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Hear poet Candradasa read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Candradasa back next the poet Born in Canada and raised in Scotland, Candradasa is an ordained Buddhist who now lives in New Hampshire, USA. His poetry has been published (sometimes under his given name, Michael Venditozzi) in Agenda, Acumen, Black Bough Poetry, Chapman , Finished Creatures and elsewhere. He was nominated for The Pushcart Prize in 2020. the poems Banagher Dam 00:00 / 02:38 That time we walked up to Banagher Dam competing all the way: the shocked, stern, physical silence, and the miraculous heat, and our thumping hearts when we got to the top. I fell asleep on the grass. When I woke you convinced me about eating apples including the core, though already a little wary of me; so it felt like I was being taught, not the old mutual sharing of ways. (A few years later, a man in Wales tells me birds won’t eat an apple’s pips as they contain some tiny trace of cyanide. He’d stopped himself on hearing this and, glad of the excuse, I found it made a lot of sense to me.) But back at the dam it’s getting late. We’re starting down, lighter between us as we come near the moss-wood, fern-breaks, soft-crumble sides falling away to the burn beneath; we cross a bridge – and run: Whooping, barking, down on all-fours, shuttling between trees like men formed in a certain kind of light growing supple as deer, while overhead a tawny sky, and underfoot the fawny ground. Scampering the wounding way of a young forest’s hollows: trip- humps and leaf-fills and rotting trunk-cuts; ducking in and out of vision like the lost patrol in a film of a far-off jungle war. A wreathing passage then, the yield of branches; smooth our stooping, sharp our awareness of the other, even when invisible. We’d stop, dead but for the beat in the ears – then strain, catch sound, and whoop again And run again, and harry and chase and laugh respectful; maintaining reserve – then suddenly veering over new paths won together through the wood: crisscrossing in front, behind each other, never getting in the way. Till eventually we emerge – glorious and nakedly undefiant – to collapse sweating, roaring with blood, silent again in a heap of grasses piled dry beside the stile close to where we’d left the car. Allan Donn ‘Ailein Duinn ὸ hì shiubhlainn leat’ Ailein Duinn 00:00 / 01:36 My Allan Donn, where do you lie in foam white as an alb? Your pillow now a mermaid’s purse, your bed of kale and gorse unseen beneath the sea, Oh, Allan, who can comfort me? The seals kept faith with every soul that fell from Hurkar rocks; their mothers watched them from the doors but no one made the shore, and all of us were torn, Oh, Allan, may we be reborn? So talk with them, my Allan dear, as we would in the dawn, our little boat with anchored dreams of other ways and times warm by the harbour side, Oh, Allan, have we lost the tide? Then pity us, sea kings and queens, the orphans of your race; whose fathers wash ashore like shells, and all the stories tell of hearts lost in the sound, Oh, Allan, sorrow’s in our hands, My Allan, when will we be found? Brú na Bóinne (Newgrange) 00:00 / 00:48 Those stones. Stones like huge mountain breads all dried out, still with the memory of oil. The heaviest overlaid in rings, spiral darknesses, sun-proofed save for the keyhole glow shown once a year: a god lasering in. The blessed work of generations roped together, hauled up and on: setting unequal day and night, their solstice harvest of grain and art. The wonder of river minds that floated quartz the length of the Boyne and turned whole hillsides to heavens where all our kings will be crowned. Publishing credits Banagher Dam: exclusive first publication by iamb Allan Donn: Chapman (Vol. 106) Brú na Bóinne (Newgrange): Deep Time, Vol. 2 (Black Bough Poetry)

