Editor's Comments
Welcome to the Issue 24, the first of two issues for 2020. I hope you enjoy reading the different poems. I'd like to remind readers and contributors that Allegro is now a biannual magazine. Issue 25 will be published in September and submissions will open on 1st June. For full details please see the Submissions guidelines.
Sally Long
Poems
Walking Towton Battlefield Trail
Beneath my feet blood sings and
bones complain.
Above me broods a broad expanse
of sky.
Wherever there is war it leaves a
stain.
Only the rich wore suits of
male and chain.
Poor men un-armoured must have
known they’d die.
Beneath my feet blood sings and
bones complain.
Lancastrians thought that day
would be their gain
until the Yorkists let their
arrows fly.
Wherever there is war it leaves a
stain.
A blinding blizzard concealed
iron rain
Wounded warriors, cruelly
pierced, bled dry.
Beneath my feet blood sings and
bones complain.
A bridge was formed
with bodies of the slain.
Sometimes I feel a ghost is
passing by.
Wherever there is war it leaves a
stain.
The bloody meadow’s now a
peaceful plain.
I watch the pink tinged cattle
graze nearby.
Beneath my feet blood sings and
bones complain.
Wherever there is war it leaves a
stain.
Judith Russell
Judith Russell
The Sea’s Secrets
Every
sailor knew that Ursa Minor
contained
the pole star;
they
knew how to cope with gales,
tar
their canvas clothes to keep
the
elements at bay, trim the sails.
They
could fathom the semaphore
of
swooping gulls, the cry and pitch
of
curlews, horizon anchor-light,
the
breaching of sea mammals,
sudden
sounds in the cave of night.
But
they feared uncertainty, sights
beyond
telling at sea or ashore;
old
shellbacks who saw much
more
than younger men, who went
below
to pray in creaking holds.
The
ship a church, and figurehead
a
sacred being with all-seeing eyes
to
chart the way. Athena’s breasts
once
calmed the storms, scattered
sirens
and put out Elmo’s fire.
Neptune
driving a pair of seahorses
gave
hope, or Jupiter astride his eagle.
Sometimes
an animal’s head
under
the bowsprit would suffice.
Any
carving could become a god.
A
gold coin in the keel gave hope,
A
silver coin beneath the mast.
Michael G. Casey
This Dream
This figure in dark robes and wielding a scythe
appears in my bedroom and, with the mere
curl of a finger, a glare from his eyeless sockets,
leads me down the stairs, out the front door,
down a street of withered trees, dead flowers,
and bones that crunch underfoot,
then through a narrow alley where, from windows
of bleak buildings on either side,
ghostly faces shriek as if in diabolical pain.
Then I awaken, shaking uncontrollably.
You take hold of me, pull my body towards you.
“You were having a nightmare,” you say,
then hug me until I fall back to sleep.
It’s a preview of my own death.
It’s a preview of where you stand on the matter.
John Grey
Nightingale
These repeat-notes with step-change and
chorus, heard through glass,
tunester in a wall spot,
leaf-fringed, by blocks,
piped up from the roadside,
might be a recording
or snatches from a poem, sounding in the head.
Old notes in darkness,
going out from a garden
led by a cellist and broadcast on the Beeb.*
Here, tuned in to shadow, by traffic,
love bird and instrument guesting unnoticed,
plays ad lib, impro and riff.
And the sudden change in set,
up sticks with listeners from chamber to outdoors,
to mid-May live,
as the on-air, breath-held woman
stirs dark sounds into wood
to coax up the birds.
Or poet in close-up, caught speaking low,
working the changes on a near-death experience.
Deliberate, we are there.
Still hear the dream-songs
in odd spots, build-ups, crossings
and stop-offs behind walls.
Or here, taking up position,
all ears at the window,
for lead-break, DJ, night bird, heart throb
(that song again, that song again)
encore and finale
to cut across the dark.
And not be interrupted.
Leslie Tate
* On May 19, 1924, the Savoy Orphean BBC radio
concert was interrupted to go to the garden of virtuoso cellist Beatrice
Harrison where she was heard playing, accompanied by local nightingales. The
performance was so popular it was repeated annually until 1936.
Murmur
The
starling nests in a cup of feathers.
The nouns
come out like eggs.
Roosting
in the holy synonyms of towns
colonising
common spaces,
the bird
becomes grammar.
In the
syntax of grass and pasture
there is
a legend spooling wordlessly.
