*

Looking At The Same Thing

Singing on the back of your motorbike

through mountains, my favourite memories

surprise me. The return of love, like it never left,

you holding me in each and every bed,

except the ones without air-con to cool us,

where we laid like starfish, salty skin

and the heat is never something you can picture,

but this winter, I think back to summer shorts,

only wearing sleeves to show respect,

the land abundant with temples,

rice fields, motorbikes, smells

distinct to every country.

We were tested with con-men, swaying boats,

sea urchins, our own minds. Somehow

we coped, we survived and now we are back,

wanting to keep these memories alive. And sometimes

it’s the snapshots of everyday, changing landscapes,

we walked through side-by-side, for the most part.

Rolling shrimp in rice-paper with satay dripping off,

the sweetest popcorn at the cinema.

At other times, it was like we were dropped

into a postcard, and I question reality

when I think of the blue of that water,

the kindness of strangers, the feeling

of swallowing beer in a hammock,

of tasting the food from the side of the road.

We are back now, but let’s never stop

climbing mountains, taking in views,

plunging into unknown water.

*

Biography

Carmina Masoliver is a poet and teacher from London, England. She is founder of She Grrrowls feminist arts night, and is a regular contributor to The Norwich Radical. Her work has been published in various magazines and anthologies, such as Popshot, and her chapbook was published by Nasty Little Press in 2014. She has featured at events including Bang Said the Gun, Latitude, Lovebox, Bestival and Goldsmith University’s The Place for Poetry. She has facilitated workshops independently, as well as whilst shadowing Ross Sutherland, Niall O’Sullivan, and Michael Rosen. She currently lives and works in Córdoba, Spain.

www.carminamasoliver.com

www.shegrrrowls.tumblr.com

@CarminaPoetry

@shegrrrowls

Five Unnamed Poems

*

I was going up and down the garden,

between glimpses of flowers and my thoughts of you.

You were giving me death, the times were giving me light.

I was making circles as an earth.

*

Spring came,

but you did not come to your senses.

The bloom left you behind.

 *

I knew now where this love was going –

it was re-entering the cells of my eyes,

it was permeating my irises, infiltrating their lights and colours.

It was washing their clearness and depths in tears,

and they were glistening, ready for the sight of

the air, mighty with empty vividness, over the Homeric seas.

 *

All forces of reality –

the breath of the sea, the crystalline shoots of the tamarisk –

were converging, and in clear mute voices speaking to me:

You live in order to live.

*

Mountains and deer are sending snow

because they care for our renewal.

We sleep in their cold, sumptuously curled up

as in an embrace of oneself.

*

Biography

Margarita Serafimova has published one book of poetry, “Animals and Other Gods”, in the Bulgarian (Sofia University Press, 2016). Her second book, “Demons and World”, also in the Bulgarian, is forthcoming in May 2017 (Black Flamingo Publishing, Sofia). In English, pieces of Margarita’s have appeared in Outsider Poetry, Heavy Athletics, Anti-Heroin Chic, the Peacock Journal, Noble / Gas Quarterly, In Between Hangovers, Window Quarterly/ Patient Sounds, with others forthcoming in The Voices Project, Obra/ Artifact, The MockingHeart Review, London Grip New Poetry, and The Birds We Piled Loosely. Margarita is a human rights lawyer. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MargaritaISerafimova/

*

In The Moment

The kids are in love, and so sweetly

you can see it melting out of them,

see gravity getting smashed into

a million pieces beneath their feet

as they bounce along, occasionally

touching down because they can.

In their free hands, the ones not

holding the other’s, they clutch balloons

painted in colours we can no longer see,

inflated with their restless thoughts of

an unmapped future, raw materials

yet to be processed into anxieties.

Don’t you remember the first days of our

being? The damage we caused to gravity?

Our balloons? How the brilliant shock

of it interrupted time itself, and made

the future evaporate, while we failed to

notice ourselves not breathing properly?

*

Biography

Robert Ford lives on the east coast of Scotland. His poetry has appeared in both print and online publications in the UK and US, including Antiphon, Clear Poetry, Whale Road Review and Ink, Sweat and Tears. More of his work can be found at https://wezzlehead.wordpress.com/

*

I Was A Peculiar Woman Child

After I discovered Emily Dickinson

At age eleven

I took to writing cryptic poems

with a homemade quill,

a seagull feather nib

dipped into a bottle of Quink.

On Sunday nights for Bonanza

I donned a pioneer dress and sunbonnet

made for my sister to wear

in a sesquicentennial pageant.

I liked to immerse myself

In full period dress for TV.

Just as my bosoms budded,

my brothers’ burst into off key renditions

Barbara is Bustin’Out All Over,

twanging the straps of my training bra,

I became obsessed with the past,

the kind at least a century old

before hot pants and halter tops

flip flops on hot sidewalks

the flush of shame at strange men’s eyes

looking at me as I walked down Chestnut Street,

arms loaded with library books,

their wolf whistles sounding like cat calls.

*

Biography

*

Bedsheets in the blue

I tossed my sheets into the ocean

when you left

this time

I heard you insist

it was I

who was leaving

I

who went seeking

out

the        sky

above

the        water

as my bedroom.

Grain, or grandeur?

Gibbous names

for a need

for the waves

and new places to sleep.

Did you think we might keep

churning sheets

and our fortunes

into rolling, silver, drum,

while the moon

and her son

tossed my pulse

in our blankets?

and I,

in my anguish,

yearned to grey,

for the sands

washed away

by the depths

of our safety?

Loved on(c)e,

lately

This

detergent

on my palms

has been leaving

hands itching

You pass me

More sterile boxed powders

neat stitching

and leave me

with no

stay

or no

go

The only way I know

Is this

bright splay

of bed sheets in the blue

Giving up on the gone

casting out for the new and

sucking

this

crisp

fabric

dimpled.

Nursing sea-salt

from the threads that we pulled tight

to hold six skies

together.

*

Biography

Jennifer O’Kelly is an Irish poet originally from Cork. She holds a Masters degree in Philosophy and is interested in the work of Patti Smith and Leonard Cohen, among many others.