Bonnie’s Crew

writing & art helping hearts of all sizes

Issue #1

February 2019

Issue copyright © 2019 Kate Garrett Writing and art copyright © 2019 individual authors and artists Cover image is ‘Mongolian chicken-keeper’ by sharon l green Copyright © 2019 sharon l green

Editor’s Note 7

Dawn Fox 8

Fastening 9

Hay Bluff 10

even night relents 11

And Yet 12

The Missing Winter… Or, That Time I Was in Residential Treatment 13

Teaching 15

In flight 16

What Home is made of 17

Hawthorn 18

A poem for the jackdaws that have taken to hanging out in my garden 20

Mirror Mirror 21

A Memory of the Hop Fields 22

The Boy Who Picked Up the Toys 23

Paediatric Oncology Ward 24

Ventrial Stenosis (Operated) 26

Your Next Move 27

Grief 28

Brood 29

Fifth of February 30

Paris Pavements d’Or #23 31

The Battle 32

Titanium and Tungsten 35

For Eva 37

Tiny Pearls 38

Junior 39

Fear 40

Warning 41

Therapeutic Seafaring 42

Chiselling Life out of War, 1919 43

Goodbye, Erin – 47

Golden Veil 48

Brigid 49

Belief 50

Three Poems 52

Biographical Notes 53

Previous Publication Credits 59

♥ 7 ♥

Editor’s Note A year ago today, Bonnie had a cardiology outpatient appointment at Sheffield Children’s with her consultant from Leeds – her first appointment after being discharged from Ward 51. The news was tentatively good – yes, the problems were there, but minor, and the doctor wanted to see her in a year to see how she was doing. Yesterday she had her second appointment, and the results were even better. Her tricuspid valve is malformed, and it does let a bit of non-oxygenated blood back through where it shouldn’t be, but it isn’t causing her problems at this point, and we also received the astonishing news that her aorta is no longer enlarged. The doctor said if he hadn’t seen it for himself when she was a newborn, he wouldn’t have thought she was a baby who’d ever had an enlarged aorta. She goes back in February 2020. So on that happy note: we’ve been publishing Bonnie’s Crew as a webzine for just over a year now, and of course the one-off print anthology appeared in May, and it’s been a beautiful journey for all involved. But today we launch our new format as a bi-monthly web journal, to be published on the 9th of February, April, June, August, October and December. Because looking after toddlers and teens (even without editing) can get a little hectic, this takes a little of the pressure off – scheduling webzine posts twice a week, with an individually selected photo for each one, was a surprisingly time-consuming commitment. As I was editing this issue, I felt such warmth and satisfaction over what everyone has achieved with it – poetry, prose, and art for the heart (literally and figuratively), the creation of much of it a healing act for the writers and artists themselves, and a journal started for a cause that has evolved into a safe, soothing place for readers. We hope you enjoy our first issue – I have high hopes for where we’re going, and I feel it’s off to a wonderful start. Kate Garrett Sheffield, UK 9th February 2019

♥ 8 ♥

Dawn Fox The fox and I the only witnesses to the curl of early woodsmoke, to the way the sunrise is all the shades of apple skin. The way frost is the negative in shadow and as the sun warms the hillside it melts the bright lace away. But for a moment the fox and I watch as light catches frost in cobwebs before heavy droplets fall.

Sarah L Dixon

♥ 9 ♥

Fastening Like the tear-loaded call from your mother, in the café with the panettone crumbs and the brought-in rain; a replay of another time when the webs were more exposed, with threads attached to walls and linked to lines that stretched across the country, a daisy chain of telegraph poles holding hands, your mother on one end and hers on the other, and you on the top stair in your nightie readying yourself as well as you could for the fallout. Here, now, in the hubbub and clutter and foggy windows, there are no visible wires; the reverberations instead run through airwaves, but just as taut, just as fastening.

Dave Stacey

♥ 10 ♥

Hay Bluff This is where he likes to come when he finds he is lost again: up to this point where trees don’t dare tread and the rock liquidates into wind. He has a job – somewhere where there’s so much glass he can’t fathom in which direction he’s meant to be looking and the coffee and the smiles and the handshakes are lukewarm and dry out the tongue. But that doesn’t matter now. He’s driven through the night and most of the morning to join this rupture of geological impropriety where red sandstone bursts out from millennia in eternal attempts to become airborne, to osmose into the palimpsest of walkers’ footprints. Penybegwn. Massif in all meanings, he’d said and she had chuckled, leaned into him – two figures on the edge of the Black Mountains surveying a kingdom of possibility. Just watching the river Wye curl lazily below them.

Ben Ray

♥ 11 ♥

even night relents beneath a sky sequined with stars a promise of a better tomorrow was spoken like a prayer days i would like to have shared with you child that never came to be, child of my loss; i never physically met you but i miss you think of all the time that has gone by that could have been ours— there were no phoenix tears to mend your body, and there was a winter in me instead of spring; death claimed life instead of flowers blooming six years later i still wonder why i was assigned this wound— my only solace is that you never suffered in the hands of the wicked nightmares that dance and pirouette in this world as if they own it, but my little flower, there are dreamers like me that will never let the darkness swallow us whole without reprieve because even night relents.