Suddenly
in the air a flock of clauses
lifts and
drops like logic, silent over children calling,
silent
over ears of corn silking by the road,
over the
wood pigeon’s soft choke
in the
consonants of trees, over the bee
devouring
the vowel of a flower.
An autumn
evening dives.
The
starlings write a novel
on the
eggshell of the sky.
Ruth Taaffe
Ruth Taaffe
Lessons
When I was six, Paul taught me how to swim—
floating me in the terror of the pool,
bringing his arms up when I needed them.
Somewhat remote, eighteen, but he was cool.
Vignettes: Paul home from Basic at Fort Dix,
me at attention in his Army hat.
Much later, ’69 in Santa Cruz,
those Sunday Karmann Ghia rides were hot.
Fast forward. Forty years on different paths,
phone calls between Thanksgiving every year.
We built a friendship, helping Mom and Dad.
Paul’s ill? He wouldn’t call, but we were there.
In one short week with Paul, I had to grow—
learning to hold him, then to let him go.
Dan Overgaard
Put down
You were done for, love: half gone,
but who could tell you that?
Legless as you were, you fought the fact
‒ so hard, we had to feed at least a
double dose into your sluggard veins
before you'd deign to loose your grip,
let self-determination slip:
eyes glazing into gazeless;
all your lovely failed flesh,
no more now than the shape of you,
left leaden in my lap.
You were done for, love: half gone,
but who could tell you that?
Legless as you were, you fought the fact
‒ so hard, we had to feed at least a
double dose into your sluggard veins
before you'd deign to loose your grip,
let self-determination slip:
eyes glazing into gazeless;
all your lovely failed flesh,
no more now than the shape of you,
left leaden in my lap.
Ken Cumberlidge
Zinnia Cedar Shawl Sadness
Reminiscence of the Garden at Etten
Vincent Van Gogh, November, 1888
Two women pass flowers by the path, wild orange
in little clusters, scattered yellow bursts. Look,
he says, those women walking. I like
their clothes. I like their faces. I see them too.
Among Cedar and Hornbeam, beside a field
of yellow wheat, the wheat field's border curling.
One wears a shawl—dark purple-blue, dots
of orange and red—for the wind and sun, the mist
this morning that chills. Beneath it, a swoop
of long, straight, gray hair. Eyelids heavy, brows
looping upward into flesh. She leans, as if she is
tired, or distracted. By gulls, by pillars of
Cypress beyond the hill. Her friend, or sister,
or daughter—blue-black hair, part in the middle—
wears a shawl—red, yellow, black—head
uncovered. She has closed the shawl
about her shoulders, folded the hems together.
I will paint those woman, he says. They speak of
daydreams and boots. And see them weep.
If I could dry their tears I would paint them too.
in little clusters, scattered yellow bursts. Look,
he says, those women walking. I like
their clothes. I like their faces. I see them too.
Among Cedar and Hornbeam, beside a field
of yellow wheat, the wheat field's border curling.
One wears a shawl—dark purple-blue, dots
of orange and red—for the wind and sun, the mist
this morning that chills. Beneath it, a swoop
of long, straight, gray hair. Eyelids heavy, brows
looping upward into flesh. She leans, as if she is
tired, or distracted. By gulls, by pillars of
Cypress beyond the hill. Her friend, or sister,
or daughter—blue-black hair, part in the middle—
wears a shawl—red, yellow, black—head
uncovered. She has closed the shawl
about her shoulders, folded the hems together.
I will paint those woman, he says. They speak of
daydreams and boots. And see them weep.
If I could dry their tears I would paint them too.
William Snyder
Slope off, turn downhill at dawn,
soft pedal past a burst bin,
out-pecked by silent gulls.
Beyond a dead boy's backward bench,
pass where tide-defying bubbles
rise below the lifeboat pier.
Will haar behead or blockade Fife?
Can the compass spilled in one lion's mane
direct summer's coming months?
Should you wave at the mis-seen woman at the edge
or nod to rubber-skinned surf dippers
now off in the very far-off?
Or will you wait to be drawn into graphite calm,
pulled by the sonnet you're never going to write?
Beth McDonough
Calling Card
I wanted to let you know I
was here, so I tried folding you
an origami crane from a
scrap of the newspaper lying on your porch.
You would know I had been
here, because I leave them everywhere at work
at home, at the park.
Everyone knows that’s just something I do.
But the wind kept blowing
the rain on my fingers, made the paper
thin and transparent,
impossible to crease, made my fingers cold and black.
