April 2010

Fionnuala Murphy

Silence

There’s something dripping.

I can’t hear it, but I can feel it. A scratching feeling along my spine.

I’m lying awake, in the dark. The rhythmic breathing of my partner irritating me out of peace. Normally it would soothe me, the up and down, gentle in and out of his breath. But tonight there is something dripping, probably in the bathroom. I know it is, even if I can’t hear it.

My breath is fogging in the air. The heating isn’t working. The air is cold, chilling my lungs. I breathe out and watch it form a smokycloud. The night is still, almost utterly, except for his chest rising and falling. I can’t hear anything, but then again I never do.

This world is silent to me.

Fionnuala Murphy is 31 and lives in Dublin, Ireland, and has recently returned to writing. She is @ickle_tayto on Twitter.

Lena Vanelslander

Windows Free My Mind

Windows of uncertain closing
that should be open
Windows where you can only see a glimpse
of a closed mind

Once my windows were shut
But luckily somebody reminded me
You might get hurt, but isn't it worth a shot
To discover all out there
Visit other minds
Why are you so closed my girl,
so confined.

Set those windows free in the blazing wind
the burning sun, the freezing cold
For if not, you will not have lived at all ...

Lena Vanelslander swam many waters. History, Comparative Culture Analysis, Languages, it all pertained to her study. Selfstudy however remained the most important thing … Mythology, Literature, Poetry, too many to sum up. After a life of tribulations the turning point came in her mid twenties: she started to write actively poetry in English. Her melancholic and darkminded nature colour her poems to an individual signature in both time and space. Several poems got published in the Stray Branch, Savage Manners, disenthralled and also in the Delinquent and The Sylvan Echo. Her first book of poetry, written with Marilyn Campiz, Quills of Fire, appeared in November 2009. She is currently the editor of Gloom Cupboard.

Valerie Walter

The Ditch

with stolen skateboards and MD 20/20
tucked in bomber sleeves we would cut
across a long dead town to where
the drainage drains.
and here among clogged sewerage we
donned stolen cans of black spray
paint we covered worn markings like
sabbath and priest with god is
dead and nonexist! and so on whatever
being the subject we would inevitably run
out of things to say so

the braver boys would huff
the shier girls would swallow. of course
the inbetweens we did not claim to be
one of us you either: fucked or
were fucked, nay way those clean-whistle types

mattered as much to us untouchables
as the mass open sky or spread undeveloped
land it was all around us but for sale and
we could only steal from opportunity
every chance we could escape.

Valerie writes and puts it here.