Denise Bennett

Quaker Meeting

The door to the garden is open
a blackbird breaks the silence –

and we listen to his ministry
clear notes from the chimney stack.

Someone speaks about the sadness
of women soldiers drawn to war –

how they will carry guns, be trained
in combat to kill –

and still the blackbird trills his song
his curtain calling aria.

It’s not about feminism or equal rights –
its about nurture …

Gathered in stillness, our thoughts turn
to women who will learn to murder.

Denise Bennett has an MA in creative writing and runs poetry workshops in
community settings. Her poems have been widely published. She has two full length collections, Planting the Snow Queen and Parachute Silk by Oversteps Books and a forthcoming collection, Water Chits by Indigo Dreams.

Kris Spencer

Funeral Song

I hold a piece
of fallen headstone.

Rubbing the dirt away
I see letters

but not the words
that marked a life.

The trace of the chisel
is still sharp in the stone;

the surface smoothed
and finished

by a hand made hard
from working.

I drop the rock.
There is enough here, I say.

Kris Spencer is a teacher and writer. Brought up in Bolton, he now lives in London where he is a Head Teacher. A Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a thread running through his written work is landscape. Inspired to write poetry when an ex-pupil came to talk to some of his pupils about her poetry during lockdown and via Zoom. He has written seven books, most published by OUP, and many magazine articles.

Mark A. Murphy

Hide and Seek

Quand on est aimé on ne doute de rien.
Quand on aime on dout de tout. –
Colette

Someone is hiding from someone else
Someone else wears a blindfold
Someone looks at you with the eyes of a fox
Someone else is counting up to ten

Everyone asks what she is playing at
Everyone knows she is obsessed with him
Everyone asks what she is hiding
Everyone knows she is running out of time

Someone else is alone very much alone
Someone could not care less
Someone else wears a black shawl
Someone looks at you with the eyes of a crow

Mark A. Murphy is a low income, Ace poet, living with GAD, complex PTSD, and OCD. He is the editor of online poetry journal: www.poeticareview.co.uk He is the author of 5 full length collections. His work has appeared in hundreds of journals including, Acumen, The Magnolia Review, ISACOUSTIC and DREICH Magazine. He has poems forthcoming in Cultural Weekly and Synchronised Chaos.