Michael Swan

I Ask You

Why don’t you get yourself a decent boyfriend,
I said,
instead of all these yobbos
with nails in their noses?

They’re not nails,
she said,
and anyway, Dad,
I could bring Sir Galahad home,
and you’d take against him.

Try me,
I said.

So OK,
Saturday night
she turns up with this bloke.

Rusty iron suit,
hair down to his elbows,
grail stains all over his moustache,
and a strong smell of horse.

I ask you.

Michael Swan is a writer of English language teaching and reference materials. He graduated from University of Oxford with a bachelor´s degree in modern foreign languages and has later gone for a postgraduate research degree. He is the founder of Swan School of English.

Cosima Gillhammer

The Turning of the Year

This is the turning of the year,
Autumn approaches fast.
First leaves tinged with red,
weeping clouds and
a less gentle air.

Less gentle this life, too.
Illusions blown away
by the ravaging storm,
and the naked heart laid bare
like the dark branches of trees.

When we first spoke
we talked about spring’s sweet showers,
and the rain on our faces was warm and benign.
You were radiant then,
and the soft green of hope in your eyes.
You were the firstling of the year’s joy,
A gift unexpected, risen from snow.

We walked by the riverbank
and our smiles then were soft,
until they were scorched by the summer sun,
cracked open
and scarred
like a field newly ploughed.

And now the reaping has started,
the sound of sickles cutting
through sinew and heart.
The grain is scattered and
there is little to keep me warm
in winter’s dark night.

And perhaps this is wisdom –
to bear the withering
and yet to rejoice
in the flowers that bloomed.

This is the turning of the year,
and this is the howling
of winds over a barren land.

Cosima Gillhammer is a DPhil student and lecturer in Medieval English at the University of Oxford. Her academic research focuses on Middle English history writing and translations of Latin liturgical texts. She has had a lifelong love for poetry, but this is her first published poem. She is also a keen photographer, and her interest in nature and landscape is reflected in her writing.

Marc Woodward

Luigi’s Calendar

Thin Luigi stands next to me and points
at the sun’s red arc settling on the ridge,
clocking out of its daily labour
in the hot factory of summer.
He says that in the long days of June
it sets further towards the Gran Sasso
then, as each day passes, creeps its way
south along the far Morrone ridge.
But today is Ferragosto and the sun
still has much travelling to do.
For now I’m glad its hot eye is closing
on another sweltering afternoon.
I offer Luigi a beer which he declines,
as usual, and in my poor Italian
try to say how a calendar could be made
by putting markers on the hills
according to the setting sun.
He smiles, nods and speaks again.
I smile and nod too, feeling sure
neither of us have understood a word.
We watch the quick descent of the sun
the top edge just showing now…
…and now gone.
The bee-eaters are still chirruping,
but in the trees the last golden orioles
have calmed their fluting song.
Thin Luigi sighs and says Ciao Marco,
ci vediamo… then wanders off up the lane.
His dogs are barking in their pen.
I shake a mosquito from my ankle,
look back at the dark mountain ridge
and the house lights coming on in Serra.

If I were constant like Thin Luigi,
I could observe all the sunsets I’d need
to mark down and make that calendar
then use it to count the fallow days
which fall between you and me
each one like a flake of snow settling
on the slopes of Monte Amaro.

Marc Woodward is a poet and musician living in the English West Country – an environment much in evidence in his writing.
He has been widely published in journals and anthologies.
Recent collections include
A Fright of Jays (Maquette Press 2015), and Hide Songs (Green Bottle Press 2018). He was recently awarded a writing residency at The Wellstone Center in The Redwoods, Santa Cruz, CA., and his poem ‘Luigi’s Calendar’ (published in this edition of Acumen) was shortlisted for the 2018 Bridport Prize.

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