Welcome back to The Codex. This is a special edition feature that serves to supplement the recent release of The Whiskey Tree: Untamed Love (Wave 1), where the notion of ‘Untamed love’ takes centre stage. Each of these poems was handpicked by Alan Parry and I over a special two day #PoemsAbout #Love submission call on Twitter / X.
We are pleased to present three poems that reflect the anthology itself and also stand on their own merit, encapsulating the transcendental and transformative power of love.
Following Untamed Nature and paving the way for Untamed Identity, Untamed Love celebrates the most primal of emotions.
1. Like Feather, Like Sun by Marta BilkovaMarta Bilkova immerses us in the gold of summer, capturing intimate moments of love and nature’s beauty, offering readers a sensory experience that lingers long after reading.
2. Revival by Jenevieve Carlyn Hughes
Jenevieve Carlyn Hughes invites us into communion with nature, a fusion of memories and present sensations. In this imaginative piece, we feel a sense of interconnectedness with all living things.
3. Butterfly Effect by Paul Short
Paul Short’s powerful poem takes us on a journey from despair to rebirth, highlighting, once again, the transformative power of unbounded, untamed love. The experience of love revitalises the spirit.
Like feather, like sun
In August the pain in splinters
of heat, like all things golden not
a whole life order, lifts. I devour
the saltiness of light, as if pleasure
acquired a taste, and thus became
a choice. You read to me aloud, with
all your body. Over mine, alive, a stray cat
stays aloof while we attempt to happen
to the soil, to stalks of grain.
Marta Bilkova
Marta Bílková is a logician and poet who writes in Czech and English. When not travelling, she lives in a cabin in Brnky, north of Prague. She is a frequent contributor to TopTweetTuesdays on Twitter and has previously been published by Black Bough Poetry. Twitter: @MartaBilkov
Revival
They are gathering in the fields of tall grass
at daybreak now, a barefoot service by the creek,
like a flower I’m awakened by the touch of wings,
have you ever felt the sensation of eyelashes
upon your cheek? This too is a kind of ministry,
a fluttering so quiet, beyond our human ears,
we must still our hearts so we can hear the spirit
of the place, a spectral wild: are emerald ash borers
welcomed alongside green-darner dragonflies?
O glittering beetle who ate every elm in the 1940s,
please appreciate the trees! Childhood memories
of bocce on the lawn, my grandmother would say
when a bug flies at your face, it only wants so much
to give you a kiss, this unrefined love, a delicious
wildness. By the birches & willows, wet meadows
and dry creeks, let us pray that they’ll still come
to congregate: airy processions of grasshoppers,
hummingbird moths, mining bees, sapphire wasps;
Cabbage whites, holly blues, tiger swallowtails,
checkerspots. Where’s the rust-red question mark?
Jenevieve Carlyn Hughes
Jenevieve Carlyn Hughes lives near the Long Island Sound. She gratefully received the 2023 Connecticut Poet Laureate Award for Eco-Poetry, and the Poetry of the Sacred Award from the Center for Interfaith Relations. Her poems have appeared in literary journals, anthologies, and scribbled in sand. X: @coastal_poet
Butterfly Effect
From the remnants of then
I built an oubliette
guilty to the crime
of hoping something special existed
pelted my soul-drained corpse in
a bloodied crucible, I lay.
A butterfly landing in my palm
pulled me from stupor to feet
– it’s incredible how atrophy subsides
at the gentle whisper of wings opening
mimicking heartbeats and explaining life.
Self-imposed exile
and emotionless tomb
transformed readily to chrysalis
metamorphosis can be fast
when you need it.
Leaving my jail
flying high with sunspot yellow, steel-sharp wings
dovetailing your chestnut elegance
we bellowed rapidly at the tinderbox
of my past life
when the smoke rose – we perched
watching the old world burn.
Paul Short
Paul Short is a writer and poet from Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom. He is currently working on his first pamphlet. Paul is influenced by the heritage of the North East and his working-class background. He has had poetry published by Black Bough Poetry, Flight of The Dragonfly and several journals. Twitter: @PaulWritesPoems
Nature poetry. For too long, it’s been the domain of soft-focus sentimentality: predictable scenes of meadows, rivers, and, yes, even gliding gulls.
As 2024 draws to a close, it’s impossible not to marvel at how much has been accomplished in just one year. This
Call for Submissions: Glow: City at Night Poems The Broken Spine is excited to announce that submissions for our latest slimline anthology,
The Broken Spine is a poetry and arts collective proudly published on the coastal edge of North-West England. Founded in 2019 by Alan Parry and Paul Robert Mullen – two school friends reunited after twenty years through a mutual love of poetry.
