![7 (1) Where He suffers loss of hearing of non-traumatic origin, but arising out of and in the course of employment under the ship (the rattling engine), This is a greater loss than I can understand. Greater than the minima in Schedule D, so [Papa] is entitled to compensation under this Part of the text. I (baby) sometimes see the ship, including but not limited to: the oil, the hull, the pistons — all solid. These regular parts are equally present in [Papa]’s body, Something about life sticking to the skeleton. (3.1) The Board may make regulations to amend Schedule D in respect of a. the ranges of hearing loss, e.g. at a festive dinner with paper decorations, the fireplace full but quiet. Disability (a multi-party arrangement) can truly be this soft. b. the percentages of disability, and [Papa]’s prolonged exposure to bulls*** is not restricted to the workplace. Prior to this continent He was once a boy, shoes too small and full of holes. c. the methods or frequencies to be used to measure hearing loss. Prior to compensation, the senses must be bloated: clauses multiplying like cells. Here, the text lectures warmly for years into the future. will He still hear ______________ ? (“member of family”) (6) An application for compensation under this section must be accompanied by a specialist's report and audiogram or by other evidence of injury (i.e. concerning the domicile: at dinnertime Us girls love to take the p*** Oh yes, we mouth words to Him across the table: that today a classmate said Why the f*** can’t poor people stay out of our schools. Why Exactly.)](http://poems.poetrysociety.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/IN-WHICH-PAPA-A-SAILOR-GOES-DEAF.png)
A Golden Shovel
- 4 horsemen
- 1 cancelled judgement day
- 1 giant rip through the sky
- 1 ocean brimming with plastic
- 1 people at risk
[post_title] => the complexities of water
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[ID] => 21189
[forename] =>
[surname] =>
[title] => Lauren Lisk
[slug] => lauren-lisk
[content] => Lauren is a top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2020, and is commended in August Challenge #3: Repetition & Imagery on Young Poets Network.
)
)
[13] => stdClass Object
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[ID] => 21161
[post_author] => 23
[post_date] => 2020-10-05 11:16:47
[post_date_gmt] => 2020-10-05 11:16:47
[post_content] => Halfway through the horror movie,
the lights give out, the whole city
held under a blanket. Turning the other
cheek. Some phantom hand finds mine.
I will learn to love you softly is what
the house would say, its belly emitting
a quiet dust rumble, drops in the kitchen sink
like fingers drumming a wooden surface
and we learn to live with that.
All night we sleep under sheets
stapled to the mirrors and windows,
linoleum floors your bedmate. Tell me
stories of killer fish in the sewers,
dinosaurs crawling the moon’s pores,
turning off the lamp of your mouth,
every cool sweep of an unexposed beam
to the ocean breaking a pier outside,
its limbs washing away till noon
where we’ll find them tangled,
inspecting the damage bred by the storm,
learning to live with it.
Patting the curve of brick spine,
the elbowed staircase that remembers our steps.
The ghosts and the sighs of the hallway boards.
The mouth of a basin that never stopped
foaming and leaking.
I know that the doorway
is as deep inside you as we will ever get
and we learn to live with that,
thanking another day to remember
the names of all the constellations
you can see from the attic’s eye,
every jump scare and the darts of our stomachs
because I was selfish enough to love you unsound.
[post_title] => Scaffolding
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[ID] => 21188
[forename] =>
[surname] =>
[title] => Iqra Naseem
[slug] => iqra-naseem
[content] => Iqra is commended in August Challenge #3: Repetition & Imagery on Young Poets Network.
)
)
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[post_date] => 2020-10-05 11:16:43
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[post_content] => I
The mini liberators of women,
hoisting those hems to the Heavens,
giving their legs room to breathe.
II
The silver capped scholars,
keeping those iridescent specimens
in place for little curious eyes.
III
The diligent sewers’ stabilisers,
holding together linen squares
so they can stitch their designs to life.
IV
The silent supporters,
presenting the poems of the next Shakespeare;
a collage of creativity.
V
The memory bearers,
pinning Polaroid pictures
to hippocampus cork boards.
VI
Pins pin
down
the important stuff.
[post_title] => Pins
[post_excerpt] =>
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[post_name] => pins
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[ID] => 18689
[forename] =>
[surname] =>
[title] => Olivia Todd
[slug] => olivia-todd
[content] => Olivia is the first-prize winner in the 2019 August challenge #2 on how-to poetry, written and judged by Foyle Young Poet Fiyinfoluwa Oladipo. She is also the third-prize winner in the 2019 poetry translation challenge with Modern Poetry in Translation, judged by Clare Pollard; the Mary Wollstonecraft challenge on Young Poets Network, written and judged by Bee Rowlatt of the Mary on the Green campaign; in Bailey Blackburn's 2018 August challenge #2; and in the 2018 August challenge #1 on prose poems. She is in addition commended in August Challenge #3: Repetition & Imagery and highly commended in the Namedropping challenge with People Need Nature and Jen Hadfield.
)
)
[15] => stdClass Object
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[ID] => 21187
[post_author] => 23
[post_date] => 2020-10-05 11:16:36
[post_date_gmt] => 2020-10-05 11:16:36
[post_content] => Body lies on the bottom step. How did it get there? we ask.
Body is bloody. Hair matted. Nails dirty.
Body ’s hand falls near the light. We are glad
Body has made no mess. Clean fall. No
Body would notice. What should we do?
Body says rug. Wrap me in rug. Rug was present some
Body gave us. Your mum. I think. Once your own
Body . Shut up says
Body , wrap tighter. What next? Put me in car, says
Body . We are not
Body builders. You are
Body carriers.
