Councillor Wilkinson

Councillor Wilkinson is walking the Common,
this quiet morning, early spring,
rehearsing his farewell speech.

The councillor’s mind is tabulating.
The Common is of course his great achievement.
Chairman of the steering group, ’82 to ’89.
Common Development Committee Chairman
through to the noughties.

A sudden racket, yowls and yells.
Small boy, lost ball, a mother fraught.
The ball is wedged below the eaves
of the cricket club pavilion.

But Wilkinson has a walking stick
(an affectation, to be honest),
so reaches, crooks the ball, tugs it out.
Oh thank you, sir. They smile, walk off.

But then. Oh dear.
In tweaking out the ball, he has disturbed,
almost dislodged, a martin’s nest.
It’s angled dangerously. So he climbs
on the refuse bin, smudging the knee
of his trousers, grazing an ankle, reaches,
eases the nest to equilibrium.
Climbs down. Walks on.

Roads and Bridges Chairman. ’84 to ’92.
Forty years in local government.
Councillor Wilkinson, absorbed again,
is rehearsing his farewell speech.

____________________________________________________________________

Robert Nisbet is a Welsh poet who has been published widely in Britain, where he has been shortlisted for the Wordsworth Trust Prize, and the USA, where he has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

One Tank of Gas

It’s good to go from west to east
you’ll get there earlier
than you think
you’re going opposite the earth’s spin
and that makes your airplane
go faster
Galileo and Ptolemy figured this out
even before there were airplanes
it’s even good to go from east to west
because the sun is at your back
you’re like Paul
singing ‘I’ll Follow The Sun’
it’s not so good going from south to north
because the people you meet up there are
as cold as the land they live in
they look at you funny and
make you feel small
if you go from north to south
it’s a recipe for heartburn
the people down there fry nearly everything they eat
plus hominy grits
biscuits and gravy
hush-puppies
if you’re from the North and
you drive from east to west
it’s a good thing
because you’ll enjoy
gaining an hour
and with all you have to do
but
if you’re from the South and
you drive from east to west
it is inherently bad
you say to yourself
‘I’ve lost an hour
and I’ll never get it back’
because the little hand
just went from seven to six
an hour you earned
through your own sweat
someone just took your entitlement away
so now you are sad
and a little angry
at all those who ever hurt you
it makes you wistful
wishing for that hour
taken from your sovereign grasp
the only good thing is
there is an aeroplane overhead
going east to west
that you imagine is full of them
all snobbish flying first class
and maybe
just maybe
it might
in spite
of what Bernoulli said
or Nostradamus
or the Old Farmers Almanac
just go flat like
a hushpuppy made without Bisquick

______________________________________________________________________

Paul Smith is a civil engineer who has worked in the construction racket for many years. He has traveled all over the place and met lots of people. Some have enriched his life. Others made him wish he or they were all dead. He likes writing poetry and fiction. He also likes Newcastle Brown Ale. If you see him, buy him one. His poetry and fiction have been published in Convergence, Missouri Review, Literary Orphans, and other lit mags.

Sufi Moment

One mistake. That one mistake.

Just one is all it takes
to send our world
into a gyro-verse that we
barely recognize.

Still, if we could retrieve one,
just one
mistake from the tapestry
of our lives,
which one would it be?

Remember, we’re allowed
one mistake only today.

Tomorrow’s up to random fate
(how ironic) fate sporting one
vermilion swirl on its jester
cheek with a corroded brass
bell crunching each arthritic
big toe crammed inside its
crumpled deerskin slipper.

Remember, today we’re allowed
one mistake only.

So, choose carefully.

_____

Go, Johnny, Go!

(Listening to John Doe’s “Let’s Be Mad”)

We poets remember all those crazy nights
spent cruising the Mount Royal Tavern
or Broadway in Fells Point as though roaming
a wasteland fueled by enigmas.

Yeah, those nights spent wondering
about our next move—
should we head for home;
after all, it’s only 2 AM.

Those nights intoxicated by youthful dementia.

Those nights wandering beneath the peeling arches
of Red Door poetry readings populated
by Baltimore’s liveliest poets of the day.

Nights that delivered black rain, plus
alchemic monks dipping their waxen fingers
into pools of ecstasy, Georg Trakl style.

Nights that detonated our brains to flow
from industrial stacks coughing black plumes
above the Harbor.

All those nights that spawned a revolution
inside muscle cars fueled by flaming saddle
shoes and slide guitars!

____________________________________________________________________

Alan Britt has been nominated for the 2021 International Janus Pannonius Prize awarded by the Hungarian Centre of PEN International for excellence in poetry from any part of the world. Previous nominated recipients include Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Charles Bernstein, and Yves Bonnefoy. He was interviewed at The Library of Congress for The Poet and the Poem. A graduate of the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, he currently teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University.

there are a lot of ways to kill yourself

there are a lot of ways
to kill yourself i write
on my bathroom mirror.
i take off my shoes
and walk the streets.
it is dark, i am black,
i am female, i keep walking.
the ground is sinking,
the streetlights are sinking,
the neighbor’s dog is sinking,
the car i broke into is sinking,
the keys are not here.
i look into the rearview mirror
and the sign says no parking
between seven am and seven pm. 