If every crane I tried to
make you had been successful, you
would have come home to a
flock of them on your porch
gray and white and covered
with phrases like “war” and “linen”
faces of politicians
half-seen in feather patterns.
But because of the rain,
there is just one crane on your porch
and a pile of crumpled,
wet newsprint squeezed and balled
ripped in frustration at
the task. I would have written you a poem instead
if I had taken the rain
into consideration when I’d started
I probably should have done
that instead.
Holly Day
orchard's stillness —
beyond the angle of ladder
evening mist
beyond the angle of ladder
evening mist
Goran
Gatalica
Dead ice: the end of a glacier
Winter’s snows are its inhalation; a freezing
draw, replenishment.
Water flows in summer as if from everywhere;
a thaw rich with minerals.
Moraine grinds bedrock in slow descent
and retreat; a seasonal breathing.
It’s been like this for twelve thousand years.
A new field is strewn with erractics; rocks
perched on castles of sand.
Long summers now take more of the blueness
than late winters give.
And you, my beautiful daughters, will not
marvel with your children at its depth,
will not hear the echoing melt-song, or
be shocked by coldness under your palms.
Storehouse of all our seasons, the ice is dying.
No, my darlings. It is already dead.
Kate Noakes
We are drawn to
mutants
Desirable koi
are painted orange,
or white, or
both
as in the pool
of greedy fish
a firm of City
accountants
had in
Reception.
They made a
splash
when investment
in anything
was a thing –
bonuses
paid in
platinum dust,
and for all I
know, carp.
The grey ones
in a stroll garden
we ignore in
their masses,
even if they
can swim upstream
in less than an
inch of water.
They’re living
ghosts,
save when one
rises
to break the
surface
under a crooked
pine.
Kate Noakes
bound
i
you dilute yourself
until they are able to see
their own reflections
ii
fingers clawing at hollow eye socket
the eye scooped out by them
to make room for their whispers
we’re the same
lens placed over good eye
oh so gently
vision blurring
let me guide you
iii
a hand grasps yours
smile
play nice
join our movement
someone stands in front of you
let’s take a detour
i know a good route
iv
they see chains
where you see roots
cut you loose
from yourself
now you’ll be able to grow
v
a prescription for freedom in a bottle
with no minimum dosage
don’t forget to come back
vi
a scalpel held between practiced fingers
let me in
i want to see the real you
how pitiful
skin and muscle unravelling
woven into a web
for your words
to get tangled in
vii
it’s okay if you’re one of the ghosts
that they don’t believe in
what they fear is the sound of your breathing
tracing strange patterns
in the air
Aaliyah
Cassim
On How, Histories Are Made
When we were here,
we discussed histories with time mocking us,
we became the history.
We were here at dawn
telling the histories of our lives in roaring laughters.
Now, the day has passed,
here I am, at dusk
not in roaring laughter but
silent reflections and mind chaos
with crickets in my company
telling me the language of the world.
It doesn’t matter about the
time or where we were,
It only matters when we
leave, then history begins
Awósùsì Olúwábùkúmí A
Awósùsì Olúwábùkúmí A
These colours keep her here,
a cwtch of mossy walls.
Under the scraggy tree
a few sheep shelter.
This is a huddled habit,
like chapel. Not stubborn
or stupid. That moss will soak
up rain and green the greys.
Phil Wood
The
Bonfire of The Collected Works
The final
straw, that last rejection slip.
Its
savagery left me in no doubt
as to the
weakness of the works. Found out!
The
editor, whose words cut like a whip,
was right
to deal his harsh but honest blow,
despite
the hours I’d spent, relentlessly
struggling
to give my words integrity.
So ended
all my hopes; they had to go.
One last
read-through, then thrust into the fire.
Sometimes
odd lines still drift into my mind,
nothing
of substance, nothing to admire.
I try to
grasp them, sensing on my hand
a chill,
like memory of dead desire,
or flakes
of ash on a November wind.
Gordon Gibson
Response to Shakespeare's Sonnet 116
Tumbledown,
an ancient house to let,
this
fabric that endures of you and me
attracts
no offers; not for rent, not
even as
investment to
guarantee
us comfort in frail age. The
beams and
rafters, bricks and roughcast of a marriage
now show
decay, the wear and tear of
time;
what once was regular, now out of true.
Still, we
try to show that neither of us minds,
and even
to best friends will not admit
that love
and trust surrender to impediments.