Linda M. Crate

♥ 12 ♥

And Yet Curtains remain drawn, as the day comes with rain like a returning memory. In darkness, early moments rest on heavy eyes, closed to a wave of sickness. In the residue of cracked ashtrays and stale alcohol, sit diary entries of dissolute nights with succubae; a debt of bad shillings that smothers and oppresses. With a switchclick of artificial light, a three-quarter circular tea stain on the old and damaged veneer of a bedside table screams normality. But the mundane hides chaos. The dark refocuses, squats on the body amid the morning’s silent rage and dusty sheets of this year’s end chapters. And yet, the Sun at winter solstice still rises, to move again at the end of a pendulum swing towards the promise of late spring’s trick of light; bodies aloft after months and miles of migration, an ache in the chest for remembered summers, anticipating the welcome return of African visitors. Ahead are days when looking out of windows will be rewarded with the hectic rise and fall of darts feeding on the freshness of a cobalt canvas. And thoughts of sky as host to arrowed shrieks, the speed of mameluke sabred wings cutting air curves with ridiculous precision, will slice through this wintered condition, lift the darkness of a season’s sadness and ease the debt so I might breathe again.

Jonathan Humble

♥ 13 ♥

The Missing Winter… Or, That Time I Was in Residential Treatment I cannot stand myself in my skin and brain. I consume air with a vengeance to quell the pain in my gut and lungs and heart. Bones creak and teeth grind. Unbidden thoughts take up space subconsciously and with terrible vitriol. Longer days and green buds as the locked door stares me in the face. The breeze smells of birth and life; continuing while I wait with baited breath and distended stomach. A taste of freedom and the fear of change dance across my scarred white knuckles. The air wafts through windows normally bolted against knives of frigid pain.

♥ 14 ♥

Sunlight and openness fill my engorged stomach and lungs, gasping for a new beginning.

Shannon Frost Greenstein

♥ 15 ♥

Teaching I’ve told children to put clowns and monkeys in the same room. To write about stubbed toes, cooking bacon, the smell of petrol, wishing I could bottle their naivety to be uncorked in a picnic field on a breezy day where new-stories never break.

Lee Mackenzie

♥ 16 ♥

In flight After the heatwave, wind, a beach striped silver at low tide, barbie-pink streamers scribbled across grey sky. The child bites her lip, stares up as her kite soars. The wind flicks dry sand from the dunes and you think of her crumpled red face and little clenched fists the day she was born as she pays the kite’s line out, draws it back, fits the flight to gusts of wind. She calls look how high it is.

Sharon Phillips

♥ 17 ♥

What Home is made of She asks me what her house is made of. Her house, not this one. I tell her ' gingerbread, or sticks, wait ‘til the Big Bad Wolf comes.' She sighs, gives her head a shake, settles on wood and stone and slate. But I know it’s made of onesies, ‘Kick Arse Boots’, ‘Kylie’ at Etam, Jelly-shoes. ‘Mr Brightside’, Jager –shots, Lorraine Pascal and Bake-Off. It’s made of ‘Billy Elliot’ and ‘Skins’. ‘Peaky Blinders’, Venga Boys, those tiny edible silver things which go on cakes. Prosecco. Glitter. Sunday lie-ins, sausage butties. Puppies. Just a hint of leopard skin. Her house smells of a cardigan worn by her mum for night-feeds. Of leather boots and bath-bombs, Tex-Mex food and dog leads. Her baby’s first-vest-back-of the neck- smell you never get again. It smells of cake and icing sugar. Cake and icing sugar, not lavender. Never lavender. For the time it's hers, the years and days and minutes, her home is made of her, because she will be in it.

Gill Lambert

♥ 18 ♥

Hawthorn

♥ 19 ♥

Geraldine Clarkson

♥ 20 ♥

A poem for the jackdaws that have taken to hanging out in my garden Jackdaws have to be the coolest of birds, with their platinum-bead eyes and that "what the fuck do you think you are looking at?" stare they give you. They are the most disreputable, with no regard for the sensitivities of people who put out bird feeders to attract blue tits and chaffinches; they just turn up and trash the place, knowing that even though you claim to be mad at them gate-crashing your party, you won't shoo them away, because their black feathers are sleek and speak to you of Parisian punk - which is not a look just any bird can pull off - I mean, have you checked out a rook lately? These guys are the bad-assed corvids and they know that, if you could be a bird, they are exactly the one you'd want to be.

Beth Brooke

♥ 21 ♥

Mirror Mirror Morning breath and bruised knees, Translucent scars and downy furs, Swollen stomach and thirsty lips, Prickled skin and baby hair, Overbite and oily skin, Pigment loss and dusted freckles, Aches and pains and wonky feet, Curled spine and skin tags– This is the way I see me. Half – moon grin and warm skin, Pitted eyes and bed hair, Stone legs and mole – mosaicked back, Slavic nose and rippled crows – feet, Elegant ankles on contoured legs, Sloped cheekbones and a sliver of chest hair, Soft lips, soft hands, soft heart– This is the way I see you: The beauty lies in the detail.

Isabelle Kenyon

♥ 22 ♥

A Memory of the Hop Fields She is in the front garden bending low, picking bluebells, wearing her old red apron, with the Spanish dancer on the front. She stands up, rubbing her lower back, her mind shaping a memory. The hop fields, her mother lean, strong, picking the hops as quick as a squirrel. Her bal in plaits, tied on top of her head. Her gold hoops pulling her ears down. Ruddy cheeks, dry cracked lips. Her father pulling poles, sweating, smiling, his gold tooth for all to see. At the end of a long day she would stand on top of an apple crate, comb his hair, kiss his neck tasting of salt. He would pick her up, Swing her high, low and say, ‘You’re the prettiest little chi there ever was.’

