Month: July 2020

Silent Sob

I have a poem in this month’s issue of Visual Verse and, as ever, I’m in great company, including Misky Braendeholm, Jane Dougherty and Kerfe Roig. This month, writers have been inspired by a powerful sepia-toned image by Gambian-British photographer Khadija Saye, whose work was exhibited in the Diaspora Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in […]

Forgiveness

In the industrial hinterland, stacks belch blue flares, stinking clouds mushroom from smoking fires and orange aureoles radiate and redden the sky of our environmental Armageddon. Will chimneys and factories ever disappear? Will Nature fill the voids of mining year on year? Will a time come when a different kind of steam evaporates across the […]

After the Virus

Megan closed the Chat Window, replacing it with the World Window, and sighed. The daily chat with her mother was becoming a chore and she felt ashamed to feel that way. None of her Friends seemed to have a problem with their mothers, but then hers had been much older when she ‘gave birth’. There […]

Fifth of July

I remember your birthdays as always sunny, with an occasional shower, maybe, but I only ever picture you with golden shimmers. Your smiles started as honeyed glimmers reflected in your sky-blue eyes, rapt with homemade gifts, so badly wrapped. Once, we took you to a restaurant; inside was candlelit while summer blazed outside. Tipsy with […]

To Unravel a Maypole

From his hiding place behind the throne, Will watched until every villager had dropped off to sleep, including the May Queen and her attendants. Silence fell like a curtain on a theatrical performance. He wasn’t sure what to do: stay and keep watch over Willa’s sleeping neighbours or return to the cottage to help her. […]