My country

Kelwyn Sole

I don’t much value the confessional:

could tell you a few stories, sitting here,

but the clink of tin as my garden’s can

of suet swings, marauded by squirrels,

confounds me

until I hazard to point

out only what you’ve not noticed but

envelops us: of the birds now bereft

of their suet, calling in distress; of flies

wringing their hands for mercy; of slug

and snail journeys seldom finished; of

fearful lizards never at ease, frantic

for a sudden hiding place to gape

ensorcelled into stone;

of ancient

rotting trees, so knotted they no longer

can find ways to ingratiate themselves

with any soil’s embrace or gale’s bluster.

I want to speak for some ugly creatures -

their recurring droughts of fulfilment as

they circle, and wish to worry to the final

bone, the carcase of their grievances.

… When may insight nimble up to us

delicate as a spider’s tensile weaving

yet strong enough to keep the touch

between us, if only for a moment?

– a speaking out that’s undistracted,

a labour truespun from the belly,

part of an earth that’s fruiting –

I want to be

a citizen of

that country

not retreat indoors each dusk

to counterfeits of light in dimmed rooms

where I fake comfort by rifling the pockets

of the dead for their words, yet end up

always finding

my vigil ends

with the dogma

of those tongues

which promise just a swarming

back to root out more myths

and feast on them, the carrion

of our history.

Featured on 24 June 2021

Weathering divorce

Colleen Higgs

Divorce is not something that happens suddenly.

It takes a long time coming,

it takes a long time to accept it coming

On the horizon you see the weather long before it arrives.

The barometer falls, the air pressure rises

like a migraine darkening the sky inside

The man who was larger than life

recedes, sometimes reappears in dreams

and all is forgotten and even forgiven.

Featured on 17 June 2021

Mowbray

Musa Khanyile

After twenty-one days of moving from one b&b to another, he is finally handed the keys to his flat: a two-bedroom apartment in Station Road smelling of paint. After moving his bags inside and gathering his breath, he looks around the space:

Rooms stripped of furniture. Empty rooms like himself, like the people who come to talk to him all day, patients who sit next to him and tell him how empty they feel. How many times has he wondered what emptiness looks like?

For two nights he sleeps in the flat without curtains and feels exposed in the morning when darkness can no longer hide him. At work, he hides everything relentlessly, especially when he sits crossing his legs, wearing a white shirt,

giving an occasional Mmm here and there, pretending to know what fills up a hollow heart.

Featured on 10 June 2021