Gordon Gibson
notes (berkhamsted castle, march 2019)
freshly-mown
grass: two
crows in
the centre like
umpires,
waiting – no
more! –
for the mag-
pies…
*
modern
moments,
outer
moat: bee’s
cursor
over nettle &
dock-;
hide-&-seek
kids,
coordinate
by phone…
*
shadows,
posted, ring
the
boundary: flint sight-
screens,
more harm
than good
Aunt Spinster
With laboured hands
she paddles the treadle
of a spinning wheel
and pulled by its
thread, the floor, its walls and
the town itself
seem to chime and twirl
like a carousel under
her command.
In its motion, you laugh
a sea of hearts, as the
puppeteering faces,
their chins on strings,
gaze vacantly, ticking
and tocking
from her salted chestnut
hair
to her scraggy weathered
boots and back.
Later, when the swaying
soothes, your hand
entwines with hers and
in frowning whispers
she swears to you that
no other man will ever
have her
wrapped around his
finger
Michael Burton
Courtship
I am afraid to say no
to his proposal.
There was never
a moment
when this marriage
was not spoken of,
even among the servants,
as my mother’s dearest wish
and the gentleman
is always generous
with his compliments and
gifts.
It is an honour
to receive the brooch
(in his family for
centuries)
although it drags a little
at the fabric of my coat
and as he bends over
to fasten it on me,
I glimpse a faint thinning
of his crown.
Before he takes his leave,
he gives a careful bow,
shakes my father’s hand
as though
he’s already heard
the answer.
Julia White
Marine Lake
One last visit
where the tide breathes
in and out from the Irish
sea,
smells salty and green.
The estuary
bed scalloped,
dips water
filled
reflecting
the sky
sand like
silk.
A leathery
hooked thing
on the
causeway
a shark egg,
mermaid’s
purse.
People walk in the wind-
chopped sea, white sails
against the sky
like music, like memories,
a suggestion of someone.
Was that your sigh I heard
your fingers brushing mine,
will we kiss like lovers
after so long, to miss
the dark
and the light of you.
I felt you there,
it was just a moment
on the breeze at West
Kirby.
Julie Mullen
Selah
Ten collared doves huddle down
together on a telephone wire,
feather-breast a southwester,
clutch the trembling line until,
one by one they take their moment,
fly low into the wind. Above, gulls
see-saw, hammered seawards.
Selah
Rooks storm-scatter. Fallen branches
lay like black clock hands wrenched
from too-complacent faces. After dark,
the moon relates cratered stories
shining onto pastures
through rook branches
half-dead half-green.
Selah
A dream wanderer coming home
in dusk, finds ten collared doves poised
on branches one above the other,
sheltered in a tall windbreak
of cypress, holding peace
as if given to them
to hide, to keep.
Selah
Michele Waering
Contributors
Michael Burton is from
East Lancashire but is living in Beijing currently. Recently he's had his poem
published by the Spittoon Collective and used as part of the Urban Fragments
Event which was held in four major cities in China.
Michael G. Casey is a writer of poetry and prose, based in Dublin,
Ireland. He has won several domestic and international awards for poetry and
short fiction. He has published five novels and a volume of short stories. A
collection of poetry--Broken Circle--will
be published next spring by Salmon Press.
Aaliyah Cassim
is a twenty-one year old South African writer who writes both poetry and prose.
Ken Cumberlidge is based in Norwich, but can be lured out
by decent company and an open mic. Recent work can be found variously online (Algebra of Owls / Allegro / Ink Sweat &
Tears / Message In A Bottle / The Open Mouse / Picaroon / Pulsar / Rat’s Ass
Review / Runcible Spoon / Strange Poetry / Snakeskin).
Webpage: https://soundcloud.com/ken_cumberlidge_poetry
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrEPf1MlegfAJyKDA5-wNqQ
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrEPf1MlegfAJyKDA5-wNqQ
Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science
Fiction, Grain, and The Tampa Review. Her newest poetry collections
are In This Place, She Is Her Own (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press), A
Wall to Protect Your Eyes (Pski’s Porch Publishing), Folios of Dried
Flowers and Pressed Birds (Cyberwit.net), Where We Went Wrong (Clare
Songbirds Publishing), Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), and Cross
Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing), while her newest
nonfiction books are Music Theory for Dummies and Tattoo FAQ.
Goran
Gatalica, born in Virovitica, Croatia, 1982, got both
physics and chemistry degrees from the University of Zagreb, and proceeded
directly to a PhD program after graduation. He has published poetry, haiku, and
prose in literary magazines, journals, and anthologies. He is a member of
the Croatian Writers’ Association.
