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.

Mandy Haggith

Discontent

Blue sky, fast-moving cloud,
all the trees with sun-silvered branches,

gleaming rushes bent eastwards,
backs to the wind we all know is coming,

like we turn our backs on the politicians whose untruths
sting our eyes if we face them,

turn our backs on the impacts of fossil fuel burning,
unable to countenance alternatives,

turn our backs on the people
whose forests are cut down, whose land is flooded.

Whether we face it or not,
the wind will blow.

Mandy Haggith lives in Assynt, Scotland, and teaches Literature and Creative Writing at the University of the Highlands and Islands. Her books include four poetry collections, most recently Why the Sky is Far Away (Red Squirrel Press, 2019), a tree poetry anthology, a non-fiction book about paper and five novels. www.mandyhaggith.net

Lori Drummond-Mundal

Lori Drummond-Mundal
Photo 1964

November birthdays are dark in the North,
untouched by the light of four thin candles

on a snow-white cake. Her harsh words hit
as if honed through generations, your face

ironed flat by the scolding’s scarlet slap.
You stare into the corner, as if watching

your delight stream down the slatted vents.
Curtains drawn against imposing night

shut out bright birch, our woodland allies.
If I could, I would take on muscles and cape,

leap to your rescue, but the best shield
I can supply is the happy-family-smile,

while you disappear behind wary owl’s eyes.
Fly, little sister.

Lori Drummond-Mundal lives in Stavanger, Norway with her husband, having made the move 150 degrees east from her roots in Alaska nearly 30 years ago. Her poetry has appeared in Orbis, Despite Knowing – an anthology of poems on addiction edited by Veronica Aaronson (Fore Street Press, 2021) and is forthcoming in Dawntreader. She is currently working on a collection of poems and stories woven from memory and imagination.