Wong Wei Cong

The Fifteen Stones of Ryoan-ji

The windless surface of the pond was broken
Rippling across the stump of an ancient pine
Loosed petals whipped into a restless gyre
Bending before the feeble notes of a flute
The sky melted into a stick of incense
A wolf delivered his dirge to the virgin darkness
The conqueror wept into his reflection in the teacup

The dissonant rain upon metrical rice terraces
Hewed longing furrows unto the hermit’s brow
Washed the blood of the poet from his withered stanzas

The monk arranged plum blossoms upon a crumbling
battlement
A gong interrupted the wandering dreams of lovers

The sand-swept soul lay in unmoving waves
The exiled wren stilled its proud wings and listened
The stone, hidden in eternal shadow, laughed.

 

Writer’s Note: Ryoan-ji is a Zen temple in Kyoto,
Japan, known for the seemingly arbitrary
composition of fifteen stones in its garden, which
evokes a sense of aesthetic beauty in its simplicity
and asymmetry. The stones, of different sizes, are
arranged in groups of five, two, three, two, and
three. It is said that when viewed from any angle
(except from a bird’s eye view), one stone is
always hidden from view, and is only revealed
when one attains enlightenment.

Ryoanji rock garden

Wei Cong is an aspiring writer and an
undergraduate medical student. Besides
frustrating himself with the messy, intimate
workings of the human body, he likes to tangle
himself in the messy, intimate workings of
the human soul.

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.