Body is funny. To the skip? Re
Body it. No. Every
Body would put it there. We have to think smart. We could disem
Body it? I can still hear you says
Body from rug. I don’t want to kill
Body you say. Do we have to? We ask
Body . No. I can be a home
Body .
Body is good at bringing frozen food in from the car.
Body entertains the kids with all the ways he can bend his
Body . Every
Body says
Body is too pale. Deadly pale, your mum says. So we take
Body on holiday. Abroad. We take
Body to the doctors to check he has his anti
Body s. Pack a case with
Body boards and
Body suits and
Body itself. The case is too full to zip.
Body holds from the inside. When it comes across the carousel some
Body has opened it. It is
Body less. We can’t tell the police, you say.
Body sends a parcel a month later. The busy
Body from next door takes it because no
Body is in. Inside is my wedding ring
your dad’s watch
the kids’ pocket money
and a card for a
Body guard. We weep on the doorstep.
[post_title] => Body
[post_excerpt] =>
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[ID] => 20146
[forename] =>
[surname] =>
[title] => Tom Rowe
[slug] => tom-rowe
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)
)
[16] => stdClass Object
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[ID] => 21167
[post_author] => 23
[post_date] => 2020-10-01 09:10:20
[post_date_gmt] => 2020-10-01 09:10:20
[post_content] => Joan of Arc and I lay head-to-head
in the wash of a meadow frothing
Queen Anne’s lace like a corrupted lung.
Her fingers dabbling my palms
like water, that martyr and I speak
of our own voices: mine, stolen; hers
given like a sack of entrails. Did the voices
twitch, I ask, did they wriggle inside of you,
still attached to God’s nervous system?
Something in her savages at that. My phrases
are all borrowed things; I nestle a soul
beneath the frisket of a printing press.
No, she speaks in French (I translate to Latin
through my medulla), I saw saints in my garden.
Then: the sound of bees, their wings spun
by the edge of a flame. I tell her we’ve
invented new ways to burn by now:
gasoline, electricity, suburban oblivion.
If I take Asenapine will I be as holy as you?
She feigns interest and the hairs stippling
her scalp engulf me like a crow’s wing,
growing, unreal. Is this what a vision
feels like, I ask. She does not answer.
Can you cut my hair for me, I ask. I hand her
the razor, buzzing like a prophecy, my first
flammable question. My hair shifts and
weeps like goldenrod as the light comes through
in the name of the voice. It is cut with tenderness.
She is nineteen and a pillar of ash.
I am seventeen and begging to catch flame.
[post_title] => Joan of Arc Gives Me a Buzz Cut, or Lux Venit in Nomine Vocis
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[wpcf-summary-description] => This poem is the first-prize winner of August Challenge #1: Re-mixing History, Fiction and the Unexpected on Young Poets Network. This challenge was set and judged by Foyle Young Poet Lydia Wei in 2020.
[wpcf-rights-information] =>
[wpcf-poem-award] => 1st prize, August Challenge #1: Re-mixing History
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[poet_data] => stdClass Object
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[ID] => 20508
[forename] =>
[surname] =>
[title] => Anna Westwig
[slug] => anna-westwig
[content] => Anna is the first-prize winner in August Challenge #1: Re-mixing History, Fiction and the Unexpected. She is commended in the Artlyst Art to Poetry challenge, in the first Bloodaxe Archive challenge (The Poetics of the Archive), and in the 2019 August challenge #2 on how-to poetry, written and judged by Foyle Young Poet Fiyinfoluwa Oladipo, on Young Poets Network.
)
)
[17] => stdClass Object
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[ID] => 21168
[post_author] => 23
[post_date] => 2020-10-01 09:10:16
[post_date_gmt] => 2020-10-01 09:10:16
[post_content] => For Wilfred Owen
Contains strong language
our bodies ache on the streets where we rattle plastic cans
for change we watch the flocks of low drooping eyes
scuttle by like brambles in the north wind we
have become part of the scene patient hopeful crying out
but nothing happens
on the corner a preacher belts God’s wrath on queers I can hear
the snare tone of his voice as he echoes verse from the
tatty bible he clutches there are few who stop and listen
to the dull rumour of God’s war on fags and wonder
what are we doing here
across the street a man tugs the last cloud from his cigarette
lets his eyes wander up the pleated skirt of a
woman at the bus stop she fans herself from the wet heat
her eyes hoping to catch a glimpse of that mottled red transport
but nothing happens
the man catches a peek of the sun’s irrevocable innocence
in her bronzed shoulders then looks across at us
at our banner chews his distaste as if it is milk freshly off
cocks his mouth as if ready to fire his first warning shot
but nothing happens
leaves collect in the street band together to line the kerb
like bouncers we are the impatient sober waiting
for entry to watch our brothers and lovers dancing with
winged expressions of surrender so this is where we end up
is it that we are dying
Johno asks Wilf should we call it a day stares down into his near
empty can at the piss-poor pennies dripped from unfeeling
hands says they don’t give a shit about us never have
says if they did they’d save us says we don’t have nobody but us
we turn back to our dying
a newspaper reads Britain threatened by gay virus plague spits
our invasion of their land shrieks the contagion of
our love lauds the purification of our dying smirks at
our ashes spilling like mountains disintegrating beneath their youth
for love of God seems dying
tonight we will drag our ghosts home to our one already measuring
their hole in the ground jokes I probably shouldn’t put on
any weight else I won’t fit smiles like the crushed tablet taken
twice daily says when we’re all gone that’s when they’ll notice
but nothing happens
[post_title] => Exposure, Part II
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[post_name] => exposure-part-ii
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[wpcf-summary-description] => This poem is the second-prize winner of August Challenge #1: Re-mixing History, Fiction and the Unexpected on Young Poets Network. This challenge was set and judged by Foyle Young Poet Lydia Wei in 2020.
