The Writers’ Cafe Magazine – ISSUE 4 “Time and Space”

A great online magazine to read and submit your writing to…..I have a couple of poems there this month…

The Writers' Cafe Magazine

The Haunted Sky
by Peter King

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Waiting Room
by Peter King

Waiting is filled with silence;
one drop slides down the smooth side,
hesitates before it’s sucked beneath
the incurved marble base.

There is bustle and commotion all around,
but it’s absorbed and nullified,
leaves not a ripple in the syrup
of the silent vessel, not a trace.

Even when the waiting’s overset –
a clumsy jog of someone’s
shoulder, maybe – it is slow to empty,
silence spreading out in sticky lace.

An insect, small and iridescent,
slow to see its danger, struggles
in the unexpected flood, antennae waving,
silence setting it eternally in place.

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Black Hole
by Peter King

Beyond the armoured glass
its metal shutters now drawn back,
I stare at vacum.

The stars are brighter than
I’ve ever seen – but I don’t
see them now, nor my reflection,
nor the ghostly cabin at my back.

And when…

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Prole Magazine

Issue 24 of one of my favourite magazines is available here:

http://prolebooks.co.uk/index.html

Prole is a print magazine crammed with poetry and prose. If you are a submitter, submit; but check out an issue for an idea of which of your work might fit. As a tiny taster, this is my contribution to issue 24:

My Whistle

In the wrought iron chair, oblivious to watchful eyes,
she’ll be waiting under a nervous moon for her dealer.
Her answers come foil –wrapped, sealed and shiny,
hard to get into without a steady hand.

My flaming wings were grounded by the threat:
‘Each time you  chew your hair, angels fall from the sky.’

Hunger, the desire for sucking barley sugar to a point
that could blind with a jab, loosened my gloved fist,
had me running from the Trailer and her pipe-smoke, to
follow the direction of rain, edges of clouds, slush of gravel.

Shame is broken-glass shaped, fists through windows, bottles
smashed on grim pavements, my whistle killed by drifting teeth,
the sudden appearance of gaps on the bottom row, an inability
to exactly shape air to summon dogs racing over the horizon.

Lockjaw Magazine

My poem 13 ways of Looking at Beetles was in the first volume of Lockjaw Magazine a couple of years ago. It’s an online magazine, one I really like, and it’s still happening (though not open to submissions at this precise moment in time). They have an archive of interesting editions. Here is that inaugural one:

Click to access Lockjaw-Vol-I-pdf-screen.pdf

Forgotten Conflict

Trying to gather together my ‘publishing history’ I came across a couple of  my poems ‘Bully’ and Crossbow’ in  Here Comes Everyone Magazine. It’s a great bi-annual literary magazine, in print, that’s still going strong,  PDF versions can be read for free. Here’s a link to the PDF of the Conflict edition, December 2014.

Click to access ConflictHQ.pdf

Progress to Date

Sixty-four poems remain in the folder I’ve confidently sharpie-penned ‘1st Collection’
It has found a title, which I’m keeping under wraps. Five or six poems are hanging on by the skin of their teeth and will probably be weeded out during the next ruthless round of decision making. I have been very ruthless to date: many a ‘favourite’ has been unceremoniously dumped because it isn’t what this particular book is about. Discovering what the book is about is a big step for me, as I’ve not thought about it while writing individual poems. I’ve never looked at them as a group before and wondered what my obsessions are outside the confines of the poem I’ve been working on. I realise that isn’t how it is for many writers: they write to a theme when working towards a collection. But it hadn’t occurred to me I was……..

I’ve been Thinking (unedited)

I’ve been thinking how discovering one tiny thing, one obvious to anyone who has done it all before, can make a huge difference. Yesterday I had several files of poems (the physical kind, in poly-pockets. I like things physical) lurking, filed by date, 2012 to the present. I submit poems quite frequently, so the published ones are all highlighted so I don’t send them elsewhere; I note down where and when published, because that’s useful. But, now I’m getting a collection together, (it already has a home, so it’s a matter of deciding the order, chucking out or grabbing back others if I realise they don’t work together.)

So, the small but mind blowing  discovery? Collate the poems like a book. Have them face each other, find where they are happy to partner up with another poem. So damn obvious, but what a difference it’s made 🙂

Shaping Dreams

 

At the tidal point where ripples run like dominoes
from sea left to sea right, memory offers up decades
of misunderstandings, trying to make things right,
managing to never be right. Reality pounds in my ears
leaving no room for imagination, the crest before anything
happens is the only time our power seems matched.
There’s no turning back, no gentle retreat to look forward to,
just being plucked like a bruised whelk from its shell.
I learn my lesson over and over again, but every wave
is a little different, shifting grains into distinct patterns,
hitting new rhythms, shuffling another set of broken dreams
to fold in on themselves.

First published on: I am not a Silent Poet, 2017

Free Poetry

November issue of one of my favourite online magazines. Happy to have a poem in here:

https://t.co/FUm5vnbYcd

Download for free 🙂

 

 

I Know

I Know
That every new notch in my rifle will be
underrated until I arrive, dead. I will never
court fame, never manage to gather people
round me in crowds, on or off line. I know

that I love wine, and it helps in the short term.
I know I won’t self-destruct, because it would have
happened by now. I know I have friends, unenvious,
coping with my dissociation, an incredible son
who has seen me lie down in traffic, and try to
get him to do the same.

I know that as soon as I get well enough, I will
be dragged back into a system that will make me ill.
I know that everything has already happened, and that
this won’t be believed. My planet is ruled by me. You
rule your planet. I don’t find that hard to conceive.

I know that the derelict is as important as the famous,
that celebrity is nothing, and that generous friends,
family and animals are worth more than anything.

First published on The Stare’s Nest, 2015

Stick Dance

Stick Dance
I’m caked in history, upside down on your street,
my silhouette cutting singers in black and white,
dizzy between the streets, amassing description.

I come clean, blow a path through talcum powder
and cheap hotel bars of soap, use chicken bones
to lure you, but it isn’t high school and

you are provoked into fury. I’m afraid it won’t be
played out when my tap shoes confront your
steel-capped boots in the elbow of corridors.

We roll in coffee grains, smelling so good
I decide to repeat this game with subsequent lovers,
to scatter coffee in all of my rooms.

I smear myself in Vaseline and am arrested
when I use you without permission
in my stick dance, my stroll dance.

First published in Ink, Sweat and Tears: http://www.inksweatandtears.co.uk/pages/?p=11722