FLOOD TIDES

by Adele Evershed

Mystery surrounds the appearance of hundreds of Victorian hobnailed shoes which have washed ashore on a beach. The black leather boots, thought to date back to the 19th Century, were discovered by volunteers cleaning up rock pools on Ogmore By Sea Beach in the Vale of Glamorgan, south Wales. Emma Lamport from the Beach Academy social enterprise which found the shoes said there was speculation locally that they could be from a shipwrecked Italian cargo vessel said to have struck nearby Tusker Rock about 150 years ago. —BBC, December 24, 2025

winter sea

cresting waves

of protest

 

The dregs of December wash up a cobbler’s lot of footwear—Victorian working boots, bloated with salt and hard labor. They’ve made a pilgrimage to Ogmore-by-Sea, walking on water, to reach the wrinkled sand.

Now they rest in rock pools with winkles and sea snails. Some are as black as Dad’s Boxing Day silence, some as tiny as a mermaid’s purse, some baring hobnails like teeth—leather tongues whispering their names to the slack tide.

They came ashore from a ship snagged on Tusker Rock—a floating cargo of tar-dipped ghosts, leaving out shoes for Christmas treats. If this was a kinder time, St Nick would fill them with gold and a life begun again. Instead, they’ll be gathered in sacks, tossed on the rubbish heap like all the other shoeless souls washed up on our beaches, their names known only to the high tide.

 

cold front—


a robin’s song 


crosses the border

Adele Evershed is a Welsh writer who swapped the Valleys for the American East Coast. Her work has appeared in Poetry Wales, Comstock Review, Modern Haiku, Avalon Literary Review, Black Bough Poetry and The New Verse News. She is the author of Turbulence in Small Spaces (Finishing Line Press) and has a forthcoming poetry collection, In the Belly of the Wail, with Querencia Press. She has published three novellas-in-flash— Wannabe and Schooled (Alien Buddha Press), and A History of Hand Thrown Walls (Unsolicited Press). Her short story collection, Suffer/Rage, was released by Dark Myth Publications.

BORN AND BREAD

by Adele Evershed

A center-left Welsh nationalist candidate defeated the governing Labour Party and Nigel Farage’s right-wing populist Reform U.K. in a Welsh Parliament special election on Thursday that has been closely watched as a potential bellwether of major upheaval in wider elections next year. Plaid Cymru, a party that supports Welsh independence from Britain, had been vying with Reform U.K…. in Caerphilly—for decades a Labour Party stronghold—amid poor approval ratings for both Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government and its main opposition, the center-right Conservatives. —The New York Times, October 24, 2025

Welsh is lilting all over the airwaves, with no definite article and plenty of soft mutations. Plaid Cymru won in Caerphilly against the odds, beating that odious little Reform Party—fashioned in the image of MAGAdom, with red hats, pitchforks, and teal (I ask you, teal?) rosettes.

Now, in Wales, we love a bit of scarlet. Jemima Nicholas beat the French back in the day with a pitchfork and a tall black hat, so we don’t mind a prop or two. And although we wouldn’t know teal from turquoise, we’re not colour-biased.

And there you have it—the nub of the thing. I listened to a woman describe herself as born and bred in the cradle of Labour’s heartland—think Keir Hardie and Nye Bevan—but now, because of Reform’s rhetoric, she fears for her sons in the town she grew up in, because her children are biracial.

We all know Farage might talk about the cost of living—how he’ll bring down the price of eggs—but all he cares about is buttering our daily bread with fear. This time he was told to go back to where he came from (and I’m not talking Clacton), but next year he’ll slide out of his gutter again, forked tongue slick with Eton-mess promises. And I’m not sure a Welsh hat will be enough.

full English breakfast—
I ask to swap the beans
for laverbread

Adele Evershed is a Welsh writer who swapped the Valleys for the American East Coast. Her work has appeared in Poetry Wales, Modern Haiku, Flashflood, Free Flash Fiction, Atrium and Literary Mama. Adele has two poetry collections, Turbulence in Small Spaces (Finishing Line Press) and The Brink of Silence (Bottlecap Press). Her third collection, In the Belly of the Wail, is forthcoming with Querencia Press. She has published two novellas-in flash, Wannabe and Schooled (Alien Buddha Press), and has a third called, A History of Hand Thrown Walls, (Unsolicited Press). Her short story collection, Suffer/Rage, was recently released by Dark Myth Publications.