The final line of each stanza in this poem is taken directly from Wilfred Owen's original poem 'Exposure'.
[wpcf-rights-information] =>
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[forename] =>
[surname] =>
[title] => Dale Booton
[slug] => dale-booton
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)
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[post_date] => 2020-10-01 09:09:56
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[post_content] => 
[post_title] => Julius Caesar Visits the NIST-F1 Atomic Clock
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[wpcf-rights-information] =>
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[ID] => 20448
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[surname] =>
[title] => Maggie Wang
[slug] => maggie-wang
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)
)
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[post_author] => 23
[post_date] => 2020-10-01 09:09:43
[post_date_gmt] => 2020-10-01 09:09:43
[post_content] => I saw Humphrey Bogart in a train station,
Crewe, three o’clock in the morning,
and he looked as faded and grey as I felt
stumbling half asleep off the late service.
When I was ushered out the doors, he was just there
by the taxi rank, leant up on a pillar, smoking,
lit up silver in passing headlights. He followed me
to the phone box, going grainier about the edges with each step
and when I’d paid my fifty pence and planned
my way home, he was no more than a faint suggestion,
a leftover image, a black-and-white echo
from a picture long past.
[post_title] => 20:30 from Stockport
[post_excerpt] =>
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[post_name] => 2030-from-stockport
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[ID] => 21177
[forename] =>
[surname] =>
[title] => Erik Rüder
[slug] => erik-ruder
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)
)
[20] => stdClass Object
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[ID] => 21174
[post_author] => 23
[post_date] => 2020-10-01 09:09:33
[post_date_gmt] => 2020-10-01 09:09:33
[post_content] => You may know Jesus. That preacher/teacher/healer/magic man
with the clear silt skin. You may have seen him around town,
raising the dead and making friends. Maybe he cleaned up
your acne, maybe he showed you the gold humming of
God. Take a look at his Tumblr: @carpentryqween. 1/?
Jesus is a rebel leader/activist/socialist/pacifist and last night
he was arrested by the Roman authorities, dragged away while
praying without resisting- they have beaten him. Unless we
do something they will crucify him. I am practically
begging you to bring him 2/?
bandages, clean cloth, even bear the Cross, if you can.
Email Pontius Pilate. Weep at Jesus’ feet. Donate
to Mary’s GoFundMe. Sign this petition to have
him released: change.org/save-jesus-of-nazareth. We only
need 100000 signatures. 3/?
Like. Share. Retweet. Pressure your local legionary.
Call out Judas. Rescue a sweet man whose only crime
was gentleness. Do not let Jesus out of your mind,
your timeline, your thoughts, your prayers, your
Instagram stories. Together, we demand mercy. 4/?
Uh, this blew up. Check out my Etsy?
[post_title] => What is Happening to Jesus of Nazareth and What You Can Do to Help: a Thread
[post_excerpt] =>
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[ID] => 18016
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[title] => Nadia Lines
[slug] => nadia-lines
[content] => Nadia is a top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2019. She is the first-prize winner in the 11-15 age category in the Turn Up the Volume challenge on Young Poets Network, and the first-prize winner in the 2019 poetry translation challenge with Modern Poetry in Translation, judged by Clare Pollard. She is also the second-prize winner in August Challenge #2: Fairy Tale Poetry; the third-prize winner in the meme challenge, written and judged by poet Rishi Dastidar; and commended in the moon poetry challenge, judged by Nii Parkes; the Golden Shovel challenge, judged by Peter Kahn; and in August Challenge #1: Re-mixing History, Fiction and the Unexpected.
)
)
[21] => stdClass Object
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[ID] => 21172
[post_author] => 23
[post_date] => 2020-10-01 09:09:31
[post_date_gmt] => 2020-10-01 09:09:31
[post_content] => "Do you not know I am a woman?"(Act III, scene ii, As You Like It)
My lover and I no longer speak.
We leave notes in the mist
on one another’s eyes. Once,
he carried me through fields
of sheep when I began to doubt
that softness could be born.
My lover doesn’t see the surgeons
that dissect my dreams.
He spends mornings watching me
put myself back together again.
Once, my lover pinched my bicep
between finger and thumb, said
“What you’re doing is wilting yourself,
and I can’t understand why.”
He laces my corsets, all fingers and thumbs.
My lover watches me blind myself
on sunlight when I begin to doubt
that anybody else can see me.
[post_title] => Rosalind on 2mg Estradiol a day
[post_excerpt] =>
[post_status] => publish
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[post_name] => rosalind-on-2mg-estradiol-a-day
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[post_modified] => 2020-10-15 14:25:00
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[wpcf-summary-description] => This poem is commended in August Challenge #1: Re-mixing History, Fiction and the Unexpected on Young Poets Network. This challenge was set and judged by Foyle Young Poet Lydia Wei in 2020.
[wpcf-rights-information] =>
[wpcf-poem-award] => Commended, August Challenge #1: Re-mixing History
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[poet_data] => stdClass Object
(
[ID] => 20330
[forename] =>
[surname] =>
[title] => Libby Russell
[slug] => libby-russell
[content] => Libby is a top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2019 and 2020, and is commended in August Challenge #1: Re-mixing History, Fiction and the Unexpected on Young Poets Network.