Gordon Gibson is a Scottish writer, living in Ayrshire. Forced by
disability to cease lecturing in higher education, he now writes full-time. His
poems and stories have appeared in a number of print and online journals and
anthologies. He blogs at https://ragmansbugle.wordpress.com/.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in That, Dalhousie Review, Thin Air and North Dakota Quarterly with work
upcoming in Qwerty, Chronogram and failbetter.
Sean Howard is the author of four collections
of poetry, most recently The Photographer’s Last Picture (Gaspereau
Press, 2016) and Ghost Estates (Gaspereau, 2018). His poetry has been
widely published in Canada and elsewhere, and featured in The Best of the
Best Canadian Poetry in English (Tightrope Books, 2017).
Beth McDonough's
work connects strongly with place, particularly to the Tay, where she swims
year round. Her poetry is published in Gutter, Stand, Magma and
elsewhere. In Handfast (with Ruth Aylett) she explored autism, as
Aylett examined dementia. McDonough's solo pamphlet, Lamping for pickled
fish, is recently published by 4Word.
Julie Mullen is a poet and writer living in
Hertfordshire. She spent her working life in a library and has a deep love of
reading, she also sings and attempts yoga. She has recently completed an MA in
Creative Writing with the Open University and has work published online.
Kate Noakes'
seventh collection is The FIlthy Quiet
(Parthian, 2019). She lives in London, where she reviews poetry collections and
acts as a trustee for writer development organisation Spread the Word. Her
website (www.boomslangpoetry.blogspot.com)
is archived by the National Library of Wales.
Awósùsì Olúwábùkúmí A.
is a Nigerian, living in Ìbàdàn, a student of the University of Ibadan,
Department of History. His works have featured in the Nigeria Student Poetry
Prize, on Merak Magazine, Kalahari review & forthcoming on Naluubale review and elsewhere.
Dan Overgaard, a third culture kid, was born and raised in Thailand. He
attended Westmont College, dropped out, moved to Seattle, became
a transit operator, then managed transit technology projects and
programs. He’s now retired and his poems are available at www.danovergaard.com.
Judith Russell
began writing poetry 2 years ago when she was seventy. She studied online
at The National Writing Centre, Norwich with Liz Berry and Helen Ivory and is
now working with Roselle Angouin ’s ‘Elements of Poetry.’ She has recently had
two poems accepted for publication in Allegro
Poetry online magazine. She lives between Leeds and York with her
husband and dog. She teaches Pilates as a retirement career. Writing poetry
feeds her life-long love of Literature. She taught English for 33 years.
William
Snyder has published poems in Atlanta
Review, Poet Lore, Folio, and Southern
Humanities Review among others. He was the co-winner of the 2001 Grolier
Poetry Prize; winner of the 2002 Kinloch Rivers Chapbook competition; The
CONSEQUENCE Prize in Poetry, 2013; the 2015 Claire Keyes Poetry Prize; and he
was awarded the Tulip Tree Publishing Stories That Need To Be Told 2019 Merit
Prize for Humor. He teaches writing and literature at Concordia College,
Moorhead, MN.
Ruth Taaffe is from Manchester and lives
and works in Singapore as an English teacher. She is taking an MA in Creative
Writing with Lancaster University. Some of her poems have been published in the
online journal Creative Writing Ink, in print in Acumen and
are forthcoming in Nine Muses
and The Poetry Village.
Leslie Tate studied Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia and has been
shortlisted for the Bridport, Geoff Stevens and Wivenhoe Prizes. Leslie wrote
the fictional trilogy Purple, Blue and Violet and a non-binary memoir Heaven’s
Rage, now turned into an indie film shown at 32 international festivals. https://leslietate.com/
Michele Waering gained an MLitt in
Creative Writing from The University of Glasgow in 2010. Her work has appeared
in A Thousand Cranes: Scottish Poets for Japan; Envoi; The
Interpreter’s House; World Haiku Review, San Pedro River Review;
From Glasgow to Saturn; The Ghazal Page, Red River Review
and Fuga No Makoto. She lives in Renfrewshire.
Julia White lives in Northamptonshire
and has a lifelong interest in words. She has been concentrating on
poetry for around five years and has recently gained an MA in Creative Writing
from Leicester University. She has previously been published in East
Midlands Poets, Captured Creativity and Nine Muses Poetry.
Phil Wood was born in Wales. He has
worked in Education, Shipping, and a biscuit factory. His writing can be found
in various publications, including: The
Poetry Shed, Ink Sweat and Tears, London Grip, Califragil
