Thomas Clark
A Hero’s Deith
Still he shidders, an staunds wi his swuird, an threitens,
kiverin wi breuken shield his kist’s remains,
nou, his een are plowt intae infineet shaidae,
spirin frae lips that lin thair hero’s sang.
Faur awa, twa seelent raens watch
The warriour arise wi shaidae weengs.
In the nicht o thae weengs, his een, bricht as day,
as flicht unnertaken, intae the lip o sky.
The Craws
Ower the hime o battle,
An the jargle o warriours,
Passes a slaw beat o weengs;
An oorie craik is haurd
As the twa craws come,
Messengers daurk an divine,
And laund on the shooders o God,
An speak tae his ear.
In Valhalla
A reid hime rings. Shields an spears a-dundert
intae a lang, uncannie rair.
Fae gapin mooths, the bluidy wounds sproot
purpie rivers.
An smuirichs, an lauchter,
An a mort-heid fou
o mead, for whilk
burnin wi fiver, deid warriours thirst.
Thomas Clark is a Glaswegian poet, writer and filmmaker whose work has most recently been featured in Lallans, Southlight, The Eildon Tree, New Voices Press and Dream Catcher amongst others. He can be found at twitter.com/ClashCityClarky.
Note: These poems are free translations into Scots dialect of originals by the Bolivian poet Ricardo Jaimes Freyre.
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Helen Birtwell
Rescue
They’d found him as usual up Pendle Hill,
and as usual the police car stopped at number 26.
Here we are Mrs Higginbottom, safe and sound.
The young policeman spoke gently as he guided his passenger.
Josh was wearing his choir suit and stiff butterfly collar -
proper Sunday attire for these last sixty years.
He’d a fine bass, had been choirmaster
at Carr Road Baptists, practically all his life.
Tricking Florrie with the pills had been easy,
as was setting out for Sabden, his birthplace.
He sang All Things Bright and Beautiful
as he made for the purple headed mountain.
She tenderly helped him inside.
Anything you’d like Josh – mean and potato pie?
Aren’t thee Florrie Lindley?
and don’t thee think it’s time we were wed?
Helen Birtwell has scribbled to not much account all her life. After gaining a B.A.Hons.in English Lit as a mature student of 55 and a Creative Writing Course organised by U.E.A.,she developed an an interest in writing poetry and is stll doing so
Read MoreDavid Marshall
The Hunters in the Snow
After Pieter Breughel the Elder
I love the perspective, the trees all straight,
Four horizontal lines, dark, receding.
The sense of cold creeping out of the frame,
Frozen; a picture in time and place.
A child watching the fire in the foreground,
Two stokers, a man lifting a table.
Poor pickings for hunters in winter,
Even the dogs follow dejectedly.
On the horizon by jagged mountains,
A bird dips, caught between sky and the snow.
David Marshall is a UK based poet and teacher. His poetry is influenced strongly by art, music and the things around him, usually people he meets on the London underground or his cats. He has been published by the e-zines Mardibooks, Whisker and The Crocodile and New Cartography, as well as in print with Miracle Magazine. This is his website.
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Dick Jones
The Sheds
Sheds: haunches nestled into
banked earth. Cow parsley, ragwort,
bedding high sides. Blunt faces
nose-ringed with hanging padlocks.
Inside, a stook of exhausted
spades, a knackered
wheelbarrow, face-down,
a crippled bike, kept for spares.
Here, where the sheds are,
clocks run slow. One man,
slouched in a doorway,
hand-rolls a cigarette.
Another taps out a briar
onto a windowsill
and then repacks the bowl.
Rapt, he stares across the match flame.
Kids roll and scatter,
break like high-tide
at the allotment’s edge.
They watch, uncomprehending,
the semaphore of sweet-peas,
rocking, bean-rows, carrot-tops;
the closed and secret faces
of the sheds.
The sun goes down
behind the recreation ground,
Breaking ranks, shadow-wrapped,
the houses sidle in.
Dick Jones has been published in a number of magazines, print and online, including Orbis, The Interpreter’s House, Poetry Ireland Review, Qarrtsiluni, Westwords, Mipoesias, Three Candles, Other Poetry, Rattlesnake and Ouroboros Review. In 2010 he received a Pushcart nomination for his poem Sea Of Stars and his first collection, Ancient Lights, is published by Phoenicia Publishing
This poem first appeared in Other Poetry anthology Miracles and Clockwork 2005
Read MoreDaniel Roy Connelly
Songstress on Primetime Italian TV
Songstress what songstress
I see svelte teenage girls
in bikinis gyrating
while men watch
& women clap hands
in time to the band who
are all men
no they’re definitely lip-synching
in fact not even
damn adverts
next up there are svelte teenage girls
in bikinis suspended
from meat hooks
while men in butchers’ hats
slap price tags on their arses
well not really from meat hooks but
you certainly get an idea of something
Daniel Roy Connelly was born in England but has spent much of his adult life being educated in Italy, India, Bangladesh, The USA and Scotland. Formerly a British diplomat, he has been an academic since 1999. He is currently an assistant professor of English Literature and Theatre at John Cabot University and The American University of Rome.
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