is an all-out fucking slut; nothing but vapour and dust and noughts and words behind a flickering screen, and I hope she dies of fucking loneliness, in a room with no window and no light. No window, and no light.

the instant collapses as the coasts dissolve Matt Fallaize into memories of borders, I’ve been doing my bit for the weather shouting down the clouds as the moment becomes the event I’ve been trying to remember the old songs and lift my throat above the present, I was in two parts of the country at the same time yesterday it was on the news singing the same lines they always come back to you in the pinch and as the swell built you could see no further than where you’d been drilled into place though not of it of course not the idea of a choate fixity in a place you’ve, for want of a better word abandoned, left it to fend off history and talk to itself so now the seas roar in so the words spill back

from ‘The Purple Haystack’ Too Busy to Tell a Tale Joanne Ashcroft sits opposite an ear feeding a nose kissing thick skin who closest was important is remember it make changes how do you feel enjoy school have any regrets any qualifications did you continue value education previous jobs / your current how important enjoy it ambitious fit into family life (she said she saw her over-stepping her words a bloody cascade) what hobbies and why how much time alone or with others describe your personality see yourself with key words (yours and others) your strengths aspects you do not like marriages / relationships give details length who leads supports / strengths stress / decisions what effect children write briefly how do they feel anxieties is this end verbatim

How to translate the winner of a Nobel Prize

Tim Allen

Transformer

Translormer

Translarmer

Translatmer

Translatier

Translatinr

Translating

Translating

Transtating

Transtrting

Transtroing

Transtromng

Transtromeg

Transtromer

Land Lock Eleanor Rees O land you bare me, you burrow through. You aren’t mine or of my mind just rain and the perpetuation of the next day. Edges of you balk and rub until I am blasted rock: a cavern shocked with exploded weight. You rush into me, wrestling the sunlight up and out of the horizon with hands heavy and rough with gravity. I do not know where this lyric ends but you are outside speaking into my breath through the unspoken air. My muscles ache and my stomach billows with the scale of you: all perimeters poured into the bulk of my blood. This skeleton cannot contain the collision of the dawn and day, expansion of rays opening on an unfolded map of the conurbation, train etching through, gull hooked on the perpendicular.

Topology Eleanor Rees I dream you in your sun-watered garden, a route to us years now gone, then walking through the trees to the lake and my immersion in you and the light on the water like you and how we are made by the turns of the earth. Still you are as steady as clay and I shrink to you, in each step, each lengthened moment of our meeting stretches, until, unnamable after no time I am without time back in the stream of us walking through our city, which watches, then melts to new substance; remember the girl’s cry as she ran too close to the edge? And yet the river slides on and I cannot stop its push unfathomable, unlit,

into the flux of us, completed, continuous.

from ‘Insomnia Postcards’

Dawn over the mountains Ben Parker Terrible architecture, but the footwear is marvellous. Here truly is the promised land. When taking a swim off the shore of a secluded beach this afternoon I came to believe that 'ocean' is the default mode of this planet, like a screensaver of almost infinity complex scattered particles. More slogans are invented daily, often they are contradictory. Yes, I have had some encounters I do not understand. The chemist I was sent to was stocked mainly with overpriced coloured liquids. Red leaves lifted by the wind are the only reason the red leaves fall.

Outside the palace Ben Parker

The way these shadows are cast is magnificent, but I am unable to explain the difference between polished silver and a mirror. Something changes. At dusk, love's ample disarrangement. The band is playing old-style tunes, though the occasional contemporary number is included in order to placate the management. I've heard that it takes more than two decades to master the local dialect, by which time most of the words are obsolete anyway. A magician sits down to smoke. Dust is lifted by passing cars.

In Machines We Trust Adrian Slatcher The lifeless wires hanging down. “Here, cock, aint you got no heart?”

So it runs: the tick-tock – Threat of obsolete machinery, Downgrading whilst you still can. At the pinch-point only the rich Will have access to the latest models; Like an Indian Railway making do With the colonial trains; the last welders In Christiandom found jobs here, Keep quiet about their origins. And Shep says “If I was really a dog Do you think I could talk?” I see how it’s fixed now – Like J.F. Sebastian’s animatronics , Wind-up dolls that are mash-ups Of old toys and nuclear weapons. Our genius is to be happy with What we can’t understand: The computer circuitry dead-on-arrival; The manual written in cod Japanese; A patch that only works at unstable voltage. Did I tell you I was partially human? “Yeah, bud, but which part?”