Raine Geoghegan Bal: hair. Chi: daughter/child.

♥ 23 ♥

The Boy Who Picked Up the Toys Stroking my now dissolved stitches on my lower back scar like the bars of a fence. There is still a twinge of tenderness from when it was new. Now, as a woman, it is nothing more than a comically cruel tramp stamp. Something I will have to explain to my lover one day. But back then, when one wrong bend would have made it tear open. Releasing gore from where they removed my tethered cord, When I had hardly the strength to walk or grip, and I continually dropped the thingamabobs in the hospital playroom. I would stare forlorn as they clacked, jingled and whistled to the floor. But then there was this boy. He picked up the toys for me. He reached his hand down to the depths of the linoleum and his arm reemerged, a skill crane claw, for once not rigged, but working in my favor. He saw me not as a girl, not as a patient. But as a fellow child. Hurting, healing. He knew himself that those plastic playthings dipped in primary colors, were also my medicine.

Gail Bello

♥ 24 ♥

Paediatric Oncology Ward

Oliver’s mother lies curled on his bed, holding her child mum-wrapped and womb-close, ever-patient and tenacious in her efforts to rewind time, as though repeatedly turning a dial on a baby’s mobile which makes it play lullabies over and over, as it circles the ceiling; the constancy of ritual signifying maternal ascendancy over nightmares, transforming them into rocking horses, as she whispers stories right into Oliver's ears, as though only memory is failing, and familiar words might have the power to inspire her son to speak. Oliver’s grandfather wears the look of one found wandering in a bombed-out city. He cannot remember solidity. He is a brick air raid shelter subjected to a direct hit, his face a former shape in the dust-ridden smoke, wind-blown as formless as recollections of infancy, as he ambles around the ward, clutching lists and leaflets like a retired handyman grasping at screwdrivers, flailing and fumbling and desperately seeking something-anything which he might have a stab at fixing. Oliver’s brother runs around the bed, waving aloft a toy plane in triumph, as though proffering a trophy or a perfect solution, anxious to show everyone how escape is as easy as shrinking, and Oliver’s tumour, just like people, could be made miniature with a simple wish. Oliver’s sister sits on the floor, inattentive to atmosphere, ignoring the others as minor nuisances.

♥ 25 ♥

She is detached, indifferent, loftily absorbed in solitary play with a small plastic dinosaur. Oliver’s grandmother sits silent and rigid, her right hand firmly gripping the left, as though unable to trust it, while she stares at the toy, transfixed, abject terror in her eyes as if she suspects it will devour them all.

Adele Fraser

♥ 26 ♥

Ventrial Stenosis (Operated) Your granddad is the slates on the roof now. No need to miss him anymore— why would you miss your granddad when he’s the slates on the roof just like your grandma became bubbles rolling all over the high street, all those eyes laughing and rolling and now your granddad is slates breathing in and out. The rain will pour off him and the sun will shine on him and at night he’ll chatter away like birds’ feet, like walking sticks and false teeth, his electric blanket tucked between the beams. Part of him will be blackbirds on the chimney and part of him will be magpies in the gutter but most of all he will be sparrows. Love is a strange thing: like the nails that hold the roof in place but never split the slate. Like how you ran the length of the street and jumped into his arms—you big heavy lump— and his stubble prickled your face and you couldn’t shout loud enough.

Ian Harker

♥ 27 ♥

Your Next Move He went fast. Here one day, gone the next. The living shouldn’t get too comfortable. Grieve if you will but, better yet, readjust your expectations. Put aside the black dress and take a vacation. Hang the suit in the cupboard then go splurge on a new car. It’s not a case of being uncaring. But the dead don’t rise in the morning. You do. Life goes on from there. Heart attack, the doctor said. Unexpected. Your heart doesn’t need the insinuation. Remember what the peasants cry. “The king is dead. Long live the king.” Shout it under your breath if you must. But make sure you hear it. Okay, so you’ll never again have a father. Your mother’s not in the market for a new one. Not now. Not ever in your estimation. But he was never a weight on your shoulders. Why should his corpse be? You’ve got ideas, theories, wants, needs, intentions. None of them are entombed. The coffin was lowered without them. Adjust your speed to fast forward. If the old man is still a presence, may it be one that boots you in the rear.

John Grey

♥ 28 ♥

Grief The field is just stubble now. We stride over it, like giants over a lightning-struck forest. In the sky there are kestrels and low golden clouds strung up in imitation of scenery jostling at the back of the stage. All is flatness, and the grand opening of the earth manages to diminish our sorrow; pour it, puny, into each dead stalk.

Deb Scudder

♥ 29 ♥

Brood She rolled brown plasticine round and round between thumb and fingertips, moulded the ball into a small nest, formed four minuscule sky-hued eggs, laid them inside. One dropped, splat on the floor, the next, with no heartbeat, had to be winkled loose, the fourth, going nowhere, was evacuated. The third hatched, made models of little men out of plasticine, plays bass in a rock band.

Sharon Larkin

♥ 30 ♥

Fifth of February You lie against my breast, 10 lbs 9 oz, twenty-five inches from crown to toe; porcelain perfection stained indigo by birth-bruises. I dare not lose you now. Lashes, incredibly long and black, warn red-gold baby thatch must darken soon. Feet, fierce warriors of the womb, move in gentle circles on my arm. Snuffling kitten-mew in search of milk. Newborn sweetness of your flesh. Unfocused, violet eyes. Tiny passport to immortality, I dare not lose you now.

