#SelectedPoetry – September

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Eds. Katie Jenkins and David Hanlon.

This batch of poetry features the work of some of the most talented poets in the writing community today.

These poets use their words to create art that is both thought-provoking and engaging. They explore a wide range of topics and they do so with a unique blend of creativity and skill.

Whether you are a seasoned poetry lover or a newcomer to the genre, we encourage you to explore this collection. You may find yourself surprised by what you discover.

Mariam Saidan

Mariam Saidan is a Specialist Advocate for Women’s Rights and has worked as a Children’s Rights Advocate, studied Human Rights Law at Nottingham Universality and Creative Writing at Kent University. She was born in London, and has lived in Iran, France, and the UK. She wrote her first journal at 8 years old while travelling with her family in Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. Her recent most publications can be found at ‘Kent Review’, ‘ink sweat & tears’ and ‘The Bombay Review’.

Singing Eyes of Iran 

She flicks her glass eye in a public video saying  
“Now I have a singing eye!” 
She seems happier than I’ve ever been. 
light streaming in my little garden 
in London, weak heart in Iran. 
I keep repotting plants to see if the roots are fine
you do weird things when your motherland 
gets smaller than a prison cell 
and you escape it.

They shoot,                     
the women dance 
like there’s a nightclub 
in every single one of them 
open until dawn.

Regine Ebner

Regine is a teacher and writer in Tucson, Arizona. She is the author of Oxidized Pennies (Alien Buddha Press, 2022) and has poems in numerous anthologies. She writes about landscape and place, inspired by the great American Southwest.

Desert Streets

In these shambled fields of quince daylight
dark gathers deep in the sharp desert thistle


canyons whisper of cold plateaus
columns of silver thorns
and homeless mountain fugues


and the dead things there can all rest undisturbed
in the still of the bristle and sage
in the ripple of the bare-winged grasses


while the brackish desert sleeps


tiny pieces of tempered sand
float up and wide
into the saffron wind

Alessa Catterall

Alessa Catterall (she/they) is an Anglo-Scottish composer and poet. She writes about living fully, authentically, and with vulnerability as a chronically ill, neurodivergent, queer woman. She aspires to live in a kinder, less human-centric world. Her work has appeared in Aloe Magazine and Selcouth Station Press.

We Are Still Here

From the night ink tumbled out
a wedding dress dream 
spilling its lace across my chest
wrapping me up in hope, desire, 
oss. The heart spools out its longing, 
never knowing where these delicate threads
lead. Pull on a strand, and it unravels, 
tearing away with the synapses and nerves 
adjoined to it.


I gazed upon the maw of the dream 
who feeds on my mind, piece by piece
under occluded stars, and into it 
fed my heart, whole morsel
to swallow tenderly. 
When its teeth ground down upon me
I cried out. Hope shatters against the palate 
as our layers – wide pink, our veined blue, 
our keen grey, our steady pulsing red, 
our soft – all are stripped away. 
It leaves only the black
outline of our light pressed flat
upon the world. 


Yet our refraction, the rain splayed out 
into shining spectrum,
will not always be bay for the dark, 
but a warm, tender thing
embraced within it, held carefully.


And we are still here – creating joy, 
shining our lanterns bold to the darkness,
breathing in the euphoria of it all, all 
the beautiful that is on its way.

Rachel McCarren

Rachel McCarren is a poet based in Waterford, IE. Her work has been featured in The Honest Ulsterman, Goat’s Milk Mag, Anti-Heroin Chic, and more. Her first full-length book of poems, Necromantic, is available on Amazon from Blood Letters Books. You can read more about her on her website at: https://rachelmmccarren.wixsite.com/poet. Her work explores themes of female sexuality, feminine rage, pansexuality, queerness, and otherness.

Nosferatu

My womb waits for you.
With eyes like full moons,
it whimpers and begs for you.
If I tell it to sit still, it croons.
If I tie my belt tight below my ribcage,
flatten my palm over its split seal,
cross my legs, close my eyes,
let my mind go dull and dark and wide,
it still cries for you.