Hear poet Ivor Daniel read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Ivor Daniel back next the poet Ivor Daniel’s work has appeared in the Cheltenham Poetry Festival's wildfire words , Steel Jackdaw Magazine and Writeresque . He lives in Gloucestershire, where he works as an English tutor. the poems Perfect Bed 00:00 / 00:56 I dream I am at Bembom Brothers Dreamland funfair park with Tracey Emin. Hard by Margate sands. I know I shouldn’t drink that Vodka on the Helter Skelter. Apart from that, a Day as Perfect as the Lou Reed song. We Kiss with Fish and Chips Lips, Join Hips. A Turner Sunset Going Down. I guess it is the Golden Hour. Blair’s Babes and even some of his men MPs are busy Changing a whole heap of things for the Better. Back in your room we remember that we even Changed the Bed this morning. The linen soft and cool next to our Optimistic skin. Questions & Starlings 00:00 / 03:01 Wow! Can the sun set blue azure and flame at the same time? How do starlings twist and turn as one? Who decided this is called a murmuration ? And who was that, going behind that awesome tree? No...It couldn’t be.. sweeping turning swooping......soon arriving from all directions. swelling then melting then swelling. streamlining safe in such numbers. pirouetting protection from predators. twist turn swoop swirl your genie is out of the bottle. shape-shifting unsolid sculpture of starling. you spinning top you sundown twister. a magic carpet has slipped its cave. . ...a cloud of iron filings .. ... dancing from... ..and to .. . . ..an ecstatic magnet. if we could cast the ashes........ of our loved ones as elegantly as your silken swirl then that would be the perfect way to go. intuiting when to turn in complex shifting patterns through a liminal space between remarkable and miracle. flying like no one is watching or maybe like God could be watching. oblivious of compass points and rocket science yet also knowing more than this. murmuration motion poetry in motion your swarm is the truth. black mustard seed beauty. then in the last of daylight at the secret signal a final funneling collective swoop down an unseen chimney to land on your roosting grounds. I labour with my leaden words, and muse on whether starlings know how spellbinding they are. And God. Is that you behind that awesome tree? Is this the last, the only, evidence that you exist? Was this your hobby all along: the choreography of sunset starlings? And is that just the slightest hint of disappointment on your face at how the human cohort of Creation has performed? Tread Lightly 00:00 / 01:31 I navigate the micro fathom ocean charts of flat portal ice puddles on a January farm track With their trapped air bubbles whorling patterns coils gyres spirals curls Trapped otherworldly whirls Secret as fingerprints coiled like intestines mysterious as a foetal scan marbled as the white fat in Spanish ham Iced lava lamps but underfoot Liquid light shows behind psychedelic bands but monochrome The frozen surface flat as frosted glass The patterns captive Zany This is the cat ice So named because it can only bear the weight of a cat Cold-pawed agile Although I am yet to meet the cat who would leave the warmth of the hearth to test ice puddles with its paws or fret on other scientific laws as hydrostatic pressure capillary action et cetera I make a resolution to tread lightly Publishing credits All poems: Exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Julie Easley read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Julie Easley back next the poet Julie Easley (she/her) is a working-class poet, activist, intersectional feminist and trans ally widely published in anthologies online and in print. Her poems have featured as audio readings on the US New Generation Beat Poet Laureate Ron Whitehead’s album From the Ancestors (with music by Gabriel Walker), BBC Upload, Open Collab, and Butterfly Effect's MdZ Estate . Her film-poem skin was published by IceFloe Press. Julie's debut poetry chapbook, NOT MY KING , is forthcoming from The Black Light Engine Room Press in October 2023. the poems god in heels 'Anyone who does not know love does not know God, because God is love' 1 John 4:8 00:00 / 00:48 if god appeared before you now, they would demand you look away if you had dared to steal their words and harm them they would fix their hair, loosen a top button or two then slip on heels to stomp on your placards that preach your commandments of hate that god you howl is dead sometimes god is just a kid growing into themselves sometimes they retreat find their community online sometimes god wears knee high boots and risks being killed in a bathroom imagine Dedicated to MPs Priti Patel and Suella Braverman 00:00 / 01:20 imagine you had just crossed the sea crashed out of the waves fell down onto your knees imagine your kids strapped to your sides their lives wrapped in plastic snapped and tagged for all the front pages imagine that journey, the swell of fear in your mind, the relief of the sand as your feet hit the ground imagine being met by