The Year of Not Dancing Hours passed languid as the flap of a hawk’s wing in a last July before the awkward initiations of fifteen and lifts to far-afield jiving. He’d work for an uncle, cutting hay, fixing shingles with bradawls and hot, smoking pitch — evenings, hung round with fairground hands till the sideshows lit at eight. Then he’d sidestroke from the main pier, alone, on a full tide as far as the bobbing Perpetua, its line of cork floats with dock and fairground small as a snow-bubble town, bull-horns carrying Frank Ifield’s When the angels ask me to recall out across a calm, irredentist blackness. C.L. Dallat …from The Year of Not Dancing (Blackstaff Press, 2009) _______________________________________ C.L. Dallat, poet, musician & critic, (b. Ballycastle, Co. Antrim, Ireland) lives in London where he reviews literature & the arts for the TLS & Guardian, has been a regular contributor [...]
The journey Travelling early, we set out while it’s still dark. At this unblessed hour, we should be wary of the threat of footpads and of cut-throats, but we are blithe with optimism, our surprising sovereigns stinging in our pockets. Our burdens are as insubstantial as the moon and already last night has dwindled to a twist of wrinkled bedclothes. How did we wake so promptly without alarm? What witchery set us bolt upright in our beds? Perhaps as the dawn begins to damage the dark, one of our number will venture: “Where was it that we were heading? Who has the map?” Day scarifies the sky, polluting our clarity of purpose. We will not answer the rank-breaker. We tear off hunks of bread with hungry teeth. The light comes up like sadness. We do not want to recognise ourselves ___________________________________________ London-based poet Susannah Hart has attended Coffee-House Poetry’s Troubadour [...]
__________________________________________________ Poet Dominic Bury grew up in Bideford in Devon and now lives in London where he works as a copywriter & brand writer. In his spare time he manages front-of-house at Coffee-House Poetry nights at the famous Troubadour cellar-club in London’s Earls Court (www.coffeehousepoetry.org). Dom studied Creative Writing at Kingston University & his poems have been widely published in UK poetry journals including Poetry Wales, Ambit and Iota, and in Best British Poetry 2014 (Salt).
Insomniac by Mona Arshi Never marry an insomniac. You will have ________to mind yourself. ________________Have hem weights ________sewn into the lining of your garments, cure your skin with almond oil until it’s bloated ________and the pores are brimming. ________________Purchase a large wooden-grained ________trunk and place it near your bed-it’s for safekeepings. (Obscurely, somewhere deep inside you ________know all this).Very soon ________________you won’t be able to tell ________the days apart, you’ll develop a tic and it will distill at the centre (within the hive of your other small ________anomalies).You’ll flail ________________in mild wind and when you speak ________minute silver-fish consort in the pit of your throat. Exquisite wife to the shade: the exact point you place ________your finger-tip on winter mornings, ________________a raindrop will later stop and fret. ________It’s a wonder if you survive at all. It will all end in the mouth; you’ll blink- ________he’ll stir. You’ll practice lying very [...]