)
)
[22] => stdClass Object
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[post_author] => 23
[post_date] => 2020-10-01 09:09:28
[post_date_gmt] => 2020-10-01 09:09:28
[post_content] => Delhi, 2020
Delhi today is like a dried-out battleground / after one
final revolution. Sentries in khaki thrash / young men
on peculiar vehicles / for something I don’t understand.
I hide my sewed-up face / in dark alleys; people look
at me from the other side of their windows / scared.
I’d have called myself Frank / had they asked, for a change.
Someone covering his face walks to me / like a complete
nutter, says there is 85% chance I won’t survive / the end
of this. Smells like alcohol / and defeat. I don’t understand.
I was so many dead people once. Nothing / about death
worries me anymore. I don’t tell them / any of this
or they might name me Monster again.
Two hundred years of running / away from everything
and it keeps coming back / to me. Someone says / I look
like a vampire, white in death, but vampires heal. Someone
says / this world is a perfectly round, stupid orange.
And we, we are like scattered shreds of rain.
[post_title] => Frankenstein
[post_excerpt] =>
[post_status] => publish
[comment_status] => closed
[ping_status] => closed
[post_password] =>
[post_name] => frankenstein
[to_ping] =>
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[post_modified] => 2020-10-05 12:02:16
[post_modified_gmt] => 2020-10-05 12:02:16
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[wpcf-summary-description] => This poem is commended in August Challenge #1: Re-mixing History, Fiction and the Unexpected on Young Poets Network. This challenge was set and judged by Foyle Young Poet Lydia Wei in 2020.
[wpcf-rights-information] =>
[wpcf-poem-award] => Commended, August Challenge #1: Re-mixing History
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[poet_data] => stdClass Object
(
[ID] => 19733
[forename] =>
[surname] =>
[title] => Jayant Kashyap
[slug] => jayant-kashyap
[content] => Jayant is the third-prize winner in the Bletchley Park challenge on Young Poets Network. He is also commended in the tree poetry challenge, in the fourth Bloodaxe Archive challenge, Take Note, and in August Challenge #1: Re-mixing History, Fiction and the Unexpected.
)
)
[23] => stdClass Object
(
[ID] => 21170
[post_author] => 23
[post_date] => 2020-10-01 09:09:25
[post_date_gmt] => 2020-10-01 09:09:25
[post_content] => Show me your teeth, God. Tonight, at the Apple Store
under the unshut moon. Visit me tonight, God.
Fog this spirit mirror with your Word —
blind me with this new handheld eclipse.
Oh, but my head sings with standing
so long as the marrow of this sun-bleached bone.
Church as mirage. Along its aisles a mosaic of moments
shimmer like ghost-salt on the banks of the Thames.
Tonight, God, I’ll read a revelation in these circles,
scry myself a future in this tiny crystal disc. For now
hours pass as seances. One day you’ll call me inwards
and in I’ll walk
as the manmade moon glows ripely,
half-hungered, leaving tiny razored lips.
[post_title] => John Dee at the Apple Store
[post_excerpt] =>
[post_status] => publish
[comment_status] => closed
[ping_status] => closed
[post_password] =>
[post_name] => john-dee-at-the-apple-store
[to_ping] =>
[pinged] =>
[post_modified] => 2020-10-01 09:53:23
[post_modified_gmt] => 2020-10-01 09:53:23
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[wpcf-summary-description] => This poem is commended in August Challenge #1: Re-mixing History, Fiction and the Unexpected on Young Poets Network. This challenge was set and judged by Foyle Young Poet Lydia Wei in 2020.
[wpcf-rights-information] =>
[wpcf-poem-award] => Commended, August Challenge #1: Re-mixing History
[wpcf_pr_belongs] =>
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[poet_data] => stdClass Object
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[ID] => 21176
[forename] =>
[surname] =>
[title] => Helena Aeberli
[slug] => helena-aeberli
[content] => Helena is commended in August Challenge #1: Re-mixing History, Fiction and the Unexpected on Young Poets Network.
)
)
[24] => stdClass Object
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[ID] => 21173
[post_author] => 23
[post_date] => 2020-10-01 09:09:16
[post_date_gmt] => 2020-10-01 09:09:16
[post_content] => Ferenc II Rákóczi was a Hungarian aristocrat who led rebellions against the Habsburg empire in the early 18th century. He is widely considered a national hero in Hungary.”Rákóczi” is also the name of a popular Hungarian breakfast salami.
Dear, kind
Ferenc: I am in love
with your meat-printed
face. I fan this last
pious slice, resting on
my plate. I should tell you:
in the afterlife
you have many wives
and spaniels. You have
also these children
who pair you with
butter—something soft
to polish your guns.
Every morning
a million murders
crow across this country:
your cool body plated for breakfast,
sixty-eight calories per serving.
I count the wrappers in the bin,
evidence of the many mornings
I have chosen to live.
[post_title] => Ferenc Rákóczi in the Pantry
[post_excerpt] =>
[post_status] => publish
[comment_status] => closed
[ping_status] => closed
[post_password] =>
[post_name] => ferenc-rakoczi-in-the-pantry
[to_ping] =>
[pinged] =>
[post_modified] => 2020-11-03 16:42:55
[post_modified_gmt] => 2020-11-03 16:42:55
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[wpcf-summary-description] => This poem is commended in August Challenge #1: Re-mixing History, Fiction and the Unexpected on Young Poets Network. This challenge was set and judged by Foyle Young Poet Lydia Wei in 2020.