Blackout Joyful Bobby Parker If she bit your chest with impossibly perfect teeth, and made the pale skin above your hard left nipple sing as the sun came up like a disappointed scuba diver, then you need to stand in front of the bathroom mirror for as long as it takes for the bruise to pass through its mythical mountain colours and fade. Use this time to practice imitating facial expressions, the reactions of loved ones as you tell them, 'This is not the life,' and 'I'm sorry, but I honestly don't know how to fall OUT of love,' Your mum a cigarette burn on your wrist. Your dad a white van with a broken windscreen. You blink and there are her eyes, so close they could be yours, they could be, they really could, and she's looking into you, fondling the part of your brain I can't be arsed to Google - I guess it's kind of like the only room in this paranormal house with electricity, it's where I keep my Pac-Man Ghost lamp. You live like a traffic light, her limousine racing through your cold, wet street as you constantly change your mind. Yes? No? Maybe? Every time you put your head down or stand alone in a room that smells like something's burning, she's there, shining off the inside of your eyelids, her smile a blurred vision of the perfect garden, children playing in the sea, the tips of your noses touching like Sistine chapel fingers. Your face a bag of damaged valuables. Her face a glossary of moments, your blackout joyful moments that blow away so quickly it hurts. Not like the hurt of losing the job you hated anyway but you really needed the money, not that kind of hurt. Or dropping the overpriced, disappointing, frankly unrealistic and illusory wedding cake onto your foot, not that kind of hurt. It's the pain of watching the ashes of burnt clocks and condoms and your unfinished novel sucked out the window while you were busy learning how to dance. Stupid Facebook messages! Pill popping heartbeat in a suitcase with a wonky wheel. Wake up. Phone shrugs on the bedside table, a vibrating reminder, perhaps, that today is another day without her soft morning wine. Sundays are films that make me cry and, also, confusingly, a little bit horny. Your dick in your hand like a sunflower. Your dick in your pants like a tired god asking for directions. Your dick like a mysterious draught. Oh lost dog, scratching the door, howling Paul Anka! Connie Francis! Bobby Vinton! Oh baby on the balcony, flick us away. Please, take my collar off and have me put down.

Atlas or When the Sun Went Out (a distorted story) Michael Egan was monochrome clocks. He felt drunk. Younger he. When he woke he went downstairs and found Wacky in the answer. He went out. Only got off the bus. Ferris, a week ago. He felt still. The sun was high. Clear. Especially after. It was winter. Too crisp. His hands were sucking, he was holding metal. He felt like of the hill, he saw the sun vanish. The sky remained blue. Rory was dreaming of Harry Lime and a someone. His hood up. Flash would stay there, probably. Birthday cuckoo down, it was noon by the time he Wheel. The cider trickled and cuckoo, there was no sound to follow the vanishing. The world was cold but not because it didn’t have a sun. He felt like he shouldn’t have seen. To see that. And no one else. Like it wasn’t his place. When he was he. Should have stayed in bed. As he had always worried about the sun vanishing. He felt it, his mother left. He felt, had painted Flash on their wall. Flash lived a few doors. “Why do you go on about. Flash was always riding a bike with bad back then. Reached the top much, he went to the pub to meet Jenny. On the wall. Silent radios. Seemed bothered. Too many. The sky was photographs. Understand that. He could see all the old dust. A man at the bar tried to talk to him about Sierra Leone. Clocks all the time?” Jenny asked him when the lights dimmed for last orders. An alligator was hanging. It was dark out. That was just night. When he was done with work a haggard man. Wasn’t his mother but all the same or woman. A sort of scarecrow. It felt like the pub was too full of sunlight, kitchen drinking the cider from. He didn’t. It always got dark at night. When he got home table. The atlas was open to Australia. A glass of cider had been knocked over a photograph once. Over Queensland. He had found. Years ago. A woman standing, the sun was huge above her. On a beach. Drunk the sun at the icy air. Greedy to be frozen. He felt like was everything. He knew the woman he kept the photograph. More for the sun than the woman. He felt very tired. He went to a circle moving. Ants, bed and sleep. Scurrying. Shadows of zither song. He found shadows. Wacky slumped on the kitchen. There was no sun up on the everything and fine. The night before Ferris Wheel. “Happy,” Wacky called. Rory didn’t. The sun vanish. Still. Everyone knew that