Marilyn Timms

♥ 31 ♥

Paris Pavements d’Or #23

Jude Cowan Montague

♥ 32 ♥

The Battle I. An invisible anaconda took hold of me around 4.30pm It was sneaky. I ignored it and carried on with the ironing until I could no longer deny that the anaconda was squeezing me at regular intervals, every five minutes. It pressed on whilst doctors talked, midwives hushed and ten trainee doctors gawped. The anaconda bit away rational thought as it prepared its finally assault. In a final bid to dull the beast, I breathed in gas and air the beast struck back by ejecting the contents of my stomach wrapping itself around my body squeezing ever harder until my body violently twitched arms striking out, mouth,shouting profanities. The snake then shot through my body like lightening and exited and left my body with the nose of a wolf, the cunning of a fox and the strength of a bear. II.

♥ 33 ♥

My hands shake with adrenaline as I wash off the blood. my breasts contract and leak out milk when I hear primal battle cries from the rooms. The nurse urges me to take the brown pills but the drug is no match for my body. A tattoo begins to hum through me; ‘Where’s the baby? Where’s the baby?’. The nurse relents and points the way to a special room full of babies that look like wizened old men hooked up to machines. My new wolf nose sniffs her out. My cunning heart tells me not to love her yet. III. My body moves of its own accord every day up the hill brain is frozen bland smile for the nurses breasts squeezed and pumped by an old fashioned machine. The baby is in a glass case. Fingers itch to touch her but brain says no, not yet. Other Mums cry but the tears won’t come until the end of this ordeal. Brain orders these visits into four hour shifts of climb,

♥ 34 ♥

pump, sit. Stomach has shrunk back to size no-one can tell of the ordeal. A blur of time passes. and then then it's time to sync body to brain and take the baby home and start to love it.

Andie Berryman

♥ 35 ♥

Titanium and Tungsten I breathed in And you began To swim and Navigate the vast Oceans to my Virginal, naive womb. You settled there In your first Home, without needing To buy furniture Or pay rent. I offered you My blood to Swim through your Miniscule, invisible, veins. I gave, freely, My immunity to Infections that could've Harmed your development And as you Grew, I shared My food, oxygen And safety until Such time as You were almost Perfect, somehow enriched By my genes. My heartbeat was Your first dance My uterus, your First warm blanket. My laughter was

♥ 36 ♥

Your first melody My unhappy cries Your first disappointment. My skin protected You like a Shield of impregnable Titanium and tungsten. My waters didn't Drown your sorrows They cultivated your Brilliance and made You so real. I'm NOT Frankenstein. I never created You to be All that I Longed to become, Just for myself. I created you To love you. That's all I Did. You are My child, eternally Linked, by my Umbilical, maternal love.

Claire Badsey

♥ 37 ♥

For Eva

You were a baby bird, fragile and tiny, nested behind glass, your breaths quick, a steady drum beat, your grip, a life force. As sure as the ebb and flow of tides

you poured out love and hope. The hours spent in this twilight world, were measured in monitors, blood gases, watching you hatch, waiting

for that first muted cry. And it came. A sound as beautiful as an angel’s plaintive song

An echo in that silent world. I am here, I am here.

Trish Dillon

♥ 38 ♥

Tiny Pearls

Three years, you’ve been building to this, the steady discovery of envy as friends turned up with altering smiles, teeth dominoeing out of their mouths. You looked at your older sister’s – ten tiny pearls stored for history in a flowered purse – and insisted that molars were moving under your fingers. But now, with one held by the smallest hinge, you scream at brushing, press your mouth closed, push away any mention of wobbling it loose. No longer intrigued by the thought of coins magicked under your pillow, you’re suddenly cautious, suddenly afraid.

Claire Walker

♥ 39 ♥

Junior

Her grandson, all of three, putters around her what is officially her sleep time — tranquilizers and all of that. She thinks it is love, allows him this excess. For putto she is perhaps another plaything.

Sanjeev Sethi

♥ 40 ♥

Fear Tonight my mother tucks me in, reads from Lord of the Rings, skips the Brothers Grimm. Under a full thunder moon, she wakes with a shudder to another of my nightmares and mouths a question from the dimly-lit corridor, What is it this time? Voices in the dark, I reply, ghosts drifting down the hall from an open closet door. Will they go away when I grow up? No, she says, but you’ll learn to recognise a four-letter word that visits us all sometimes – best not fight it but embrace it. It need not be an enemy. Make it a companion.

Mary Franklin

♥ 41 ♥

Warning

S.A. Leavesley

♥ 42 ♥

Therapeutic Seafaring We talk about you Sitting there silent and proud Like an early frost. I wonder if cold Is an insipid secret I might vanish in. Would you deny me? A quiet simplicity, mute. My voice begets your silence. I am an iceberg Bringing destruction to ships My own fleet submerged. Would that I were fire Able to thaw apathy And scorch reaction. Roaring like a prayer. Internal and penitent, Far beyond your eyes. There is no turning No correction to our course. Your eyes widen in awe – There is more of me beneath.

Laura Elliott

♥ 43 ♥

Chiselling Life out of War, 1919

They say he is the spitting image of Father. Rocking in his Dad’s chair,

as is his custom nowadays, Alex catches his reflection in the china cabinet

glass, a pale veteran. He had volunteered to loosen the past, but he’ll be

nothing but a washed-up ghost-soldier, unless he does what he has to do.