[wpcf-rights-information] =>
[wpcf-poem-award] => Commended, August Challenge #1: Re-mixing History
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[poet_data] => stdClass Object
(
[ID] => 21178
[forename] =>
[surname] =>
[title] => Irma Kiss Barath
[slug] => irma-kiss-barath
[content] => Irma is the second-prize winner in the Poetry and Political Language Challenge on Young Poets Network, in partnership with the Orwell Youth Prize. Irma is also commended in August Challenge #1: Re-mixing History, Fiction and the Unexpected.
)
)
[25] => stdClass Object
(
[ID] => 21075
[post_author] => 23
[post_date] => 2020-09-28 11:01:34
[post_date_gmt] => 2020-09-28 11:01:34
[post_content] => Based on the legend of Chang’e
Winter: the living room gleaned of moonlight.
A city slumped anemic over its knees, milky
and putrid like a wound unsutured. I used
to scrape rust from kitchen counters and drink fat
until my tongue swelled gibbous, large enough
to swallow the November sky and your rice fields
gone sour. Those nights I watched the skeleton
of a rabbit materialize in the television set, whetting
its teeth against the flotsam of your slumber:
your ribcage dipping into shadow, every joint slanted
like a knife. Today I am crimson-slick and excavated
sockets, colored soft white at the mouth like a pear
beneath sawtoothed iron. Today I am treachery’s
lovelier sister, unseaming silicon from terracotta
and looking pretty with metal pressed down
my tongue. I was hatched wide-awake from meteorite
and crescent powder with the ground halfway lunar
beneath my feet. I slip supernovas and crystallized salt
between teeth and set myself floating off-kilter,
drifting untethered from a world where men shed
their skins in and out of holiness and the earth
won’t rise without its mantle of bones.
Touch me and glisten for days on end. Watch me
spin garlands from gravity and silver-toned orbits,
fluctuating between every phase: the body
of a snow-laden goose, a tongue of light
during the eclipse. Let me
become moon-skinned, celestial—
nothing will ever hold me still.
[post_title] => Halfway Lunar
[post_excerpt] =>
[post_status] => publish
[comment_status] => closed
[ping_status] => closed
[post_password] =>
[post_name] => halfway-lunar
[to_ping] =>
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[post_modified] => 2020-10-05 11:44:51
[post_modified_gmt] => 2020-10-05 11:44:51
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[wpcf-date-published] => 2020
[wpcf-summary-description] => This poem is the first-prize winner of August Challenge #2: Fairy Tale Poetry on Young Poets Network. This challenge was set and judged by Foyle Young Poet Meredith LeMaître in 2020.
[wpcf-rights-information] =>
[wpcf-poem-award] => 1st prize, August Challenge #2: Fairy Tale Poetry
[wpcf_pr_belongs] =>
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[poet_data] => stdClass Object
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[ID] => 21147
[forename] =>
[surname] =>
[title] => Annie Cao
[slug] => annie-cao
[content] => Annie is the first-prize winner of August Challenge #2: Fairy Tale Poetry and the second-prize winner of August Challenge #3: Repetition & Imagery on Young Poets Network.
)
)
[26] => stdClass Object
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[post_date] => 2020-09-28 11:01:32
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[post_content] => is thinking of you at those just-teenage get togethers at Rebecca’s,
hoping to feel grown but betraying your youth by gripping
your glammed-up fruit shoot too tightly.
Dionysus creating Strongbow Dark Fruit (and the
Aldi knock-off too) is thinking of you at family BBQs,
where you are fourteen and disgusting and need
something to do with your hands.
Dionysus creating Strongbow Dark Fruit knows about
Julie’s moving away party where you wanted to kiss her mouth
and cry, but Julie says ‘We do not cry in Mother Russia’ so
you do not cry but drink instead, behind quaking lips.
Dionysus creating Strongbow Dark Fruit as decorations
for your room, for those interminable zoom pub quizzes and
Results Day Eves, for spilling the secret of your lost virginity,
for reading fanfiction, for vomiting profusely, for retelling
it all gleefully at school the next day, for bad poetry,
for the picnic the week before you all leave.
Dionysus is creating Strongbow Dark Fruit
to see you through the ritual madness of growing.
[post_title] => Dionysus Creating Strongbow Dark Fruit
[post_excerpt] =>
[post_status] => publish
[comment_status] => closed
[ping_status] => closed
[post_password] =>
[post_name] => dionysus-creating-strongbow-dark-fruit
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[post_modified] => 2020-10-01 09:52:25
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[wpcf-summary-description] => This poem is the second-prize winner of August Challenge #2: Fairy Tale Poetry on Young Poets Network. This challenge was set and judged by Foyle Young Poet Meredith LeMaître in 2020.
[wpcf-rights-information] =>
[wpcf-poem-award] => 2nd prize, August Challenge #2: Fairy Tale Poetry
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[poet_data] => stdClass Object
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[ID] => 18016
[forename] =>
[surname] =>
[title] => Nadia Lines
[slug] => nadia-lines
[content] => Nadia is a top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2019. She is the first-prize winner in the 11-15 age category in the Turn Up the Volume challenge on Young Poets Network, and the first-prize winner in the 2019 poetry translation challenge with Modern Poetry in Translation, judged by Clare Pollard. She is also the second-prize winner in August Challenge #2: Fairy Tale Poetry; the third-prize winner in the meme challenge, written and judged by poet Rishi Dastidar; and commended in the moon poetry challenge, judged by Nii Parkes; the Golden Shovel challenge, judged by Peter Kahn; and in August Challenge #1: Re-mixing History, Fiction and the Unexpected.
