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.

Peter Scheponik

Even Though

Even though, when I look in the mirror,
see my father looking back at me,
I still feel full- moon rising.
Even though I can count the age spots
that look like coffee stains on the fabric
of my face, I sense the surf still rushing in.
Even though my joints get stiff if I sit too long,
and I cannot bend like I once could,
I love the sun’s hot hands upon my face,
my arms, my chest, my legs,
taking all of me as if I still mattered.
Even though I am well beyond Indian summer,
and the leaves are falling more quickly from
the trees, and whole bunches of me lie
in heaping piles of colorful memories –
before the cold grey sky, the sleet and snow
wind arrive –
I love, truly love these golden moments in time,
burning their brightest the way candles do,
just before their flames die.

P.C. Scheponik is a lifelong poet who lives by the sea with his wife, Shirley, and their shizon, Bella. His writing celebrates nature, the human condition, and the metaphysical mysteries of life. He has published four collections of poems: Psalms to Padre Pio (National Centre for Padre Pio, INC), A Storm by Any Other Name and Songs the Sea has Sung in Me (PS Books, a division of Philadelphia Stories), and And the Sun Still Dared to Shine (Mazo Publishers). His work has also appeared in numerous literary journals. He was a finalist in Adelaide Anthology Contest 2017, 2018, and 2019. He is a 2019 Pushcart Prize nominee.

Veronica Aaronson

Absentia

In the rooms where my father dwells
confusion spreads like a virus,
the television isn’t where he saw it last,
someone has stolen his wallet,
his boiled sweets have been moved yet again.

On different days I am his mother,
his sister, sometimes his daughter.

Some days his dribbled words land like soft rain,
on others they leave his mouth like storm troopers
slapping us across the face.

Whether to prepare his blue shirt, polish his shoes
or tell him there is no interview, my mother
follows an intuition I don’t have. I pray
my mother stays sane and outlives him.

Mine is a guilt that’s difficult to wash away.

Veronica Aaronson’s first collection Nothing About the Birds Is Ordinary This Morning (Indigo Dreams) has been put forward for the 2020 Laurel Prize. One of the poems from the collection was chosen for the Scottish Poetry Library for its Best Scottish Poems Anthology 2019. A poem from her upcoming collection Emily’s Mothers, to be published by Dempsey and Windle in December, came second in the Waltham Forest Poetry Prize and has been nominated for the Forward Prize.