Flaming June in a few months, the anniversary of their loss. He will never get

over it, that day, the washhouse, those puppet legs, the shadow on the wall,

the noose. This time, he has to get the hell out of the place. For good.

Then the afternoon sizzled with the buzz of bees and burst open in

the pinks and purples of the monarda and penstomen he had planted in the

garden, beyond the lattice fence, down the path to the back lane. His eyes

widened at the sight of the Belfast sink, a mangle, washboard askew, shirts.

This was women’s territory. He had come home as ever after a day’s work to

be greeted with it. Then the overturned stool. The colour of Father’s face, the

ugly bend of the neck. Memories of the trenches compound the tremors.

Alex starts from his dwam as Mother struggles through from the

kitchen, cutlery in hand, ready to lay the teatime table, for three, these days,

only three left of her brood of seven. He just can’t begin to tell her, doesn’t

know where to begin or if he should. She has been crying, eyes red rimmed

with tears. The war has not changed her. Her boy left and is supposed to

return whole. He clears his throat, draws a breath. Gaslight flickers like a

stressed pulse, throwing shapes on the opposite wall.

‘Please don’t upset yourself. I’ve been thinking about it for a long

while, Mother.’

She continues laying the table.

‘I didn’t know how to tell you.’

The wedding clock ticks on and on.

She turns. A ghost herself, weighted down by his restless nights,

nightmares and flared tempers.

♥ 44 ♥

‘It’s no surprise, son. You all leave, Jessie to Canada, James not here

for days, then wanders back and not here in his head when he does come

home, William and Agnes married with bairns of their own.’

She drops a fork, clatters plates, rubs at her apron, then settles beside

him at the hearth. ‘You’re not the boy I could rely on. I can’t work out what

you’re thinking.’

The coal fire crackles in the north facing room.

They shared so much. Him, the head of the house ever since Father.

His had been a dismal farewell, a few mourners at the lair. Little said over the

Hawkhead grave, murmurs as the coffin hung in the air above Charlie’s, their

wee lost bairn. Mind, Father was known as a loner, a solitary walker strolling

by the River Cart or passing windows in the gloaming, his faithful collie at his

heels.

‘It’s a fine opportunity Jessie’s offering me. Canada, Mother. Work on

the farm, the chance to set up my grocer’s where it’s needed. The war’s put a

stop to the business here. You still have Margaret.’

A reliable anchor, Father, for all those years, a tall moustached figure,

austere, sometimes fiery and stubborn. The man whose by-phrase was ‘don’t

make a fuss’. Baffling that he, proud stone mason, shook at climbing the side

of a building, yet… It was a silent grief. Long-standing close neighbours like

the Holms, who were witnesses at his parents’ wedding, had given them a

strength, and their minister at South Church, funeral service and burial all

completed with discretion. The world moved on. Despite them. Despite the

tenement gossip and twitching curtains. And everything in the Calside house

was lost, from sandstone dust to stick of furniture and gold bangle – those

had slipped through family fingers, pawned or mortgaged or sold.

Alex speaks over the chimes. ‘Father never got over the business

being undercut. The debts. The disappointments. His accident.’

Overcome by a ripple of grief, his lip trembles as he meets his

mother’s gaze.

‘The war’s made me see I have to make something of my life and it

won’t be here, Mother. Can’t be. The place doesn’t understand me. The old me

is gone. This one is restless and edgy.’

♥ 45 ♥

His mother sighs. Alex knows they are closer now than when he came

home, war-weary.

Then she whispers, ‘This is another leaving. Another grief’, pushing

back fine strands of hair, forcing the kirbies in tighter. Alex thinks they must

pinch.

‘Och, I know what I’m doing, Mother. And I’ll still be on God’s Earth.’

She leans forward to take his hands in hers, following the lifelines

with her gnarled fingers. ‘So handsome they are, like your father’s. Good and

strong, made to chisel stone, or as you like. I did love his hands. I felt safe.

They made me safe.’

Alex winces at the mention of his father’s hands, remembering their

final act, remembering the creative years of cutting stone and perfecting

edges.

‘Well, there’s nothing to inherit here. He disinherited us. To trustees.

The house isn’t ours any more. He left those debts. The business undercut by

lower prices. He was making do. Into the war, and we’re just managing out of

it.’

They speak of Jessie and her Canadian adventure, her tales of the

Atlantic and war brides, and of Norwegian neighbours, the baffling attempts

at chat in the township as the only English-speaking woman. His mother nods

her head at his enthusiasm. The war has returned her son to her, but he

seems a stranger. Everything has changed.

Alex senses that she’s acknowledging his desire. Maybe shares it,

surprising him.

‘Thank the Lord, Jessie’s made a good match though, with that George.

His friends, look up the McGibbons, they said. But Canada, the prairie land, so

far away.’

He rubs his hands, kneeling to add coal. He feels colder, his nerves

playing up.

‘I won’t see Jessie again. It’s the way now. But she might have written

to me as well? What did she think I might say? Forbid you?’

Tonight, a bit of life in a bright fire. Many war-torn nights, and that

one bereft night fresh in their minds, the cold remains of a hearth. Ashen as

♥ 46 ♥

Alex’s face. Then he had sat with the death certificate in the gloom of tightly

pulled curtains. Beyond, sunshine had heralded another heatwave. Pavement

tar melting and a mirage of horses, carts passing by and the shadow of a rag

and bone man. The washhouse had remained shut and bolted for a long time.

Until Mother’s ‘we have to get on with it.’