military might their strength and power transposed onto you imagine being met by all that force imagine the drowning of your spirit no helping hands to keep you afloat imagine that danger, your desperation imagine the spectacle of media transmission is live on the 6 o’clock news your trauma and torment in full public view imagine if none of this were true when I walked with my First Nation friend in Australia 00:00 / 02:35 our footprints were the same – marks in time and place, whispers on the land. hers had longer toes, a lighter touch, her higher arch scarcely skimming the surface of the red dust road. you could tell I was following, hers paused occasionally, turning and smudging the powdered earth between us, gathering up the grains in pinched skin. her footsteps were rhythmic, heartbeat paced, moments of movement that mourned the song of the mother. she danced a little, displaced the land beneath belonging feet, placed her land beneath her feet. our bodies became the map, charting out the points where we lingered longingly, where the dappled sunlight dripped on us like melting butter, running down our bare flesh onto crusted paths. we merged into one as we rounded the river, disappearing into cooling waters quenching that part of us that thirsted for more. we swam till fading light beckoned us home, our impressions trailing behind tired limbs, through bush-lined lanes into the mass of structures that bore the town. we left our embrace in the earth, toes melting into toes obscuring our separation, and as the sky dimmed into night we promenaded the parade of hotels, where the tone of her feet was too dark to glide through the guarded gates into the gilded paradise of cocktails and canned laughter. in her country it was the pale stranger at her side who held the keys. we retreated to the welcome noise of the downtown bar that had no care of the colour of our soles and rested, pressing our toes together as if in prayer. if by chance you were soaring overhead and happened to glance upon us, you’d find two figures playing footsie like childhood friends in the park. Publishing credits god in heels: written exclusively for iamb imagine: Culture Matters when I walked with my First Nation friend in Australia: StepAway Magazine (Issue 33)

Hear poet Charles G Lauder Jr read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Charles G Lauder Jr back next the poet Charles G Lauder Jr was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. Having lived on both coasts of America and graduated from Boston University, he moved to Leicestershire in the UK where he lives with his wife and two children. His poems have been published widely – in print, and online. From 2014 to 2018, he was Assistant Editor for The Interpreter’s House; and for over twenty years, he's copyedited academic books on literature, history, medicine and science. Charles' two pamphlets are Bleeds and Camouflaged Beasts . His debut collection is The Aesthetics of Breath . the poems The Color of Mourning 00:00 / 01:21 The colour of morning in a San Diego autumn: you displaced here twelve years note sunlight’s silent taint and fade trees stained not with the blood of a slain midsummer god but with the knick of his finger. Dressed in the hues of fallen leaves you fill kitchen corners with apples and acorns corn husks and pine cones brew cauldrons of thick chowder and beer dropping hints that August has outstayed its welcome. This is the time of spiders gossamer-veiled doorways thresholds scorched by the shadow of scarred tattooed pumpkins eyes spooned out in grief over summer’s supposed passing. From here you scry distant clouds of smoke: seasonal wildfires fuelled by desert sage and dried brush that will touch many hands before put out like the sparklers once waved around a bonfire as if casting a spell lights danced off your fingers before extinguishing. The Pissing Contest 00:00 / 02:24 Little boys with their penises in hand gathered about a porcelain trough, the drain a silver dome, when all they know of politics is what they overhear their parents declare, so though they know nothing of Watergate and eighteen minutes of missing tape, nor of Ehrlichman and Hunt, Mitchell and Dean, they know ‘Nixon’, with its hard ‘ks’ lump, and Congressional hearings, the long, droning table of men in a dark wooden-panelled room and the high smack of a gavel, broadcast on all three TV channels, stealing away afternoon cartoons and Mother’s soaps for weeks on end, they