Readable 2
March 2019
A free-themed poetry issue, celebrating nature, love, identity and mental health. There's something for everyone, even spiders.
Editors:
Andrew Cross and Ellis Carr
Contributors:
Bopape Jessica, Callum Beesley, Katie, Nina Marie Dunne, Joel Fisher and Mel Glazer
Cover Art:
Allisa Rosales
Silence
Bopape Jessica
It be not the dark out
Nor insomnia as he holds me to my mind
As he seeks for that last breath
He feels I owe
It be neither the wet noise that
I allowed that night to drown
The house along with me
It may be the hope for hope
Be it the voices?
Voices I fear to listen to,
They that cause me to befriend her,
Insomnia and they, they that drown me all night till dawn,
And night again.
They that try to steal from me that which I would willingly
Give away with my last breath, for they all fail.
It be the voices that I fear in the silence of the night
And not its dark, making me fall for he that
Helps me keep wake at night,
And they that drown the voices in my head,
Along with me.
For I would fall for all the evil in the world
To keep the evil inside of me in silence.
My mistress
Bopape Jessica
Fickle image he began being
Fickle until real enough to be real
No longer born from his mother that bore him,
The mind and his father that took pride in
All that he did for as long as it were him,
The imagination.
Blessed cursed wishes by the parented
Soon it dawned on them
How ungrateful they were
Full of pride they made him and
Full of pride he became, not their pride as hoped
Image of an imagination
And mind he ceased to be
But faded memory he now was
As real as he prided
He drove her to insanity
Believing he was but a soulmate of her.
As well as he a mistress to her world
Is as well as he forgot he be only
From an imagination, making her forget
Beckoning her, now to find him.
Black growing
Bopape Jessica
I never knew how commonly common
How common was I
Dusty, cracked gravel roads
Bringing about my playful imagination
Coupled with tiny rocks stomping
Softly through my tales
May I be one with them
As dusty as we want to
Growing, growing, growing
Unaware of how poor
How grey, how black
Black growing
Seemingly to the others poor
Little would they ever know
How richly happy were
We really were
Now that we grown black
Rich even to them
But poor now that we lack
That which we had
Took it for granted while black growing
How happy we were
….together.
Mattnau
Bopape Jessica
Her small mountain stood gracefully
Two villages away from her
with stars that stare at you at night,
She breathes dusty brown through the winds
That love feeling her flaws
Her green oasis stretched long
As the only fresh streams
That keep cool her bosom
Nurturing beautifully her children
That call to her by her name
Mattnau.
Scorching her tough love
Her field feeding they
They that reap that which they sowed
Her intentional corner earth
To make hard for her children to leave,
Forget her, their roots
That stood deep in her heart
Being the very life that she has.
A mother’s love for her children
Nurturing them through life and
Holding them tight to her bosom in death.
My Name Day
Nina Marie Dunne
I was an unwanted present that year
A stowaway on Christmas cheer
As my hostess hid in a harbour town
Pining away by a pine tree
Barely decorated
Nervous and fearful of my arrival
A big bump with a bigger kick
New Years Day felt like the right time
To burst out of hiding
I snuck in during a dismal afternoon
I intended to erupt but I lost my nerve
Why make things harder than they already were?
A baby of the state
No name, one date
Months passed without event
Valentine’s Day was as romantic as Lent
Until one day I was collected
And given a name
Named after St Nicholas; Patron Saint of Sailors, Thieves and Children.
Sanity
Callum Beesley
Passed
From pillar to post
One minute they want me
The next they’ve forgotten
Where they’ve laid me down.
Dark, always dark
Away from my cousin –
I haven’t seen him in years.
Sometimes they want me back
At least I think so
For a moment
Until I realize they’re between
Serious relationships
And want me for
A quick mind fuck.
They take me
Hover me in front of their faces
Like a mask
And pretend to all those prospective
Lovers before them
They’re the same sweet Sandra
The same funny Flo
The same curious Callum
From High School
I know they are not.
Why do I put up with them?
Because every time they hold me
Every time they bring me up to
Their faces and I look into their eyes
I think: this is it
At last they recognize me
This time
They’ll kiss me.
Our Moment
Katie
There are a thousand poems about
a thousand forbidden kisses
capturing thousands
of moments.
‘Time stands still’ they say.
A timeless description
perfectly fitting our moment
that lasted a lifetime.
They say ‘it feels so right’,
so why is the weight of
our secret
crushing me?
They say a forbidden kiss
seals our fate
but not us.
