As we transition into the crisp embrace of September, The Broken Spine is delighted to present a curated collection of poetry that encapsulates the spirit of change, introspection, and the intricate relationship between nature and our inner worlds. Carefully selected by our editors, David Hanlon and Katie Jenkins, this month’s offerings explore the profound connections that bind us to one another and to the earth.
Alex Carrigan (he/him) is a Pushcart-nominated editor, poet, and critic based in Alexandria, VA. He is the author of Now Let’s Get Brunch: A Collection of RuPaul’s Drag Race Twitter Poetry (Querencia Press, 2023) and May All Our Pain Be Champagne: A Collection of Real Housewives Twitter Poetry (Alien Buddha Press, 2022).
A retired builder, Miles Hovey holds a BA in Creative Writing from Aberystwyth University. His work has been featured by Literature Wales, Collide Zine, Black Bough Poetry, New Croton Review, and in the Aberystwyth MA students anthology. A Pushcart-nominated writer, Miles is currently working on his debut poetry collection.
Nia Solomon is a mother, gardener, and poet whose writing has appeared in Magma, Mslexia, and various anthologies. Often inspired by her deep connection with nature, Nia has been shortlisted for several poetry prizes and is currently working on her first pamphlet.
Sue Spiers lives in Hampshire and is involved with the Winchester Poetry Festival. Her poems have been published in Acumen, The North, South, The High Window, and Ink, Sweat & Tears. She won the Shepton Mallet poetry prize in 2024 and was longlisted in the 2023 National Poetry Competition.
Tolu Ogunlesi’s fiction and poetry have been featured in Wasafiri, Transition, Sable, Magma, Orbis, Eclectica, VLQ, Ad Fontes, and more. He has won the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize and the PEN/Studzinski Literary Award, and was shortlisted for a 2023 Miles Morland Writing Scholarship. Tolu resides in Abuja, Nigeria.
Danielle Gilmour lives in Gloucestershire with her family, an unruly dog, various chickens, newts, and probably frogs. Her work has appeared in Spellbinder, Dreich, and Poetry Wales, among others. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2024, she can often be found in her potting shed, the forest, or the nearest body of water.
Kissing Mirrors
Alex Carrigan
After a line from Dylan Parkin
Kissing mirrors has given me such cold lips.
I expected warmth to radiate out from the glass.
The glass offered me no reminders of mugs of mulled
wine by the fireplace, nor of us under that tartan blanket.
That tartan blanket was how I first learned how warm
I could be, and I wonder if my kiss made you boil over.
You boiled over as we huddled under that blanket,
and I could see how I looked in your dark brown eyes.
Your dark brown eyes weren’t there the next morning, snowshoes
removed from the wall and oval tracks leading outside.
Outside, I wondered if you were warm enough.
Inside, I was desperate to feel that warmth again.
I’d feel warm again if I gave myself the love you showed me,
but kissing mirrors has given me such cold lips.
The river above Milford Haven
Miles Hovey
Words from the far shore
to the foreshore of this estuary.
Vowels that owl out of woodland,
wavelets of consonants that rattle on margins.
History calls from humpbacked clouds
which whale through blueness.
An eagle built of thought
soars beneath suns on a breast of wind.
We are enraptured,
wings unfurl on our shoulders
like ferns uncurl in the forest.
Swan white, we thump our love on pale air.
Above, bright light, whilst far below
our shadows rush, pursued by night.
No Trains Out of Hyderabad
Nia H Solomon
Protests. Strikes for the next three days Madam.
Pushing clammy rupees to the clerk, I clutch the ticket
tight through the tumult, bellows. Sticky bodies jab
bayonet elbows. Backpackers don’t stop here. I’d marked
Mogul palaces, gharial rivers. Stuck luminous post-it-notes
on bible thin pages. Pushka lake, seek moksha like Sadhus,
sip bhang lassi on the street where a new friend scribbles
secrets in biro. Hidden coves where trance beats blast
and the cool kids forget their own names. Dance till their feet
bleed, high on freedom, minds forever altered, air a chillum haze.
I cover my shoulders, wear cerise full skirts to the floor. My hair
a celebrity on busses, tugged from behind. In Delhi a sharp blow
smacked hard on flesh when hands grope more than my head.
Here in meat-searing heat women dressed in black and deep
blue burqas eat soup through a flap. My cowlick rising like
saffron steam from a bowl of golden biryani. Lunch under
the clank of ceiling fan I’m flanked by three beautiful men,
travel buddies who are neither brother, father, or husband.
Behind the grey gauze were the women whispering slut
to each other in Telugu or Urdu? I tie a scarf over my head,
swallow awkwardness with fluffy yellow rice.
Private Collection
Sue Spiers
i.m. John Singer Sargent (1856 – 1925)
What can be said, and what remains tacit
about those private sketches, long hidden,
unearthed as relatives scoured the attic –
material for a biographer.
Lifelong bachelor: that chestnut repeats
the rumours of the women in your life,
unconventional kinds of romances,
deep friendships with male and female artists
and your sister Emily – ersatz wife,
as hostess for guests and convenience;
no need to explain, no need to expose
the staid and reticent persona used.
The light and dark of each sitter’s portrait,
elements to be brushed out of the work,
those hints for the informed to know they’re loved
and captured for eternity in oil.
Pandemic
Tolu Ogunlesi
1.
Things happening inside this bloody chest, things assembled someplace far—market, lab, outer space, or other hell—all we know is someone said: ship it off to a scrambling world! This keepsake portfolio marks x-thousand days since the last viral upheaval. Somebody brought these things home, despite best efforts. Generosity—or unwitting vendors of variant sweepstakes?
2.
Inside another chest, another part of the city, or the world, the lights go out in the middle of suspense-full scenes, god exiting the (pumping) machine just so he can shut it down. Lucky one, listed for parole. I collect the days, hour-glassing & sealing, exactly how I picture the imprisoning of heart & lung and all the other soft & bloody parts, the slow count to steady light.
Isle of Raasay Tasting Notes
Danielle Gimlour
after Sorley MacLean
There is very gentle smoke – little more
than the smell of a distant bonfire, swilling
around the green bracken by the Burn. In the background
I hear my fleshy fruits – their laughter
a mineral mist in my ears. One sucks raspberry juice
from salty fingers. Another builds a bed in dry grass. The last
hunts the peppered curve of the common seal, flopped
on lowball rocks like ripening banana peel. It is
a very soft, sweet start. We walk endlessly –
stumbling among the sweet plum heather like
lightheaded deer drunk on colour; green apple lichen,
black-cherry moss. I long to stay here long enough to find myself
knee-deep in peat, bright and hardy as the gorse. Instead
we hoard talismans of dusty sea glass, stones, and claws.
We ferry them home slightly charred. The water opens
a black wake and we cling to each other like otters
There is a greater sense of space
and also depth between the Sounds
I carry it in my pocket to keep these bones
afloat – a fossil curled and resting beneath
the time and weight of my world; forming
and guarding a memory I love
Sometimes my fingers trace its curve to find the loch,
the quay, the cool Burn where gold pours down
the steep slopes. Where time, the deer, is in
the wood. Where elements cling like wet linen
And for a while time rests –
it rests like a knife on fruit skin
(Text in italics taken from Dave Broom’s Tasting notes on Isle of Raasay Whiskey)
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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.