Alex breaks the silence. ‘You might come too, in time? We can look

after you?’

His mother looks up, enquiring. She turns her head as if jiggling her

mind to make room for the thought. He’ll never feel as close to her as at that

moment.

Jessie’s letter lies open on his lap. She has warm, cursive handwriting.

expressing polite requests for copies of The Sunday Post and clothes parcels,

fabric and threads. Mother lifts a page, reads. Above the mantel hangs a

photograph of them all in best Sunday dress in earlier days, serious and

bonded. Another, framed, stands on the cabinet, of Sven, one of the new

farmers across the Atlantic, all smiles in the heat of an unfamiliar field. This

new century had already brought death and destruction. Alex thinks it owes

her the seeds of some peace and stability.

His body loosens as he shakes off Father’s ghost with the hope of

living his own life. The Atlantic. The New World. Him, a man reborn.

He senses his mother reading him. ‘I have good bairns. There’s

Margaret, nothing but a bag of nerves, losing her betrothed. The missing in

action. He might return.’

Alex wonders what she might be really wishing for.

‘Mother? What are you hatching? A daydream plan? You can be

Granny, look after Jessie’s babies when they arrive? And find me a fine

Norwegian wife? Settle on the prairie, eh?’

She offers Alex the broadest smile of her life. He is taking her home.

Maggie Mackay

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Goodbye, Erin – I miss the way your lips curled into a smile salted with sass like the face of the moon. When I heard you cry, my heart undressed and went sulking naked in the rain. It was frigid the early summer night you told me you no longer loved me. Every time I see the moon I think of your pale radiance, how it filled our bedroom with tepid glow. This too must pass. Just know my heart is coming inside now, bundled up in towels, in silent hymns of praise for how you broke it. My heart is stirring tea and opening the windows to let the morning in.

Samuel J Fox

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Golden Veil

Fabrice Poussin

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Brigid Praise Brigid, the wise woman. A great goddess, she appears from secret corridors, moss-lined and cool, to save us from the scorch of war. In Ireland’s coldest castle, turreted and vast, choired voices scroll high into the vaulted evening air. As She ascends the parapets, harmonies swell in her wake. She calls for all to follow, transforms flames of fear and conflict, rekindles snug fires in inglenooks, lights candles to lick thick white walls with warmth and brighten our over-wintered homes.

Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon

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Belief There’s nothing to say Just pools of nothing expanding across the air waves from me to you There’s nothing to say just a solace in timescapes dissolving into space and There’s nothing to say Just how much we hate each other compete with each other and make each other cry Wonder why And play games across the landscapes of our lives You to me to me to you There is no tithe that ties us into continual service and servitude A forest of mirrors all around us Tells us that the nature we run from is our innate self A merry go round of screeching howling laughter That hides the deep mistrust of life The deep sense of self hatred and strife we mask as we show the world how very happy we are As we make sure to take that moment treble it and say See how very happy I am just there But you’re not We are not We cannot Be Happy Content In Separation That is not how this works Union asks we come home to all parts of us We mouth the words but the inner graveyard is spilling rotting corpses who

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bleed into our veins and make us sick The sickness feels familiar and we seek the familiar and run from the new Half a million lifetimes ago You walked with me hand in hand Placed your arms around me And told me we would be together till the end of time I have no doubts That when the sands fall out of this hour glass And the unified chorus calls cut when we pull away the screens of the mind There you will be Telling me you always loved me I just couldn't see I didn’t believe love was for me There you will be

Amber Agha

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Three Poems Communion Holding a drop of rain in my hand— I feel the world flow into me. * Fast Asleep Winter buds are unaware of how soon they will bloom. * In spring Our river receives even stones with joy.

Trivarna Hariharan

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Biographical Notes sharon l green is a local artist in leiper's fork, tennessee, just outside of nashville. her heavenly Father has forged a path for her to express her passions through her current art. she paints, sketches, journals, and writes. her mediums are acrylic inks, watercolours, oils, acrylics, and pen & ink. she has raised her (6) children and is now able to spend her time furthering her pursuit of art forms. this season of her life has allowed her to cultivate her devotion for all things artistic. she receives inspiration from resting in His presence, experiencing His peace and finding the quiet in her soul to convey on canvas/paper what is on the inside. nature speaks volumes to her as she enjoys the creation that surrounds her in the beautiful hills of tennessee. www.sharonlgreenart.com Sarah L Dixon is based in Huddersfield and tours as The Quiet Compere. Sarah has most recently been published in Marble, Confluence, The Interpreter’s House, The Lake, Obsessed with Pipework, Troubadour and Curlew. The sky is cracked was released in November 2017 (Half Moon). Sarah’s second book, Adding was patterns to Wednesday was released in November 2018 with Three Drops Press. Sarah’s inspiration comes from many places, including pubs and music, being by and in water and adventures with her eight-year-old, Frank. She is still attempting to write better poetry than Frank did aged 4! Frank’s line, aged 4, was “Is your heart in a cage so it doesn’t fly away?” www.thequietcompere.co.uk Dave Stacey lives and works in London. He has been a secret scribbler for a number of years, only now coming out into the open. Ben Ray published his first collection After the Poet, the Bar with Indigo Dreams Publishing, and ‘Hay Bluff’ will be published in his second collection, called What I Heard on the Last Cassette Player in the World, also to be published by Indigo Dreams in summer 2019. Find out more: www.benray.co.uk Linda M. Crate's poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has five published chapbooks A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press - June 2013), Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon - January 2014), If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications, August 2016), My Wings Were Made to Fly (Flutter Press, September 2017), and splintered with terror (Scars Publications, January 2018), and one