Wastwater Angela Topping It had been the right, thing to do, coming here. Getting here had been so difficult, walking up those steep passes, Wrynose and Hardnott, forcing himself to go on, despite aching calves and burning lungs. It felt good, just now, to have something physical to focus on; even the flies, colliding senselessly with his sweating forehead, were a distraction. Now he stared at the mere, noticing the spikes of reeds, the way the unforgiving water appeared to bend them sideways. A trick of the light, but he understood from this how everything depended on how you looked at things. The bulk of the fell opposite, immovable, felt good to him. Solid, a certainty, like the news he couldn’t push away. He had the place to himself. And it made no demands, offered no pity. It shut him in. There was no easy route forward from here; at the other end of the valley was a rock pass. Tonight was the impersonal youth hostel, smelling of lit gas and damp boots, the other guests busy and hearty, discussing the next day’s climb. He would be ready to deal with them by nightfall. He’d had to get away, after the funeral, the cloying sympathy, the blank looks of people who didn’t know what to say. What Sam had done seemed so terrible to them, an appointment with a railway line, the rainy night he’d chosen to suit the occasion. What they didn’t know was that his father, now, celebrated his success, a plan well thought out; less painful than the failed attempts, the pills, the knife.

Silence JT Welsch

there is no silence j cage said so j denver said so sh we said till both are silent sh said were trying but the interruption they interrupted my interruption isnt neither your sh as much machine and now for all that effort which is fear again but beauty in it not really really even worse really love if defined again a limit but as limit fearful limit but understood as movement which is all movement which is sound and stillness and no sound the great thing which includes the box gives another way into it thats the thing

Tim Allen ran the Language Club reading series in Plymouth and edited the magazine Terrible Work. Now lives near Preston. Has had various small press chapbooks and two books published by Shearsman. Also co-edited Don’t Start Me Talking (Salt) with Andrew Duncan and was a contributor to Cusp (Ed. Geraldine Monk). Has new books appearing in early 2014 by Manchester and N.W. innovative publishers: The Carousing Duck (zimZalla), © (Department Press) and Tattered by Magnets (Knives Forks and Spoons). Joanne Ashcroft was joint winner of the inaugural Rhiannon Evans Poetry Scholarship 2010. From Parts Becoming Whole (The Knives Forks Spoons Press, 2011) is her first book of poetry. Joanne was winner of Poetry Wales Purple Moose Prize 2012. She teaches poetry part time at Edge Hill University. Daniel Bevan is a lecturer and lives in Cheshire, he has previously had poetry published in Neon Highway. He is currently experimenting with new work after a break from writing. He has a dog called Roscoe, he has a motorcycle with no name. Michael Egan is from Liverpool. Steak & Stations was published by Penned in the Margins in 2010. He is currently fine tuning his children’s book The Pale Fox. He is rewriting Shakespeare’s sonnets as Unsonnets. He edits Veild the Pole. Matt Fallaize is a writer living in Ormskirk, Lancashire. To his mild surprise he’s been published in various places and two chapbooks, L39 and Delete, Recover, Delete are available from Erbacce and Knives, Forks and Spoons presses respectively. He tweets @MattFallaize but, to be frank, says little of interest. SJ Fowler is a poet, artist, martial artist & vanguardist. He works in the modernist and avant garde traditions, across poetry, fiction, sonic art, visual art, installation and performance. He has published five books, the latest of which was Enemies: selected collaborations (Penned in the Margins 2013) and been commissioned by the Tate, Mercy, Poetry Parnassus and the London Sinfonietta. He is the poetry editor of 3am magazine and is the curator of the Enemies project. He is a full time employee of the British Museum www.sjfowlerpoetry.com www.blutkitt.blogspot.co.uk Tom Jenks has published three collections with if p then q (A Priori, * and Items) and one, Streak Artefacts, with Department Press. He has collaborated extensively with Chris McCabe, with projects including Ubu Roi, I Boris, a re-write of Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi. Other publications include An Anatomy of Melancholy, a Twitter re-configuration of Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy. He administers the avant objects imprint zimZalla, co-organises The Other Room reading series and website, and is a Ph. D. student at Edge Hill University, researching digital technology and innovative poetry. Canadian poet Evan Jones has lived in Manchester since 2005. His The Cavafy Reader is forthcoming with Carcanet. The Alexandrian Greek poet Constantine Petrou Cavafy (1863-1933) lived in Liverpool when he was young. Garrett Kaufmann was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1982. He runs his family’s bar, Mark’s Marmoset. His first pamphlet, O Greta, was published by Chickasaw Books and he is currently working on a full collection, Letters to Greta Chapman. For a time he played semi-professional soccer but now he mainly plays not-professional squash. His poems have appeared widely in journals and magazines such as Loose 54, The Brook and the Wood, Tell City Review and A New York Roman. Melissa Lee-Houghton's first and second poetry collections are published by Penned in the Margins, the latter, Beautiful Girls was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. She has contributed to The Silent

