Alessio Zanelli

The Brigand

I only wished to start a new one.

May this be home? Millstone grit and heather?
Undulating pastures and drystack fences?
The dales once ruled by the Brigantes?
A place this ancient ‒ where days glide by so slow
and human presence is not a fundamental trait ‒
surely wrings my deepest strings.
Lost in it, on my own, carrying nothing,
and nothing loaded on my mind ‒
it looks, sounds and smells
like I had always been part of it.
Everything fits just right, and I feel good.
Like I had been treading these moors
and my thoughts ascending these ridges ‒
to see what runs away beyond the hilltops ‒
since the very moment I was born.
Still, it is when the light abates
and cloudbanks slither down to cloak the slopes ‒
emulating lowland fog ‒
when the lines of trees fade on the horizon
and silence appropriates each quiver of life ‒
coming to nestle in the most distant memories ‒
that I do find myself at home.
But sooner or later the sun ‒as precious as gold
and of such rare beauty on this drowsy, sullen land,
orchestrator of grandiose skies ‒
reminds me who I am, or who at least I used to be,
where my roaming soul indeed belongs,
hurling me a thousand miles southeast.
For I am a brigand here ‒
my loot the eternal swish of branches in the westerlies
and the instancy of desperate sunsets over the crests.
A sly usurper, a thief of space and time.
All while galaxies out there keep on drifting,
and the clock cannot be zeroed.

I only wished to start a new one.

Alessio Zanelli is an Italian poet who writes in English and whose work has
appeared in some 170 literary journals from 15 countries. His fifth original
collection, titled The Secret Of Archery, was published in 2019 by Greenwich Exchange Publishing (London).

Jenny Hamlett

Masked

Too early and unsteady
I walk slowly along the half-empty corridor.
My glasses steam as I breathe,
blotting out direction signs and leaving me
stranded in a boat without oars.

What has happened to me?
What has happened to the alert,
making a joke of my hearing,
proud of my lip reading, me?

I fumble my way to a receptionist.
She says something. I hesitate.
She points towards some chairs.
I sit, get up and go back. Sorry,
I say, I’m deaf. I won’t hear the call.

I think it must have worked.
A figure in grey
hospital uniform shuffles forward.

I follow him, hoping
this is the right thing to do.
We enter a smaller area.
The man speaks. I hesitate,
look towards the changing rooms.

He says something angry and points
to a hard, red plastic chair.

I’m out of my depth, sit hunched
and silent over my bag.
At a distance, a tough-looking youth,
in trench coat and thick black mask
removes it for a few seconds.

He says, They don’t understand.
The rope he’s swung towards me holds.
Thanking him I smile, hoping
he can see it in my eyes,
and scramble ashore;
the shreds of my identity holding hands.

Jenny Hamlett has an MA in creative writing and has 2 full length collections published by Indigo Dreams Publishing. She has worked as a creative writing tutor with Link into Learning and other agencies in Cornwall and has read her poems across the south. Retired now she belongs to Second
Light, Open University Poets and locally, Company of Poets.

Duncan Forbes

Mrs Mortimer’s Podcast

Men? Flowers don’t have much choice
when it comes to bees, do they?
Children. You get what you’re given
and as for the virgin birth. Try it.
The root cause of all this extinction rebellion
and global warming is over-population
and over-copulation.
It’s not as if there’s no birth-control.
It’s no self-control to the power of n.
Marie Stopes must be turning in her grave.
I’m going to be cremated and one of my
feckless sons can jolly well scatter my ashes
in Torbay or wherever. I hope he gets some of me
in his eye. Dying? No, I’m not afraid of it.
Everyone else has died so far, haven’t they?
As for money, it’s lovely to have enough lolly.
To have grown old and not be poor,
that’s a real aspiration worth having.
Dr Bramble is hopeless with ingrown toenails
and don’t ask me what a defibrillator is.
There’s one outside the village stores
but I wouldn’t know how to work it anyway.
The Bible has a lot to answer for,
so does the Koran. Unreadable, for a start.
As for Genesis, can you imagine any male making
heaven and earth and all that therein is?
Most of them can’t even make a bed properly.
I can’t dress like a super-model anymore.
When you’ve got one foot in the grave,
you’ve got to have comfortable footwear.
It’s the resurrection of the dead
which scares the living daylights out of me,
not that I believe in any of that malarkey.
Imagine meeting all those revitalised corpses.
It’s such a stupid superstition.
Try saying that quickly and with dentures.

Duncan’s poems have been published by Faber, Secker and Enitharmon, who brought out a Selected Poems in 2009, drawn from five previous collections. For his most recent collection of poems, Human Time (2020), see
www.duncanforbes.com . He read English at Oxford and has taught for many years.