Ink, sweat & tears

  Veckans webbmagasin har förekommit förr i bloggen. Nu tycks sajten "Ink, sweat & tears" dessvärre ha försämrats. Vid mina senaste besök kan jag konstatera att den ser mer ut som en blogg. Jag har lyckats läsa mig till att den numera drivs av en enda person. Det kan vara skälet, tidsbrist. Jag har i alla fall valt ut tre dikter från den senaste månadens publiceringar.

***

  Sajtens deklaration:
"Ink Sweat & Tears is a UK based webzine which  publishes and reviews poetry, prose, prose-poetry, word & image pieces and everything in between.  Our tastes are eclectic and magpie-like and we aim to publish something new every day."

*

You, by Richard Law
(Published in Ink, sweat & tears. October 5, 2016.)

Tonight, the sky sags, heavy with stars,
and the wind has a cough,
but I need a breeze,
though the winter frost
has sandpapered my knuckles. Cracked,
they look tough and dry
as elephant hide and dangle,
hesitant above the keys.
Fingers slowly flex out the frost
like a spider, dying. I loved you
like hell. Ah, and there it is-
the brain, beer-battered,
swimming in cliché:
the moon is at the window.

The stars freckle your cheeks.
Beyond, the river jumps
with singing salmon.
And I could’ve sworn
I brought you mountains
wrapped in bows.

But we built our love
on concrete, with cement mix kisses
and scaffolding, skirting round a building
that will never fall,
but will never be finished. I loved you, truly,
as Neruda would have loved you,
and even he would’ve tipped his dusty heart
up like an old box in an attic and searched
through the empty frames,
imagining things.

***

  IS & T grundades av författaren Charles Christian 2007 som en plattform för ny poesi och kortprosa, och för experimentella verk inom digitala medier.
  Sedan 2010 har Helen Ivory varit del av redaktionen och hon har nu ensamt ansvar för webbplatsens innehåll. Hon föddes i Luton, men bor nu Norwich med sin make, poeten Martin Figura där de basar för organisationen Cafe Writers.

*

The woman who could not say goodbye, by Angela Readman
(Published in Ink, sweat & tears. October 6, 2016.)

He’ll come to hear it soon enough, by the door
where a woman can simply put herself out with the milk.

The air there is ivory, cool as a piano key worn
by notions of leaving that didn’t play out. It is not a sole

act, farewell, but a language slow as wood smoke
doving the wall over the hearth. He’ll come to learn

the so longs she laid all around the house. Carved
into couches, an embrace of absence, sags where he can sit

now and observe her slow bow, stowed in the snowdrops
she placed in a vase. So suddenly, the clothes lines

look like unwritten confessions in diaries. The horizon is
a closed ballroom where days of the week refuse to dance.

***

  Sajtens publicerade dikter är till övervägande delen skrivna av mindre kända poeter. Mitt sista valda exempel är författat av en student vid The University of Gloucestershire.

Blues (part 1), by Taylor Edmonds
(Published in Ink, sweat & tears. October 13, 2016.)

I

The creature found me in Hensol Forest
during my sixteenth summer
I didn’t eat anything that wasn’t blueberry flavoured
for two weeks and three days

It lived in a wood cabin with a log fire
and floorboards that creaked under my weight
We ate blueberry pie together with our bare hands
My blue legs crossed on a matted fur rug
with rust-coloured stains on the underneath

I bathed with blueberries
burst open their plump skin
and left a blue-black stain on the cast-iron rim of the bathtub

The creature slept in a room
with tree roots grounded into the floor
Trunks stretched their arms across the walls
As we entered their crooked fingers unfolded

A bluebird sang a song I did not recognise