)
)
[27] => stdClass Object
(
[ID] => 21079
[post_author] => 23
[post_date] => 2020-09-28 11:01:31
[post_date_gmt] => 2020-09-28 11:01:31
[post_content] => And I never saw my mother again.
All my stars fell palms-first into the thorns
outside my small glassless window.
No door, no stairs. I just found myself,
there. My thimble. My long smoking rifle
and I, the smoke softly ceasing to exist.
It takes seventy years to wash my hair.
She did it in such a way that I can’t undo,
the tight knots of my hair, the bolts, the locks.
I wear it like a straitjacket. Gold
is the softest, most feeble metal. The horsehair
bristles of the brush whisper against my scalp
a million matriarchal ghosts. Child. Girl. Here, my vengeance.
I want to hurl myself out the window and live,
briefly. For the small children in the distant village
to point and say
look! Mama! a shooting star!
[post_title] => Self-Portrait as Rapunzel, in which the Tower Represents Grief
[post_excerpt] =>
[post_status] => publish
[comment_status] => closed
[ping_status] => closed
[post_password] =>
[post_name] => self-portrait-as-rapunzel-in-which-the-tower-represents-grief
[to_ping] =>
[pinged] =>
[post_modified] => 2020-09-28 11:32:15
[post_modified_gmt] => 2020-09-28 11:32:15
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[wpcf-rights-information] =>
[wpcf-poem-award] => 3rd prize, August Challenge #2: Fairy Tale Poetry
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[poet_data] => stdClass Object
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[ID] => 18987
[forename] =>
[surname] =>
[title] => Ellora Sutton
[slug] => ellora-sutton
[content] => Ellora Sutton lives in Hampshire, where she is studying towards an MA in Creative Writing with the Open University. She has been published in Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, The Cardiff Review, Mookychick, and The Female Spectator, amongst others. She was commended in the 2019 Winchester Poetry Prize; won the 2019 Pre-Raphaelite Society poetry competition; and has been a winner of several Young Poets Network challenges. Her debut chapbook is forthcoming from Nightingale & Sparrow.
Ellora is the first-prize winner of the Carol Ann Duffy challenge on Young Poets Network, judged by Mari Hughes-Edwards, and celebrating Duffy's legacy as Poet Laureate. She is also the first-prize winner of Bailey Blackburn's 2018 August challenge #2 on found poems and the third Bloodaxe Archive challenge, The Re-Re-Re-Drafting Challenge. Ellora is also the second-prize winner in August challenge #4 on the poetics of interrogation, written and judged by Foyle Young Poet Kara Jackson in 2019. She is the third-prize winner of the Ode to (Small) Joy challenge and August Challenge #2: Fairy Tale Poetry.
Ellora is commended in the first, second and fourth Bloodaxe Archive challenges, The Poetics of the Archive, White Space and Take Note; the 2019 and 2020 poetry translation challenges with Modern Poetry in Translation; the Mary Wollstonecraft challenge, written and judged by Bee Rowlatt of the Mary on the Green campaign; the moon poetry challenge, judged by Nii Parkes; the Golden Shovel challenge, judged by Peter Kahn; the Bletchley Park challenge, judged by So Mayer; the W. S. Graham challenge judged by Rachael Boast as part of Graham’s centenary celebrations; and Ankita Saxena’s protest poetry challenge, remembering 100 years of the women’s vote in the UK.
)
)
[28] => stdClass Object
(
[ID] => 21085
[post_author] => 23
[post_date] => 2020-09-28 11:01:27
[post_date_gmt] => 2020-09-28 11:01:27
[post_content] => Şahmaran tells me behind her bar,
don’t trust a man if you have to tell him
but you have sisters and a mother, too.
don’t trust them if they think clearing the table is a compromise
don’t trust the family father who thinks his sons rather
fear him don’t trust the boy who pulls your left pigtail and
don’t trust your mum when she tells you it’s
because he likes you.
if you must trust someone, it should be your mum
but not when she tells you how you should
just shake it off,
if I must trust anyone, I
think, it should be Şahmaran,
my fairy godmother — except she isn’t a fairy
& she’s sorta scary & there are no godmothers over
this part of the World, but I
did grow up with the American Mouse, so I imagine Şahmaran a blonde girlboss, a CEO lady who’d like to
sell me bras and razors and
build a hipster coffee shop on top of my chest —
Şahmaran would tell me not to trust her American adaptations,
especially when they eat labneh or make baklava at home
and my tongue knows no difference
between v and w, but my new mantra is
I am the
Sun.
Şahmaran tells me, if I ever write a poem about her,
it should be a long one, an
epic with few line breaks that would take up
space my body could not, but I (should be)
am the Sun now.
I whisper to Şahmaran underneath the neon moon behind her bar,
“I am scared, but
only sometimes,
of men —
older men richer men
younger men poorer men businessmen, men
with questionable morals, men who sneer at the color
pink, men who like it when you’re
tied to a radiator, men with
beige pants who teach literature,
men who steal your
best favourite bands and films.”
she doesn’t say anything but
slices me golden apricot suns &
cherry hearts.
[post_title] => half woman half snake
[post_excerpt] =>
[post_status] => publish
[comment_status] => closed
[ping_status] => closed
[post_password] =>
[post_name] => half-woman-half-snake
[to_ping] =>
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[post_modified] => 2020-09-28 11:30:21
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[wpcf-summary-description] => This poem is commended in August Challenge #2: Fairy Tale Poetry on Young Poets Network. This challenge was set and judged by Foyle Young Poet Meredith LeMaître in 2020.