It prays for you, for the creature with eyes
like bowls of blue moonlight 
spilt over red desert dunes. 
My womb bides its time,
counts the hours aloud, swoons
for the man whose heart flies faster
than a hare caught in the amber iris 
of an eagle’s steadfast swoop, 
whose limbs move with the tender violence 
of an owl skinning a lesser-brained fowl.


My heart lies, but my womb
sings its truth! All night
it echoes love’s tight hollow
throb-knot hot-swell spasm.
My belly becomes a bellowing 
chapel dome. It drones 
with hooded monks’ huddled moans. 
Mournful, atonal, it hums
a never-ending herald.
Obedient as a two-headed dog, 
it bows to its conditioned whistle,
salivates in anticipation
of its master’s lilting howl.


Under the rod of your reach,
thick timbers snap, branches creak,
leaves quake with the spread and speed
of your webbed wings. Your silver tongues
hiss and click against the inside 
of your ivory beak. You laugh, 
throw your head back, trace the gap
between my thighs with rough knuckles
grasp my knees and plunge deep 
into my singing bowl to lap up
all the poison-sap from me.


You fill me with seed and leave me 
wounded and gaping, stomach ripe 
with the root of your petulant greed. 
While your silence bribes my confidence, 
I seethe, envious of your strength,
your power, your freedom,
your beauty.

Oenone Thomas

Oenone Thomas is a writer and chocolatemaker, brought up in South Wales and southern Spain, now at home in the south east of England. She is about to begin her second MA year at Poetry School, London.

Nine Counts Of Betony And Milfoil

I picked some rosemary. They said that was the first sign.
I made a broth, in an oversized pan. That was the second.
I took in a cat, with a mangy dog and three hens, rescued.
Third, they all agreed. Soon I lived alone, cooked for one.


They asked me if I’d share, warm the widower next door.
Four. I took to staying in. They swore I came back and forth
from an attic window — absurd, not so young anymore
— and with a brush of sticks. Six. They all looked away


when I showed them I had no need of leaving for my food, 
showed the rows of snappy beans, sappy lettuces in clumps, 
swelling apple orchard, nut trees, overflowing water butt, 
my three fat hens, now laying. My mistake was to point 


to the herbs, mention Betony, best for toothache, Milfoil, 
for fever. That was seven. As they gathered round, a hen 
took flight; eight. Some more of them came, felt afraid 
so that was nine. Pardon me, I didn’t let them count to ten. 

Sue Finch

Sue Finch’s first collection, ‘Magnifying Glass’, was published in 2020. Her work has also appeared in a number of online magazines. She loves the coast, peculiar things and the scent of ice-cream freezers.

I Hate You

said the cow.
Yeah, she hates you, whispered the grass,
hates you,
hates you, it swished on and on.


So I climbed the gate.
Get off, you’re too heavy, said the gate.
Yeah, get off, you’re gonna break us
said the padlock on the chain.


I stepped over a large muddy puddle,
marvelled at a greeny-brown cow pat.
Imagine creating that!
Then I remembered that the cow 
hated me
and I ditched my admiration.


Stop looking at me 
and notice how quiet it is, stupid,
said the cowpat.


I lifted my head to the clouds,
caught the eye of a bird I couldn’t name,
saw its beak begin to open.


I wondered if the silence would shatter 
like a pint glass, all splinters and nibs, 
or just split quietly down the middle
like surface ice on a pond.


There’s only one of you.
The unknown bird was staring at me.
I waited for it to cock its head.
It remained still;
a totem carved in the tree.


You want me to repeat that 
don’t you?
mocked a heron
standing on the path,
You think I have ancient grey wisdom
and the key to solitude.


I did.
And I wanted to carry on,
but as his wings opened like a prayer
and he lifted his legs to fly
I froze.

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