Magdalena Ball #2 This Old Land responding to Dominique Hecq #1 Mood

This old land

this is the jetstream that bites

a forgotten pull that cuts through sound

approaching via the window of a plane

is not the same as going back

home is abstraction, it’s no place, a nausea

vibrates the muscles, talks in code

raised hairs, whispers against strained neurons

inarticulate, hungry

moves back to photographs

creates stories over wine, in the car, when no one

is listening, as interior voice, safe in obscurity

poetry no one is reading

breaks into a thousand dust motes

the eyes sting from the colours – refracted turquoise

watercolour green, a prayer to God the Vacant

stuttered out like the confession of bad dreams

in spite of the polygram that compels me

beeps as I walk through, taking off my jewels

a necklace of words and lies, desire the taste
of exile, returning to a place I never knew

Kit Kelen #2 - signature tune - following Jean Kent's #1 'Fly Away Names'

2

signature tune

following Jean Kent's #1 'Fly Away Names'

one day my name leaves me

and I'm left to guess a home

just from where I'm with

there's someone else sings this

was stretched to fit the box

naughty if ever written red

sometimes printed block, now blank

like PIN lost after a long flight

I think I missed it in a dream

when I was centuries from home

had curled around appendage

cooed, hoping for a stroke

and can you smell my name?

was given when I could not know

goes with a certain style as popular

each year, though there are stand-outs

let's remember... in the garden all the names

went too, then in a forest of falling spears

we all came to bloom to wilt – still there

was an inch of pride stood for the sun

where I am in all the years of my kind

a name would have shown that flit

between anonymous – it catches in

a certain light become a household

if I'm gone and golden you could

name things after where I have taken leave

went to do battle, was on a crusade

or took to bed for conquest, all whispered

it had to be someone who saw what I'd be

though they could not know all these days

convincing myself, like stone inscribed –

a cenotaph – this reputation for type and hardness

gone to it then waking to the named day

like a saint in wait and hair so long

you'd busk a sun up new each day

hundreds of years they are will be

still calling, calling for me

to office or to throne – a bubble

it will be like this from now

Jean Kent #1 ‘Fly-Away Names’

Jean Kent #1 ‘Fly-Away Names’

Fly-Away Names

In hospital, our names fly round our beds

as if they are preparing, already, to leave us.

They are as elusive and flittery as the little
lilac moths I glimpse, unexpectedly, in my garden—

snipped-up twilight skies, clustering round the plumago’s

leaden blue, or that long-lost choko vine,

when its fruit was still small, as exquisite
as ornaments of jade suede, swelling by the hour.

In the watery autumn light, those moths

regathered every slight angle of sun, and shone,

flashing violet before they vanished—a burden

of bruises whisked away so quickly

they seemed never to have been here. 

All day the nurses and doctors
are netting my name now.  I hear it flutter from me

briefly frittery, a bright glitter that could go

out of the ward and down the corridor with all

this building’s other breakages.  When we leave
we will all wait for that mist of moths

to settle back into one black and white print-out,
delicate as a butterfly’s touch on a wrist.

We won’t remove our dangling hospital bracelets
too quickly—those rings of red, pop-snapped plastic

where our names, detached from us
for too many days, are still warily sleeping.

In the garden of healing, we will wait
for their return—for the blissed silence

of no one calling them, yet, for a final flight.

Tricia Dearborn #2 Breath responding to Judith Beveridge #1 Breath

Breath

what you once

accomplished in

tandem with

every other

thing you did

oxygenating corpuscles

while you shopped

or made a cuppa

or made love

becomes the task

eclipsing all others  

the sustaining

unselfconscious

rhythm gone —

with asthma

you are either

breathing out  

or breathing in

not forgetting

for a second

that we must

breathe to live

Peter Boyle #2 Responding to Cui Yuwei #1 Keywords

Responding to Cui Yuwei #1 Key Words

Responding to Cui Yuwei #1 Key Words

Keywords migrate across my skin

house

leaf

ransacked sky

finger

downfall

doorknob

they press against my forehead

searching for the tiny

rust flake of the third eye

the small lock that will open

the corridor

                     the stairwell

                                           the great darkness

the narrow path across the dead pool of wastage

and there

on a far off, deep-set island

a cabin

and inside

in the self's innermost wardrobe,

held high by some

impossibly diminutive hand,

the cracked magic lantern

lighting up

the neatly folded sheets of the unborn

Judith Beveridge #1 'Breath'

Breath

  

                        I’ve done my thirty minutes around the oval,

                        my legs and heart carrying me up the three hills

                        as best they can, though one pounds and the other

                        two ache, and my left hip as usual calls for its

                        recuperation on the soft brown sofa which is

                        where I am now listening to the wheezing

                        from my lungs, the walk triggering a constriction

                        of breath, so that sitting here, I’m struggling

                        with a heaviness in my chest and a coughing

                        that opens or releases nothing, not even phlegm,

                        only a renewed sense of the body’s moody requiem.

                        My lungs that once seemed strong as leather,

                        now as poor and crepitant as a paper bag

                        filling with the hyperventilated breath of someone

                        trying to alleviate their heart rate and their panic.

                        My wheezing will cease soon, either of its

                        own accord, or from the vapours of a puffer

                        that will restore the reservoir of good air I need 

                        for easeful breathing—up until that time

 when some infection will turn each inhalation

                        and exhalation into static distortion: my breath

                        sounding like the crackling of drinking straws

                        sucking up dregs, or like the sounds of children

                        roughly tearing layers of foil-wrapping

                        from their birthday presents. Or until tomorrow

                        when exercise and allergens cause heaviness

                        and coughing again in my heart-flanking organs,

                        the squinching of breath that only a puffer’s

                        dose of ventilating mist, or the proxy pulse

                        of passing time will return to a legato progression