________________________________________________________________________

Chidera Abii is a Nigerian American writer. She studied fiction and poetry at the University of Virginia and is currently a Michener Fellow at the Michener Center for Writers. She lives in Austin, TX.

Folkestone (2013)

It’s always winter there, but it feels like autumn, because it’s all slightly dead and slightly broken. It’s 2013 and you’re still young and skinny and your family can afford the trip and no one knows who Trump is. They use pounds there but the pounds look like big stamps and you forget it’s money and you start buying stuff only a teen would. It’s 7:30 not 4:20 but you’re smoking all the same you don’t care, you have long, silver cigarettes (the cheapest, still too expensive) for breakfast. You drink Monster before classes not coffee because you know you’ll need it and because you pretend to care but don’t and that’s okay because you’re 16 and in love and there’s parks everywhere and people say hi and no one steals a thing because you’re in Europe and South America is far away. You think feelings and emotions are for emos and you call them faggots but you know you love someone and that makes you proud and special and it makes it easier to sleep at night after you jerk off (never thinking about her). You live with a young couple that must have been lovely but you never noticed because you’re too busy smoking and drinking and watching Heroes with the Muslim friend you never thought you’d have. You lose the house keys once and don’t see the allegory there but no one does anything because it’s Britain and everyone’s polite about everything and no one really gives a shit about an Argentinian. You buy beer with a fake ID from a Pakistani girl that can’t be older than you but already is (she has to be), you go to a hidden garden full of orchids and bees and get offered some hashish but you don’t have enough money and you’re too afraid to try. There’s a cemetery in the street where you think you’re living but you’re not because you will always be an Argentinian and you’ll never escape from the Third World.  So you go there with the girl you love (names never matter) and you walk and should be holding hands but don’t because you’re nothing and will never be, and she talks and talks and you’re Semele so you can’t reply because you’re burning inside and everything’s on fire even though it’s winter and suddenly wearing shorts isn’t such a bad idea. She stands in front of a big tombstone with a ship on top, some German soldiers who died once, who cares, she does, so you stare too and think it’d be right to cry for the dead young men because you’re young too (not for long) and dead (this you’ll be forever). So one day you get up and think that maybe she loves you back so you call her and talk and make her sit beside you and you tell her. You don’t say “I love you” because you know better, but you do say things like “I always dream about you” and “I like you a lot.” A second passes and your fate is decided in that second. She shakes her head, says “No,” and starts crying. You cry too, but that doesn’t matter, your life is already irrelevant and stupid. She goes away and doesn’t look back, never looks back, always moving forward (unlike you). A couple sees her and asks her if she’s okay and you know what she says and what she should have, but it’s too late now and you can’t chase her and you’ll get scolded once you get home and you will nod and pretend to be sorry and go to your room and see what it feels like to scream in your pillow. 

A lot of things happen after that, too many, you want to write them all down, you get obsessed with the idea of laying down all the facts you think you remember, but no one will ever read them because you’re too afraid to let people know how you really feel about her, about that trip, about Folkestone, where it’s always winter, where you bought pot once and went to English classes, where everyone says hi and no one steals a thing, where you’ll always lie dead.    

________________________________________________________________________

Felipe Rodolfo Hendriksen studies Literature at Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina. He currently lives in Quilmes.

Combustion

I

Where do I go without you? The shell
in which I hid before you arrived is now
compromised, and I feel naked as a wire.

I’m an old-school purchaser, always buying
two in place of one; a spare, an extra
for emergency.

But with you I was young & careless: never
thought of getting insurance, never imagined
slipping my number to another, or handing them
the duplicate of my back door’s key.

I understand persons are not objects; who then
are these people I see kneeling in cemeteries, talking
to stone? Where I reside, presidents inaugurate

aircrafts by cracking open coconuts at the landing
wheels, anointing moist vermilion with their thumbs
in vulcanised rubber grooves.

II

An ambulance—its siren bawling like a hungry
child—vanishes as soon as it appears. A grey
nightjar prepares to launch from an electric pole.

The traffic light: red; the zebra-coloured
pavement strewn with rat-gnawed foam
mattresses and homeless tykes asleep

in crisp November chill. Their still,
subdued bodies shrouded in papery blankets,
their surreptitious breaths detouring
no passing feet. Alongside, on the road,

engines hum, exhaust pipes vibrate.
Petrol continues to ignite.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Sudhanshu Chopra is a poet, wordsmith and pun-enthusiast. 30 and rootless, he is fascinated by nature and frustrated by its incomprehension. He wishes we had evolved better or not at all. It is the midway that causes Catch 22 situations, which are quite troubling, mentally and otherwise. He tweets at @artofdying_