Gill McEvoy

Masquerade

Let loose by sun on bevelled glass,
a circus of sequins and baubles
parades into my room:

troupes of clowns with tiny pots of paint
spatter the shadows with rainbows,
back-flip on the walls, daub the cupboard
with lozenges of reds and orange,
splatter the fridge in green and purple silks,
cover the dog in blue and violet spots.
Colours caper like goats on my arms and hands,
spider tightropes spin out silver threads,
strings of performing horses shake
their plumes of gold and green and indigo.

The sun moves on beyond the window,
the masquerade departs.
The cupboard resumes its dark sobriety,
shadows are shadows once again.

Only the fridge continues humming to itself,
remembering something quite remarkable.

Gill McEvoy has two pamphlets from HappenStance Press: Uncertain Days ( 2006) and A Sampler (2008). First collection The Plucking Shed (2010) from Cinnamon Press. Second collection Rise (2013), also Cinnamon Press. She runs several regular events in Chester: Zest! an open floor poetry night (the full team: Judy Ugonna, Leih Steggall and Angela Topping); the Poem Shed, a workshop group; the Golden Pear poetry reading group; and Poem Catchers, jointly with Judy Ugonna. She was previously Artistic Director for the spoken word section of Chester Literature Festival. She has appeared on Sky Arts TV, speaking about free verse as opposed to formal verse. Gill has given readings of her work in London, Sussex, Manchester, Liverpool, Richmond, York, Newtown, Ludlow, Shrewsbury and Much Wenlock, as well as locally. She also collaborates with singer Polly Bolton to produce ‘sung and read’ shows. She is a Hawthornden Fellow.

Gill McEvoy runs several regular events in Chester: Zest! an open floor poetry night; the Poem Shed, a workshop group; the Golden Pear poetry reading group; and Poem Catchers, jointly with Judy Ugonna. She was previously Artistic Director for the spoken word section of Chester Literature Festival. Gill has given readings of her work in London, Sussex, Manchester, Liverpool, Richmond, York, Newtown, Ludlow, Shrewsbury and Much Wenlock, as well as locally. She is a Hawthornden Fellow.

J.S Watts

Monkey Night at the Circus

Monkey see.
Monkey do.
Monkey gone.
No longer my monkey.
No longer my circus.
Say goodbye to the red haired clowns,
the tension, the drama, the spangled tears.
No more balancing on an impossible wire,
spinning dizzily up high with no way down,
the world running round and round like it will never stop,
everything smooth and shiny bright,
its surface sticky with blurred rainbows.
I sleep better now at night, but the dark sparkles less.

I liked the way the yearning circus lights always
shimmered across the sequins and the glitter,
wishing on a thousand twinkly stars,
pink and gold and bleeding-heart red.
The air stuffed full of the warm sweet banquet-promise
of candyfloss and popcorn.
The crazy, ginger clown made me laugh as well as cry
and the performing monkeys with
their tiny, clever hands and winning grins,
those curling, gripping, funny tails
that wrapped around your fingers
as if they wanted to hold on forever.
I miss the monkeys.

J.S.Watts is a British poet and novelist. Her work appears in publications in Britain, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the States and has been broadcast on BBC and Independent Radio. She has edited various magazines and anthologies. To date, J.S. has published eight books: poetry collections, Cats and Other Myths and Years Ago You Coloured Me, plus multi-award nominated SF poetry pamphlet Songs of Steelyard Sue and her most recent pamphlet, i. Her novels are A Darker Moon – dark fiction, Witchlight, Old Light and Elderlight– paranormal.

 

William Virgil Davis

Journey

I step into my shadow
and the shadow goes away.

How many blackbirds
are sitting in that tree?

If snow fell sideways
would the flakes spin or stop?

Old cats eat slowly.

The colour I most want to inherit
is blue, colour of clouds and water.

When fog obscures the trees beside the lake,
boats disappear, are never seen again.

An evening like this
is one in a million.

Can you see where we are going?

William Virgil Davis’s most recent book of poetry, his sixth, is Dismantlements of
Silence: Poems Selected and New. His first, One Way to Reconstruct the Scene, won the
Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. His poetry has been published widely worldwide.