POST-ELECTION BLUES

by Peter Calder

after seeing a small rally of people in George Square, Glasgow (file photo above) following the recent election results in the UK

He says they’re
all in on it.
Every single 
bastard one.
 
They know what 
they are doing.
Death of Scotland.
That’s what he says.
 
Politicians. Scientists. 
Journalists.
All of them—
Liars.
 
A ripple of hands
startles a pigeon
and sends the flock
soaring above the square.
 
But this Rally—he says
is rewriting history.
A pocket of truth 
in a new skin suit.
 
And I guess he’s right.
It is just skin 
holding us together.
We’re all in on it.
 
The left. The right. 
The indifferent.
Every single one of us 
wrapped up in it.
 
From Westminster 
to Glasgow lies
a body, bruised 
in patches of blue.
 
It happens almost
unnoticed. The birds
loop and scatter 
on the ground.
 
An old man
tosses crumbs—
and the flock
follows.

Peter Calder is a Primary School teacher living and working in Glasgow. He is the co-founder and editor of the Hull based magazine Descent Spread and has had poetry and short stories published in various UK-based magazines.

THE ULTIMATE DOT

by Julia Bair

Ukrainian word for bread: хліб [khlib]

friends say: 

you will write about completely other things now  

the war blanks flowers and butterflies 

it blanks the old books and new plays 

blanks the birds 

blanks men

it blanks hunger   

hungry people share their last crumbs with birds 

becoming the birds themselves 

disgusted to share their bread and life with occupiers 

and fall into the ground as crumbs 

instead of the grain 

to sprout over the “i” in every staff of life 

as the ultimate dot

Author’s note: Russians have no letter “i” in their alphabet.

Julia Bair is a Ukrainian poet, essayist and cultural critic writing on various topics, especially literature, fine art, cinema, and theater. Born and bred in a small town close to the Subcarpathian foothills and educated in the big city of Lviv at Ivan Franko National University, Julia travelled across Europe and lived in the USA for some years.

FAITH

by David Chorlton

The lady’s hair protests
too much; it shines against her age
with glitter in the green
dye cresting on her head. She holds
a cigarette between her first
and middle fingers, exhaling into
the morning just now
clearing from the early clouds
as she walks with her breast on display
by way of the five bold
letters silvered on her black shirt that proclaim
her FAITH.
                     In what
remains unstated. And all the upper case sparkle
gives nothing away
as to what or why she believes,
but inspires a guess regarding which sea
her soul is sailing on
in these impeachable, divisive
and uncertain days within sight
of Christmas. The pigeons
circling overhead have faith
that someone’s crumbs will fall for them,
the traffic lights
that cars will stop when they turn
red, the president that every lie
will one day be a jewel
in his legend’s crown. But faith
is a blind man’s mirror,
                                          a step in the dark,
the makeup on a woman’s face
when she is past her prime
and needs it to steady
her walk. She’s sitting now, on a stool
looking across the parking lot, while
the country teeters
on a tightrope and the great
questions just hang in the air like
the scarf of smoke around her face.
Whether there’s a god
                                           and who
he’d vote for; how old
is the mountain draped beneath the northern
sky; what kind of pen
was used to write the Constitution?
These careless moments
spent gazing
at life’s passage end
with a tobacco stub trodden into the ground.
There:
something finished, over
and done with. What comes next?
                                                                Maybe read
a few pages of the King James version, or
the National Enquirer. A cough
to clear the throat, a storm to clear
the air. Walk a little
up and down, practice how it feels to doubt
which direction is the best. Look
into the clear light for rain,
check for bargains
at the Safeway, light another
and inhale the belief that nicotine
can heal. A little bell
                                     keeps ringing
charity, charity.  At her place in the arcade
here’s a warrior fighting time alone
while the starlings on the power line
chatter strength in numbers
and when she strikes another match
on the year’s shortest day
the flame reflects
upon the word by which she lives,
taking comfort in uncertainty.

David Chorlton was born in Austria, grew up in Manchester, England, and lived in Vienna before moving to Phoenix in 1978. The Bitter Oleander Press published Shatter the Bell in my Ear, translations of poems by Austrian poet Christine Lavant. Reading T. S. Eliot to a Bird is from Hoot ‘n Waddle, in Phoenix, and a long poem Speech Scroll comes from Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library.

KEEPING INDEPENDENCE

by Archana Sankaran

Old Beggar With a Boy - Pablo Picasso, 1903

I will keep my
strong sense of independence,
my fierce will,
precious freedom
and hopefully,
creative lust.
Until the minute coffers
where I pinned my
existential insecurities,
stand near empty.
But empty, it does not
scare me anymore.
I have seen empty,
spread those bowls of begging
and received often pity
but sometimes crumbs
that were and are of
much value to me.
That some people can
be kind, never mind if grudgingly
to strangers.
There certainly is
a clarity, a looking at truth
a freedom at empty.
Oh, what a wonderful
place I am at, tonight.
Happy at going to full.
And happy to get to empty.


Archana Sankaran is a poet based in India. She is also an artist . She finds writing poetry often emotionally cathartic. And is grateful for the gift of writing.