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micro-chapbook Heaven Instead (Origami Poems Project, May 2018). She is also the author of the novel Phoenix Tears (Czykmate Books, June 2018). Jonathan Humble is a deputy head teacher at a rural school in Cumbria. His poems have appeared in a number of anthologies and other publications both online and in print. He blogs at northernjim.wordpress.com Shannon Frost Greenstein resides in Philadelphia with her family and spoiled cats. She is a former Ph.D. candidate in Continental Philosophy, meaning she is no fun at parties and has a lot of debt. Shannon harbors an unhealthy interest in Hamilton, Nietzsche, Game of Thrones, and Mount Everest. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee with work that has appeared in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Scary Mommy, WHYY... actually, you know what, just Google her. Lee Mackenzie is the ‘Post-Growth Poet’. His poems have been published in the New European and with the Pulp Poets Press. Themes of ecology, consumerism and De-growth are the work's life blood: sometimes they can be life-giving; sometimes they’re as ugly as an open wound. @LeeMackenzie14 @PostGrowthPoet Sharon Phillips retired from her career in education in 2015 and started learning to write poems. Her work has most recently appeared, or is forthcoming, in The High Window, Amaryllis, Three Drops from a Cauldron and Words for the Wild. Gill Lambert is a poet and teacher from Yorkshire. She won the Ilkley Literature Festival open mic competition in 2016 and her pamphlet 'Uninvited Guests' was published last year by Indigo Dreams. A full length collection will be published in 2019. Geraldine Clarkson is a UK poet whose work has appeared in UK and international journals. She has three poetry chapbooks: Declare (Shearsman Books, 2016), Dora Incites the Sea-Scribbler to Lament (smith | doorstop, 2016) and No. 25(Shearsman Books, 2018). Beth Brooke is a retired teacher. She writes about what she notices and sees her work as being like postcards capturing a moment or an experience. She loves deserts and The Jurassic Coast and these places inspire her.

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Isabelle Kenyon is currently a northern, UK based poet. Isabelle is the author of This is not a Spectacle, Micro chapbook, The Trees Whispered (Origami Poetry Press) and Digging Holes To Another Continent (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, New York). She is the editor of Fly on the Wall Press, a small press for charitable anthologies, the latest of which is Please Hear What I'm Not Saying, which raises money for UK mental health charity, Mind and came runner up for Best Anthology at the Saboteur Awards, 2018. Her poems have been published in many poetry anthologies, such as The Road To Clevedon Pier and The Inkyneedles anthology. She has had poems published in literary journals such as The Blue Nib, Pangolin Review, I Am Not A Silent Poet, Eskimo Pie, Scrittura, Anti - Heroin Chic, Bewildering Stories and Literary Yard. Raine Geoghegan, MA, lives in West Sussex. She has been published both online and in print with Romany Routes Journal; Fair Acre Press; Words for the Wild; Ink Pantry; Fly on the Wall and others. Her poems have been featured in a documentary film, Stories from the Hop Yards. Her first pamphlet, Apple Water: Povel Panni was published by Hedgehog Poetry Press in November 2018. Gail Bello is a former co-editor of the online literary magazine The River and placed third in the 2018 Plunkett Poetry Festival contest. She writes fiction, poetry and plays, her work has been published in The Sandy River Review, the Feminist literary magazine Ripple,Water Soup, Collective Unrest and Turnpike Magazine. She is thrilled and honored to be published in Bonnie's Crew. Follow her on Twitter @AquajadeGail. Adele Fraser’s poetry has been published in a number of journals, both online and in-print, including Envoi, Orbis, The Interpreter's House, Obsessed with Pipework, and Poetry Salzburg Review. Her debut pamphlet, Intense World Fortress, is available from Eyewear Publishing. Ian Harker’s debut collection Rules of Survival was published by Templar Poetry in 2017. Most recently he’s been poet in residence at the Henry Moore Institute and runner-up in the BBC Proms Poetry Competition. He’s co-editor of Strix magazine, which was shortlisted for a 2018 Saboteur Award. John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in the Homestead Review, Harpur Palate and Columbia Review with work upcoming in the Roanoke Review, the Hawaii Review and North Dakota Quarterly.

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Deb Scudder wrote the novel The Hag in the Woods, and now concentrates on writing poetry. She lives and works in Lincolnshire, UK. Sharon Larkin has been published in a number of anthologies including Bonnie's Crew; in magazines eg Prole, Picaroon and Obsessed with Pipework; and in e-zines including Ink, Sweat & Tears, Amaryllis, Atrium and Riggwelter. She has a pamphlet recently published by Indigo Dreams, jointly runs Cheltenham Poetry Café – Refreshed, is Chair of Cheltenham’s Arts Council and Poetry Society and was founder/editor of the Good Dadhood on-line poetry project. She also has an MA in creative writing and publishes poetry as Eithon Bridge Publications ... but no achievement has ever eclipsed the birth of her only son who was diagnosed with a heart murmur shortly after he was born, causing much anxiety until he was given the all-clear when a year old. See Sharon's blog and website, Coming Up With the Words: sharonlarkinjones.com/ Marilyn Timms, a writer, artist, and cancer survivor, is a great believer in beginner’s luck. The first poetry competition she entered won her a holiday for two in the Caribbean. Since then, she has performed her short stories and poems at four Cheltenham Literature Festivals. Her poetry collection Poppy Juice, is described by Alison Brackenbury as ‘a collection of brave and unexpected adventures, with intoxicating, sometimes threatening colours.’ Marilyn’s grandsons recently redefined her as retro rather ancient. Jude Cowan Montague worked for Reuters Television Archive for ten years. Her album The Leidenfrost Effect (Folkwit Records 2015) reimagines quirky stories from the Reuters Life! feed. She produces 'The News Agents' on Resonance 104.4 FM. Her most recent book is The Originals (Hesterglock Press, 2017). Andie Berryman lives in Oxford, she was lucky twice and now wrangles space (and clothes) with two teenage Daughters. Claire Badsey aka The Poet with Passion began writing poetry again, as an adult, in 2013, as part of recuperation after several years in hospital. She tentatively progressed to local spoken word events where she regained some lost confidence and discovered what fun poetry can be. She has performed at several music festivals and been published in the local press, and performed for the Countess of Wessex through a local homeless charity that she’s involved with.