stand there, penises grasped in little hands, following the biggest boy’s lead and aim their streams at the silver dome drain: Look at me! I’m peeing on the Capitol! Only a few of the arched golden flows have the strength to splatter against the dome, burst through its holes like a water cannon against windows, offices and corridors flood with desks and sofas floating away in the foam, interns and PAs swim to get clear. It doesn’t matter if they really meant the White House, or Congress, or Washington in general, this is for Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, and, if their mothers were here, The Guiding Light and As the World Turns , little boys peeing until penises run dry and the pee drains away, leaving a stink and a stain, the little boys are proud of their new game, as penises are waved and shook, then tucked away. This before the days of separate urinals, like older brothers and fathers already use, where they’ll stand, distracted by size, and brag to one another that the water is cold , and the biggest boy will reply, And deep too . The Guest 00:00 / 01:25 Bellying up to the night in neighborhoods as dark as the street corners of my mind I meet him fully for the first time, lucid, bug-eyed manic but not ugly, his frightened grasp handcuffed to my wrist as he circles, circles about me like wagons on the open, empty plains. What folk birthed and nurtured him, caged him, then set him free with few words in the ear as guidance? Like a cousin, or brother, last seen as a child —he’s not a stranger, but he is. Back home, thieves have broken in and he breathes their air, the money they stole, the television they broke, the window they crawled through, the colorful oxygen of their skin. Like a dead grandfather or drunk uncle at Christmas he collapses on the sofa mumbling like a ventriloquist, lending me his tremulous voice, his pinched nose and clouded sight. Rubbish spilling from his pockets is quickly brushed under the carpet. Publishing credits The Color of Mourning: The Aesthetics of Breath (V. Press) The Pissing Contest: Atrium The Guest: Dreich (Season 4, No. 2) Author photo: © Julian Lauder-Mander

Hear poet Moira Walsh read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Moira Walsh back next the poet Originally from Michigan, USA, Moira Walsh now calls southern Germany home – her poetry finding homes in a variety of Austrian and German journals. She's the author of Earthrise , and with Wilfried Schubert, Do Try This at Home . A founding member of Kollektief Dellgart, Moira has co-translated contemporary poets such as Olja Alvir, Ken Mikolowski, Halyna Petrosaniak, Maë Schwinghammer and others. the poems White noise, they say 00:00 / 00:22 as if it’s all one color. But then there’s the Lake: a rainbow of sushing and loshing and ashing and flishing and sething and hayshing Apology to local vegetables 00:00 / 00:36 Sweet corn – hours old, stalk to table! Oak-leaf lettuce, garlic scapes! Beet greens, basil, cucumbers! I’m sorry. On days like these nothing can squeeze down my throat except, after dark, some good cheese and a weird combination of transportation starches. Removed 00:00 / 01:09 Small room, only the right twin bed mine, half the bookshelf, half the table and one chair so half time chair sitting I miss those tranquilisers sometimes wish I’d kept the ones they slipped in a small paper envelope for my test night at home when the ward went up in smoke someone set a bed on fire and I missed it Two weeks later the next arsonist nurses changed the sheets too soon fine ash everywhere home again for a night I missed that too If I were still delusional seeking connections at all costs I would feel responsible for incendiary absence Publishing credits White noise, they say / Apology to local vegetables: exclusive first publication by iamb Removed: [kon] (Issue 10)