[wpcf-rights-information] =>
[wpcf-poem-award] => Commended, August Challenge #2: Fairy Tale Poetry
[wpcf_pr_belongs] =>
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[poet_data] => stdClass Object
(
[ID] => 20547
[forename] =>
[surname] =>
[title] => Alara Egi
[slug] => alara-egi
[content] => Alara is the first prize winner in August challenge #4 on the poetics of interrogation, written and judged by Foyle Young Poet Kara Jackson in 2019, on Young Poets Network. She is additionally commended in August Challenge #2: Fairy Tale Poetry.
)
)
[29] => stdClass Object
(
[ID] => 21081
[post_author] => 23
[post_date] => 2020-09-28 11:01:25
[post_date_gmt] => 2020-09-28 11:01:25
[post_content] => Don’t let your widowed father remarry—
that is, if you still want to wake up at dawn
to the sound of your heart beating between
your ribs. Remember: stepmothers are evil
and vain and bloodthirsty and own talking
magic mirrors capable of making calculated
analyses of your beauty. Remember: all
that matters is your fairness. No, not how just
you are, but how pale. The ivory of your skin
must be as pure as the ebony of your locks.
Your body should mirror a piano’s keys:
the juxtaposition of black and white will
help you morph into a corpse. Remember:
macabre is beautiful. Drain your veins of blood—
anemia does the trick. Remember: all you are
is an orphaned vessel of Once upon a time…
You are your own mother, and your own
daughter, and your father is nowhere to be found.
Remember: your body is a parable. Your sweet
song, godless. The apple skin is caught between
your brittle teeth, but you are only Eve
for a moment since the heavens punish you
as soon as the mortal sin is committed.
The whole of the human race will (thankfully)
not have to suffer from your naiveté.
Remember: huntsmen are always bad at following
directions and spurting a few fake tears may save
your life. Trust yourself, but mostly the seven
little men whose cottage you wander upon.
Remember: when someone is enamored of you,
they become obsessed with you (times seven).
Embrace necrophilia when it gallops up to you,
locked away in your glass casket (believe me,
in the depths of a forest, glass can materialize
out of thin air). Remember: you are nothing
more than a damsel in distress. Yet you are
immortal. You are fated to live happily ever
after if 1) you marry the royal necromaniac
2) you invite your stepmother to the wedding
and 3) avenge yourself by forcing her to dance
in a pair of scalding iron slippers until she drops
dead. The End. You are happy forever (and ever
ever and ever), a malefic wretch wed to a shallow
prince she just met. Neither virtue nor love matter
in this fairy tale. Snow White, named for the color
of your impossible skin, you are in desperate need
of a fake tan. What I mean to say is that in this
version of the story, we can only take you at face
value. Rewrite the end of your fable—teach us
your morals. Let the spring melt your snow, and let
us marvel at the fiery hues of the earth hidden beneath.
[post_title] => Rules of Survival for the Girl as White as Snow
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[post_modified] => 2020-11-03 16:46:06
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[wpcf-date-published] => 2020
[wpcf-summary-description] => This poem is commended in August Challenge #2: Fairy Tale Poetry on Young Poets Network. This challenge was set and judged by Foyle Young Poet Meredith LeMaître in 2020.
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[wpcf-poem-award] => Commended, August Challenge #2: Fairy Tale Poetry
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[ID] => 21051
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[title] => Divya Mehrish
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[content] => Divya was a commended Foyle Young Poet in 2018. She is the third-prize winner in the Poetry and Political Language Challenge on Young Poets Network, in partnership with the Orwell Youth Prize. She is commended in the 2020 poetry translation challenge with Modern Poetry in Translation, judged by Clare Pollard; and in August Challenge #2: Fairy Tale Poetry. She was longlisted in the 2019 National Poetry Competition and in the 2020 Art to Poetry challenge.
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IN WHICH PAPA (A SAILOR) GOES DEAF
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Through the Lens of @realDonaldTrump: A Decade of Twitter Politics
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so you want to talk about the ap*calypse
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What I Learnt from Reading the News
By Hannah Aston
after Kate Bingham I learnt that words don’t mean anything, That your hands do all the talking. I learnt that you don’t always have to tell the truth And I learnt that there’s always a loophole To weasel your way through. I learnt how to take offence at an inanimate object And how to play […]
someone calls me the c word and i respond
By Emma Chan
there are worse things to be. i could be, for instance, dying, or alive, but just enough to be taking up space. i could wade through a body that does not belong to me. yes, i could ravage, rumble, sour your milk, bite your children, poison your evening news. i could enlist my grandparents to […]
In My Wallet
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How to Flirt at Your Best Friend’s Funeral
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Content warning: grief
Semantics
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Content warning: rape
in response to eliezer wiesel’s night
By Jasmine Kapadia
this is the moment skeletons became atheists. gold lodged in the back of throats and stuck, rigor mortis like you never had a chance. and maybe the soup tastes like corpses, or maybe the soup tastes like god. or like angels, and cracks in the barbed wire. because skeleton is a synonym for survivor, in […]
How to Kill a Tiger
By Annie Cao
The sky reddening like an unbruised body— and you, gone for days now, calcified in this unshed nightmare where the tiger is closing its teeth over your wrist again, dozens of rabbit carcasses littering the halls again, tiger slipping quiet through the nights, […]