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Trish Dillon is a poet from Keighley, West Yorkshire. She won the Capital of Culture poetry slam in Bradford and represented the town in Bristol. She was runner up in the Ilkley Festival of Words in the City open mic competition. She wrote the poem 'For Eva' about her granddaughter who was born eight weeks early in August 2018 weighing 2lb 150z. She spent two weeks in Neo natal intensive care and four weeks in special care where she was cared for and nurtured by the most dedicated people Trish has ever met. Claire Walker’s poetry has been published widely. She has two pamphlets published by V. Press - The Girl Who Grew Into A Crocodile (2015), and Somewhere Between Rose and Black (2017), which was shortlisted for Best Poetry Pamphlet at the 2018 Saboteur Awards. Her third pamphlet is due next year from Against the Grain Press. She is a Reader for Three Drops Press, and Co-Editor of Atrium poetry webzine. Sanjeev Sethi is the author of three books of poetry. His most recent collection is This Summer and That Summer (Bloomsbury, 2015). He is a Best of the Net nominee (2017 & 2018), on the longlist for the Erbacce Press Poetry Prize 2018, shortlist for the Creative Writing Ink Journal Contest (June 2018). His poems are in venues around the world: Litbreak, Blognostics, Poetry Super Highway, The Journal, Otoliths, Bold Monkey, and elsewhere. He lives in Mumbai, India. Mary Franklin has had poetry published in numerous print and online magazines and anthologies including Ink Sweat and Tears, Iota, London Grip, Message in a Bottle, The Open Mouse and Three Drops from a Cauldron. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. S.A. Leavesley is a poet, fiction writer, journalist, photographer and editor, who loves words, art and creativity. Her website is at www.sarah-james.co.uk. Laura Elliott is a twenty-something disabled writer and journalist. Her short-fiction has been published by Strix Magazine and Rhythm and Bones, and she hosts the monthly politics and disability podcast, Visibility Today. You can find her screaming into the void on Twitter at @TinyWriterLaura. Maggie Mackay has a fascination for family history which informs much of her work online and in print, including a poem in the #MeToo anthology and one commended in the Mothers’ Milk Prize, 2017. Her poems have been nominated for The Forward Prize, Best Single Poem in 2017 and 2018 and for the Pushcart

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Prize last year. Her first pamphlet ‘The Heart of the Run’ was published by Picaroon Poetry in 2018. Samuel J Fox is a non-binary, queer essayist and poet living in the Southern US. They/He is poetry editor at Bending Genres, a CNF reader at Homology Lit, and a frequent columnist/reviewer at Five 2 One Magazine. They/He appears in many publications, in haunted houses/dilapidated places, and coffee shops depending. They/He tweets (@samueljfox). Fabrice Poussin teaches French and English at Shorter University. Author of novels and poetry, his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and dozens of other magazines. His photography has been published in The Front Porch Review, the San Pedro River Review as well as other publications. Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon lives in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, and writes short stories and poetry. She has been widely published in web magazines and in print anthologies. She graduated with an MA in Creative Writing from Newcastle University in 2017. She believes everyone’s voices counts. Amber Agha is a London based poet and sound artist. Her poem films and sound installations have showcased in galleries and festivals around the world winning commendations and awards. She has published 2 poetry anthologies and is working on her third. Her spoken word sets include The Book Club, Soul Food Poetry, The Roundhouse with Tongue Fu and She Growls. She has been published in numerous journals and magazines. Her work combines the esoteric with the deeply personal. Trivarna Hariharan is a student of English Literature from India. She has authored There Was Once A River Here (Les Editions du Zaporogue), The Necessity of Geography (Flutter Press) and Letters I Never Sent (Writers Workshop, Kolkata). Her poems appear or are forthcoming from Right Hand Pointing, Noble/Gas Quarterly, Entropy, Third Wednesday, Otoliths, Sweet Tree Review, Across the Margin, and others. In October 2017, Calamus Journal nominated her poem for a Pushcart Prize. She has served as an editor-in-chief at Inklette, and a poetry editor for Corner Club Press. Besides writing, she learns the Electronic Keyboard, and has completed her 4th Grade in the instrument from Trinity College of Music, London.

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Previous Publication Credits ‘A Memory of the Hop Fields’ by Raine Geoghegan was first published in Words from the Wild, Summer 2018, and her pamphlet Apple Water: Povel Panni (Hedgehog Poetry Press, 2018). ‘Junior’ by Sanjeev Sethi was first published in Right Hand Pointing.

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