We go on
in silence as if our forbidden kiss
never happened.
The sun fires the sea
Joel Fisher
The sun fires the sea
A thousand embers sparkling
You cannot see
To where it ends
But wade in regardless
Cold heat in your legs
Then waist
Then shoulders
Until you plunge your head
And you are in the waves
The flames, the water
Burning at the wonder
Of it all
Fergus the Dancing Fox
Mel Glazer
Photo Credit: Francisco Moreno
I am the trickiest, niftiest, white paw slickest
Prancing, tap dancing fox.
Down Stationhouse Street in crepuscular light,
slinking sultry and slow I stealthily go to dance a fandango
at night.
I dance in those homes with their kitsch garden gnomes
‘cos dancing might give them a fright.
Holding a trowel I’ll screech and I’ll howl much worse than
an owl
or banshee preparing to fight.
In great desperation and foxic frustration
I’ll bury that gnome congregation
along with their leader, the plastic bird feeder
painted to look like Snow White.
I am the trickiest, niftiest, white paw slickest
Prancing, tap dancing fox.
At house forty-two I’ll chew the washing line through
then Charleston on knickers and socks.
I deliver my rants on their bras, vest and pants
Then bury them all under rocks.
With sinewy ease I go where I please in places that nobody
sees.
For a bit of a sport and when I’m caught short I’ll pee on
anyone’s trees.
I am the trickiest, niftiest, white paw slickest
Prancing, tap dancing fox
I can slip next door at house forty-four regardless of fences and
locks.
There’s a greenhouse and store, quite warm for the paw,
As one cannot ignore the bore of rain and loud thunder,
In such it’s no wonder, I’ll prize his greenhouse asunder to rhumba
with prize peppers, tomatoes and pickerling cucumber.
I am the trickiest, niftiest, white paw slickest,
Prancing, tap dancing fox.
I am amorous and glamorous boasting big bushy tail with white
trims.
Often quite late I meet my vixen called Kate
and we sip sloes and gins by the bins.
She’s vivacious and voluptuous and rather rumbustious so we go at
the tango ‘til late.
Then we engage in yowling canoodles, like two overfed poodles,
and roll on the plants in a state.
When they’re all squashed and flat we blame next door’s black cat
who’s lazy and much overweight.
I am the trickiest, niftiest, white paw slickest,
Prancing, tap dancing fox.
I tramped through the flap of that overfed cat,
found the log fire, food by the drier, along with a well-heated mat.
The cat sadly saw me and started to paw me and hissed ‘we’ll have
none of that.’
As the moggy descended I was poorly defended and believed,
maybe that’s my lot.
But as I held her so tight all was all right,
prancing and dancing a fairly, fine, feline foxtrot.
And it is just for me that the entire street is free and I need no aids
nor no props,
I am the trickiest, niftiest, white paw slickest
Prancing, tap dancing fox
Bernadette: Her thoughts on being a spider.
Translated from Spiderish to English by Mel Glazer
Photo Credit: Егор Камелев
With eight legs, multiple eyes and saucily dressed
it is no less,
my duty to stress that
for beauty we spiders are the best.
As thin as a pin
my waist is trim, so silk spinning slim.
You’ll inevitably find,
my superb design, pre-dates all mankind.
I must add as a rider …
I am one glorious, gorgeous spider
Often told is a gory story,
In which it is said I am too preda-tory
It’s true I do welcome men,
and now and then, like
eating them. Amen!
let it be
‘tis much the best way to keep us women free.
I strongly spurn, those long black laid-back spiders
who refuse to earn and yearn to hang from their web, by just one leg
each sighing in turn
whilst relying on languidly trying
to web trap any damm thing flying,
My dear, they’ve no taste, no vision –
I mean who’d eat a bloody pigeon?
But as tutor I feature as preacher and teacher to my one hundred brats
I make them aspire to something higher than gnats.
After all, you’d agree having so many legs free
they should learn to write poetry, proper like, like me
I kick, cuss and curse coaching in iambic verse.
They’re a bit put upon and before they disperse
I say to the most ‘write a sonnet or you’re toast!’
Regarding verse I can be terse ‘cos I’ll bite their heads off should they,
err some different way and my goodwill betray by using trochee.
Of those remaining, should they commence complaining,
Moaning, sighing and implying
Ingratitude, I reply with platitude –
‘no pain no gaining’,
then I’d wave me legs and laugh ‘cos that’s a spider’s craft
and daft as it may be, I like it … see …
Beats aphid, blackfly, ant, or flea.