get out of my face
By Ottavia Paluch
Somewhere out there is a statue of me where my face isn’t as long, my sadness shorter. I meet with her head-on. I tell her to turn in the direction of the power ballads and the attractive folks that sing them. I’ve just seen a face, says Paul McCartney in the middle of 1965, and […]
the complexities of water
By Lauren Lisk
Scaffolding
By Iqra Naseem
Halfway through the horror movie, the lights give out, the whole city held under a blanket. Turning the other cheek. Some phantom hand finds mine. I will learn to love you softly is what the house would say, its belly emitting a quiet dust rumble, drops in the kitchen sink like fingers drumming a wooden […]
Pins
By Olivia Todd
I The mini liberators of women, hoisting those hems to the Heavens, giving their legs room to breathe. II The silver capped scholars, keeping those iridescent specimens in place for little curious eyes. III The diligent sewers’ stabilisers, holding together linen squares so they can stitch their designs to life. IV The silent supporters, presenting […]
Body
By Tom Rowe
Body lies on the bottom step. How did it get there? we ask. Body is bloody. Hair matted. Nails dirty. Body ’s hand falls near the light. We are glad Body has made no mess. Clean fall. No Body would notice. What should we do? Body says rug. Wrap me […]
Joan of Arc Gives Me a Buzz Cut, or Lux Venit in Nomine Vocis
By Anna Westwig
Joan of Arc and I lay head-to-head in the wash of a meadow frothing Queen Anne’s lace like a corrupted lung. Her fingers dabbling my palms like water, that martyr and I speak of our own voices: mine, stolen; hers given like a sack of entrails. Did the voices twitch, I ask, did they wriggle […]
Exposure, Part II
By Dale Booton
For Wilfred Owen Contains strong language our bodies ache on the streets where we rattle plastic cans for change we watch the flocks of low drooping eyes scuttle by like brambles in the north wind we have become part of the scene patient hopeful crying out but nothing happens on the corner a preacher […]
Julius Caesar Visits the NIST-F1 Atomic Clock
By Maggie Wang
20:30 from Stockport
By Erik Rüder
I saw Humphrey Bogart in a train station, Crewe, three o’clock in the morning, and he looked as faded and grey as I felt stumbling half asleep off the late service. When I was ushered out the doors, he was just there by the taxi rank, leant up on a pillar, smoking, lit up […]
What is Happening to Jesus of Nazareth and What You Can Do to Help: a Thread
By Nadia Lines
You may know Jesus. That preacher/teacher/healer/magic man with the clear silt skin. You may have seen him around town, raising the dead and making friends. Maybe he cleaned up your acne, maybe he showed you the gold humming of God. Take a look at his Tumblr: @carpentryqween. 1/? Jesus is a rebel leader/activist/socialist/pacifist and last […]
Rosalind on 2mg Estradiol a day
By Libby Russell
“Do you not know I am a woman?”(Act III, scene ii, As You Like It) My lover and I no longer speak. We leave notes in the mist on one another’s eyes. Once, he carried me through fields of sheep when I began to doubt that softness could be born. My lover doesn’t see the […]
Frankenstein
By Jayant Kashyap
Delhi, 2020 Delhi today is like a dried-out battleground / after one final revolution. Sentries in khaki thrash / young men on peculiar vehicles / for something I don’t understand. I hide my sewed-up face / in dark alleys; people look at me from the other side of their windows / scared. I’d have […]
John Dee at the Apple Store
By Helena Aeberli
Show me your teeth, God. Tonight, at the Apple Store under the unshut moon. Visit me tonight, God. Fog this spirit mirror with your Word — blind me with this new handheld eclipse. Oh, but my head sings with standing so long as the marrow of this sun-bleached bone. Church as mirage. Along its aisles […]
Ferenc Rákóczi in the Pantry
By Irma Kiss Barath
Ferenc II Rákóczi was a Hungarian aristocrat who led rebellions against the Habsburg empire in the early 18th century. He is widely considered a national hero in Hungary.”Rákóczi” is also the name of a popular Hungarian breakfast salami. Dear, kind Ferenc: I am in love with your meat-printed face. I fan this last pious slice, […]
Halfway Lunar
By Annie Cao
Based on the legend of Chang’e Winter: the living room gleaned of moonlight. A city slumped anemic over its knees, milky and putrid like a wound unsutured. I used to scrape rust from kitchen counters and drink fat until my tongue swelled gibbous, large enough to swallow the November sky and your rice fields gone […]
Dionysus Creating Strongbow Dark Fruit
By Nadia Lines
is thinking of you at those just-teenage get togethers at Rebecca’s, hoping to feel grown but betraying your youth by gripping your glammed-up fruit shoot too tightly. Dionysus creating Strongbow Dark Fruit (and the Aldi knock-off too) is thinking of you at family BBQs, where you are fourteen and disgusting and need something to do […]
Self-Portrait as Rapunzel, in which the Tower Represents Grief
By Ellora Sutton
And I never saw my mother again. All my stars fell palms-first into the thorns outside my small glassless window. No door, no stairs. I just found myself, there. My thimble. My long smoking rifle and I, the smoke softly ceasing to exist. It takes seventy years to wash my hair. She did it in […]
half woman half snake
By Alara Egi
Şahmaran tells me behind her bar, don’t trust a man if you have to tell him but you have sisters and a mother, too. don’t trust them if they think clearing the table is a compromise don’t trust the family father who thinks his sons rather fear him don’t trust the boy who pulls your […]
Rules of Survival for the Girl as White as Snow
By Divya Mehrish
Don’t let your widowed father remarry— that is, if you still want to wake up at dawn to the sound of your heart beating between your ribs. Remember: stepmothers are evil and vain and bloodthirsty and own talking magic mirrors capable of making calculated analyses of your beauty. Remember: all that […]