Hear poet Conor Kelly read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Conor Kelly back next the poet Conor Kelly was born in Dublin where he spent his working life teaching in a school. He now lives in Nova Scotia's Western Shore, Canada, from where he runs his Twitter (now X) site, @poemtoday , which is dedicated to short-form poetry. Conor has had poems published in literary magazines in Ireland, Britain, America, Canada and Mexico. the poems The Immaculate Conception 00:00 / 00:53 (Mary speaks) It happened at a feast in Palestine. When the meal was over and the remains were being cleared, somebody slipped on grains and spilled onto my lap enough red wine to make a patch of dress incarnadine. I’ve cleaned it often since, but it retains the faintest shadow of those crimson stains picked up some years ago in Palestine. And when my earthy father sent his seed surging with love into my mother’s womb to match and merge and predispose my fate, why should it, then, from Adam’s stain be freed and not from Eve’s distress at Abel’s tomb? Sometimes it’s hard to understand my faith. Through The Medium 00:00 / 01:27 It is quieter than I had supposed. Often I hear what may be a river, the sound of water infiltrating stone, but I can see nothing at all clearly. It is, if you will pardon the irony, like looking through a glass darkly. Perhaps there is nothing to see. I do not know any more than what I can discover in what is not quite darkness, nor yet light, but a kind of fog in which the dispersed vapours flow past me, continually. There is a faint sweet odour in the air, one which I find hard to identify although it reminds me of aniseed. But there is nothing there to taste, nor any object that feels tangible. I doubt this is either Heaven or Hell. It is far too cold, and there is no one with whom I can share happiness or pain. Not that either emotion excites me. Sometimes I can feel the mild dejection, a kind of post-flu depression. Occasionally, the desolation of unrequited conversation grates. And there are times, times I used to call night, when I crave the consolation of sleep. Most of the time, though, I just want to die. The Writing Spider Argiope aurantia 00:00 / 01:44 They left the poet's desk the way it was the night before he slept and never woke, the night before his final heart attack left one last sheet of paper on that desk half-filled with spider-like and scribbled words with some encircled and with zigzag lines leading to changes in the margins where his latest words were fatally ensnared. There are no spiders in the poet's house. A woman cleans and dusts it every day before it opens to the few who come to visit, for a modest entrance fee, and see the poet's desk the way it was the night before he slept and never woke; and see, also, the view from where he wrote of sunflowers wilting in the summer sun. There is, for those who wander round the back, behind the trash cans, near the café door, between a freshly painted metal bench and the next door garden's large camellia bush, a writing spider busily at work, its stabilimenta (those zigzag lines) catching the sunlight as it shines beneath the black and muted yellow banded legs. Desolation and determination: the poet and the writing spider both weave and unweave their patterns day by day. While every evanescent word evokes the emendation of essential loss, the ritual rebuilding of the web affirms a zest for life. Nevertheless, we all zigzag our way to certain death. Publishing credits The Immaculate Conception: The Irish Times (December 1992) Through the Medium: exclusive first publication by iamb The Writing Spider: The Rotary Dial (August 2016)

Hear poet Sarah James read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Sarah James back next the poet Nine out of ten solo poetry titles by prize-winning poet, fiction writer, journalist and photographer Sarah James have either won or been shortlisted/highly commended for various awards. Her latest collection, Blood Sugar, Sex, Magic scooped the CP Aware Award Prize for Poetry in 2021, and was highly commended in The Forward Prizes. Her newest collection, Darling Blue , due out in 2025, combines ekphrastic poems with a book-length fictional poetry narrative – winning Sarah the Geoff Stevens Memorial Poetry Prize 2024. Author of a poetry-play, an ACE-funded multi-media hypertext poetry narrative > Room , and two novellas, Sarah also runs V. Press publishing . the poems An Atlas of Tears Inspired by Rose-Lynn Fisher’s work ( The Topography of Tears) 00:00 / 01:35 Under the microscope, entire landscapes contained in every dried human tear. In these photos, grief’s saline secretions are aerial shots of flooded cities. Tears of change are a slum, overpopulated with flimsy dwellings. Basal drops are quake-lines from the cracked mud of a parched riverbed. Each one is mapped as art, but doesn’t chart what happens when ducts block. Nothing explains the tears that won’t flow, or how a body of skin and bones can carry years of non-stop rain inside, yet still remain whole. It wasn’t always like this. A few