STEELING

by Adele Evershed

Cwtched up in my bed in a Connecticut winter I listen to the news about Port Talbot Steelworks. It seems they are to be closed down, stealing three thousand jobs. Other facts are thrown out like breadcrumbs—the blast furnaces pump out too much muck and not enough money—the future is in recycled steel. And all that might be true but I remember the steel works at night winking in the gloom like a magical fairy village. I’d imagine Queen Mab being driven on a plume of smoke in her hazelnut coach over the bay to make mischief as we slept—birthing dreams and promising things that made the cold light of day seem less cruel. All these years later I like to believe it was Mab who whispered in my ear that even if you are from a small grey place in South Wales you could still sparkle and believe you deserve so much more.

 

the coldest month

I steel myself 

for another change...

Adele Evershed is a Welsh writer who now lives in America. Her prose and poetry have been widely published in journals and anthologies such as Every Day Fiction, Grey Sparrow Journal, Anti Heroin Chic, Gyroscope, and Janus Lit. Adele has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize for poetry and short fiction and Best of the Net for poetry. Finishing Line Press published her first poetry chapbook Turbulence in Small Places. Her second collection The Brink of Silence is available from Bottlecap Press and her novella-in-flash Wannabe was published by Alien Buddha Press in May.

SOME MEMORIES OF THE QATAR GAMES

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman, I.W.B.S.

A woman holds up sign reading Woman Life Freedom, prior to the World Cup group B soccer match between England and Iran at the Khalifa International Stadium in in Doha, Qatar, Nov. 21, 2022. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

armbands 
hands covering mouths 
wales a flag 
a falling star 
silent voices for a national song 
(did you know the team and their families were threatened) 
silence for a dead lady 
signs for “Women, Life, Freedom”  
“no politics in sports” the cry
yet politiká in greece where sports also ruled 
a word for a network and affairs of the cities 
a small world if you will 
our world now 
in a game 
where the boundaries of freedom’s speech 
end and begin 
now  
who will speak for those who died building 

Sister Lou Ella has a master’s in theology from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer.  Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and The New Verse News as well as in four anthologies: The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon, edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets edited by Sue Brannan Walker and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and in 2020. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015 (Press 53.) On May 11, 2021, five poems from her book which had been set to music by James Lee III were performed by the opera star Susanna Phillips, star clarinetist Anthony McGill, pianist Mayra Huang at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. The group of songs is entitled “Chavah’s Daughters Speak.”

ANIMALS IN PARADISE

by David Spicer

“Shelter in Place,” by Christoph Mueller

Maybe the meek will inherit the earth.
Peacocks strut through the streets of Dubai.

Peacocks have strutted, but not in Dubai.
Twenty ducks quack in unison in Wales.

The twenty ducks aren’t wailing. They’re quacking.
And mountain goats have descended into Bern.

The goats aren’t causing shops to burn or collapse.
Christchurch rabbits aren’t afraid of the few cars.

A family of them drive a Suburu.
A man sees pumas in Santiago, Chile.

The pumas purr, eat big bowls of chili.
Monkeys throw bananas at the T***p Tower.

Monkeys, bears, wolves are trumping us humans.
Maybe the meek will inherit the earth.

David Spicer has published poems in Santa Clara Review,  Moria, Oyster River Pages, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere.  Nominated for a Best of the Net three times and a Pushcart twice, he is author of six chapbooks, the latest being Tribe of Two (Seven CirclePress). His second full-length collection Waiting for the Needle Rain is now available from Hekate Publishing.

NO PLANET B

by Gail White

Image source: Tehran Times, April 22, 2020

A truth we’d rather see removed
now stares us in the face:
how much the planet is improved
without the human race.

Now hatchling turtles on the beach
escape in seaward flight.
In Africa’s deserted streets
the lion sleeps tonight.

Now dolphins leap from their lagoon
and wave excited tails,
while goats go sauntering among
the shuttered shops of Wales.

So every passing day would find
the earth more fresh and green
if only all of humankind
would stay in quarantine.

Gail White is a formalist poet and a contributing editor to Light. Her most recent collections are Asperity Street and Catechism. She lives in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, with her husband and cats.