History, a digital novel, and was commissioned to write a short story for BBC Radio 4. Harry Man lives in Streatham, South London. His first pamphlet, Lift, was published by Tall Lighthouse in 2013. His poems have appeared in Poems in the Waiting Room, New Welsh Review, ditch, And Other Poems and elsewhere.

Rob A. Mackenzie was born and brought up in Glasgow and lives in Leith. He has published two pamphlets (with HappenStance and Salt) and two full collections (both with Salt), the latest of which, The Good News, was published in April 2013. He is reviews editor of Magma Poetry magazine. Ben Parker‘s debut pamphlet, The Escape Artists, is published by tall-lighthouse and was shortlisted for the 2013 Michael Marks Award. Bobby Parker, born 1982, lives in Kidderminster, England. Publications include the critically acclaimed experimental books Ghost Town Music and Comberton, both published by Knives Forks & Spoons Press. His first full-length poetry collection 'Blue Movie' will be published by Nine Arches Press in 2015. Eleanor Rees is the author of Andraste's Hair (Salt, 2007) and Eliza and the Bear (Salt, 2009) She is currently in her third year of a PhD with University of Exeter provisionally entitled 'Shifting Boundaries: the Work of the Local Poet' and completing her third collection of poetry, Blood Child. She lives in Liverpool. www.eleanorrrees.info Robert Sheppard has recently published A Translated Man with Shearsman, his ninth book. His autobiographical prose work When will be published by Knives, Forks and Spoons this year. He lives in Liverpool but works at Edge Hill University, where he is Programme Leader of the MA in Creative Writing. He collaborates with painters, print-makers, calligraphers, dancers and other poets. Adrian Slatcher writes poetry, fiction and music and lives in Manchester. His recent work can be found in Unthology 4, Best of Manchester Poets 3 and Bare Fiction 2. His favourite version of Blade Runner is the one with the voiceover, because that's the one he saw first. He blogs about literary matters at artoffiction.blogspot.com Angela Topping has published seven full collections and three chapbooks, all with reputable publishers. In 2013, she was a writer in residence at Gladstone's Library. Her poems have won prizes and have appeared in magazines such as Poetry Review and London Magazine, as well as over 50 anthologies. She has appeared at a range of festivals, including StAnza and Cheltenham Poetry Festival. She has edited and co-edited anthologies including Sculpted and The Robin Hood Book. JT Welsch lives in York, where he is lecturer in Creative Writing and English Literature at York St John University. His poems have appeared in 3AM, Blackbox Manifold, Boston Review, PN Review, Stand, VLAK, and four chapbooks, including Orchids (Salt), Waterloo (Like This), and Orchestra & Chorus (Holdfire). Luke Wright is a poet and broadcaster. His poetry stage shows have toured the world and played sold-out runs in London and Edinburgh. He is a regular contributor to BBC Radio and his verse documentary on Channel 4 was nominated for a Grierson Award. Mondeo Man is his first collection.

Cover illustration by Zo Bevan - zobevan.com

‘I hope I’m not too late’ by Kit Hauksson