Stephen Bird

North West

The coordinates of my heartland
are north west. Egalitarian

rights of way about a city square,
Manchester Central Library in the round,

sundial shadows from its portico,
limestone columns to lean on and meet by,

sunlight rising through its windows on
righteous and unrighteous in the carrels.

Or Seattle’s open sculpture garden,
where the tilted planes of lawn and footpath

slalom from pavilion to shoreline,
and pairs of friendly seats attend together

the effect of wind on open water
and a holy mountain in the haze.

Stephen Bird is a technical editor and content strategist. He grew up in Cheshire, studied in Newcastle, and now lives and works in Central Scotland. His poems have been published in Edinburgh’s Anon magazine, and by Stirling’s Makar.

Jenny Hamlett

Masked

Too early and unsteady
I walk slowly along the half-empty corridor.
My glasses steam as I breathe,
blotting out direction signs and leaving me
stranded in a boat without oars.

What has happened to me?
What has happened to the alert,
making a joke of my hearing,
proud of my lip reading, me?

I fumble my way to a receptionist.
She says something. I hesitate.
She points towards some chairs.
I sit, get up and go back. Sorry,
I say, I’m deaf. I won’t hear the call.

I think it must have worked.
A figure in grey
hospital uniform shuffles forward.

I follow him, hoping
this is the right thing to do.
We enter a smaller area.
The man speaks. I hesitate,
look towards the changing rooms.

He says something angry and points
to a hard, red plastic chair.

I’m out of my depth, sit hunched
and silent over my bag.
At a distance, a tough-looking youth,
in trench coat and thick black mask
removes it for a few seconds.

He says, They don’t understand.
The rope he’s swung towards me holds.
Thanking him I smile, hoping
he can see it in my eyes,
and scramble ashore;
the shreds of my identity holding hands.

Jenny Hamlett has an MA in creative writing and has 2 full length collections published by Indigo Dreams Publishing. She has worked as a creative writing tutor with Link into Learning and other agencies in Cornwall and has read her poems across the south. Retired now she belongs to Second
Light, Open University Poets and locally, Company of Poets.

Duncan Forbes

Mrs Mortimer’s Podcast

Men? Flowers don’t have much choice
when it comes to bees, do they?
Children. You get what you’re given
and as for the virgin birth. Try it.
The root cause of all this extinction rebellion
and global warming is over-population
and over-copulation.
It’s not as if there’s no birth-control.
It’s no self-control to the power of n.
Marie Stopes must be turning in her grave.
I’m going to be cremated and one of my
feckless sons can jolly well scatter my ashes
in Torbay or wherever. I hope he gets some of me
in his eye. Dying? No, I’m not afraid of it.
Everyone else has died so far, haven’t they?
As for money, it’s lovely to have enough lolly.
To have grown old and not be poor,
that’s a real aspiration worth having.
Dr Bramble is hopeless with ingrown toenails
and don’t ask me what a defibrillator is.
There’s one outside the village stores
but I wouldn’t know how to work it anyway.
The Bible has a lot to answer for,
so does the Koran. Unreadable, for a start.
As for Genesis, can you imagine any male making
heaven and earth and all that therein is?
Most of them can’t even make a bed properly.
I can’t dress like a super-model anymore.
When you’ve got one foot in the grave,
you’ve got to have comfortable footwear.
It’s the resurrection of the dead
which scares the living daylights out of me,
not that I believe in any of that malarkey.
Imagine meeting all those revitalised corpses.
It’s such a stupid superstition.
Try saying that quickly and with dentures.

Duncan’s poems have been published by Faber, Secker and Enitharmon, who brought out a Selected Poems in 2009, drawn from five previous collections. For his most recent collection of poems, Human Time (2020), see
www.duncanforbes.com . He read English at Oxford and has taught for many years.