By Hand

This is an experiment
to see if holding these words
and feeling my pen strokes
scratched into the paper
makes them more valuable.

I’ve made an old-fashioned effort
to find a pen (sorry, blue ink)
and some paper (apologies,
torn from a reporters’ notepad)
and felt that unfamiliar stretch
of tendons straining against plastic.

I grimaced at the taste
of glue as I sealed in my 
offering and then I queued
at the post office for a stamp.

I know your address by heart;
I should, I live there too.



Ben Banyard

Ben Banyard lives in Portishead, UK where he writes poetry and short fiction. His work has appeared in Shortlist Magazine, The Stare's Nest, Nutshells & Nuggets and a forthcoming issue of Sarasvati.

Great Migration

We all moved
switching our spots,
like leopards denying their
true identities.
We found our new home,
but it reminded us too
much of the old melancholy,
so our feet grew restless
once more moving.


JD DeHart
Tennessee, US

mis-fit

are times
of interest , for new
decisions , waking
to different views . I have
no rules & cannot fit
shall not sign
for safety & each birth
brings pain . there is danger
here & things don't measure
will try
to keep a door open
to suffer
not to slumber.


Reuben Woolley
Zaragoza, Spain
reubenwoolley@gmail.com 

Family Business

Weekends were maintenance and balancing the books.
Saturdays we got our hands dirty.
The cab tilted to check tappet clearances.
A crawlboard under the chassis, back aching.

Latching up wheelnuts, a length of steel tubing
slipped onto the torque-wrench
for leverage, knuckles white through the dirt
as it groaned then clicked in confirmation:

did six-hundred newton metres
mean they were good and tight? I don’t remember.
I didn’t have a head for the technical side.
Sundays were my forte: clean hands and sheets

of paper, the columns of figures easy enough
before spreadsheets and look-ups
and pull-throughs confused it.
Now in the office I’m almost innumerate

compared to the whiz-kids, all college-taught
theories and clever equations.
Back then I was fifteen and doing the invoicing
for a one-man-firm with a sixteen tonner,

tapping numbers into an old-school calculator
with a spool of paper chattering out
the profit and loss,a ticker-tape parade
if we weren’t in the red.

Neil Fulwood

Nottingham, England.

neilfulwood@mail.com

Twin Girls, 1948

Beth was always different
marching as she did
to an armless drummer.

Her sister Kate marched
to another drummer,
one with arms on certain days 

but never with a drum 
that caught the sticks Kate 
kept in the air flailing.

When the girls were young
their mom and dad took them out
for walks on Sunday

afternoons in summer.
The girls waved to butterflies
but never to anyone else.

It was hard for other kids
peering from porches
to understand the problem.

When the twins were small
they didn't call it autism. 
It had no name on my block.

Now the illness has a name
and different medications
that sometimes temper

but never cure.
The girls are women now
old and living in a big home

with others in a small band
some still playing instruments
no one else can see.

Donal Mahoney

donalmahoney@charter.net
Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, USA and has had poems published Ancient Heart Magazine and other publications in the United States, Europe, Asia and Africa.