decades ago, we had cradles of ice for our polar cubs, summer skies counterbalanced by the days of snow. Who’s to say which tears would shine brighter – mine or the mother bear’s, trekking for miles across our thinning seasons? My son’s room 00:00 / 00:51 I can only hear birds, from his open window but their song rises and falls on his sleeping breath. Like this, love is peaceful. Sure in its presence – listened to and witnessed. A hymn that silence turns to prayer once he’s not there. Birds sing on through the opened glass. Air moves within. The empty-bellied note that settles on my outstretched finger has a mother’s hunger. It feeds on the crumbs of my heart. The River Girl After The Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse 00:00 / 02:19 Maybe her real curse is Lancelot himself, glimpsed unwillingly. The glass in her mirror shatters like a Cinderella slipper forced onto the wrong foot. Or so, the myth goes … She steps into her boat in a dress of innocence that’s bridal white. Sitting upright, her gaze is alive, but eyes fixed on something out of sight. She has no oars or means of steering, only her arms outstretched slightly at her sides like swan-wings half-prepared to fly or glide. Except, she doesn’t move; she’s as still as a dead Viking on a funeral pyre about to be lit and set adrift. As yet, the only flames are a lantern at the golden prow and one taper candle, another two having blown to smoke. But her hair is ready to set fire to the autumn trees in a slow blaze across this whole landscape. Her tapestried quilt drapes in the water. Already, a layer of colour from the tales patterned by that fabric has slipped onto the river’s surface, like a dream which has lost both shape and meaning but not its fluidity. If she were to dive in now to swim for shore, she’d arrive with a new life dyed into the white of her clinging dress – dripping weed, yes, but also the taste of fresh flowing rain and how brightly sunlight shines through when freed from a cracked mirror. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Rachael Clyne read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Rachael Clyne back next the poet Rachael Clyne (she/her) has been published in journals including Tears in the Fence , Shearsman , The Rialto , Lighthouse and Ink Sweat & Tears . She's also had work anthologised in #MeToo: A Women's Poetry Anthology , Queer Writing for a Brave New World and Rebel Talk: Poems from the Climate Emergency . Her prize-winning collection, Singing at the Bone Tree , addresses our broken connection with nature – while her pamphlet, Girl Golem , explores her Jewish migrant heritage and sense of otherness. the poems Girl Golem 00:00 / 01:27 The night they blew life into her, she clung bat-like to the womb-wall. A girl golem, a late bonus, before the final egg dropped. She divided, multiplied, her hand-buds bloomed; her tail vanished into its coccyx and the lub-dub of her existence was bigger than her nascent head. She was made as a keep-watch, in case new nasties tried to take them away. The family called her chotchkele , their little cnadle , said she helped to make up for lost numbers – as if she could compensate for millions. With X-ray eyes, she saw she was trapped in a home for the deaf and blind, watched them blunder into each other’s neuroses. Her task, to hold up their world, be their assimilation ticket, find a nice boy and mazel tov – grandchildren! But she was a hotchpotch golem, a schmutter garment that would never fit, trying to find answers without a handbook. When she turned eighteen, she walked away, went in search of her own kind, tore their god from her mouth. The golem legend is of a man made from clay and Kabbalistic spells to protect Jews from persecution. Rewilding the Body Based on Isobella Tree’s account of rewilding Knepp House Farm 00:00 / 01:06 The ribs of my country jut, its dreams gutted, hopes tilled to exhaustion. Fault lines exposed by monoculture expectation, by intensively farmed ambition. Let thistle stitch my wounds, as painted-lady caterpillars feast on the prickles. Let pigs unzip my paths with cracks for bastard toadflax and meadow-clary. Let ragwort flourish as one hundred and seventy-seven insect species thrive on its bad reputation. Let longhorn cattle tramp hoof-print pools for fairy shrimp, water crowfoot, stonewort. And one moonlit night – nightingales will return to fill my country with their song. Plague Times 00:00 / 03:35 At Passover, we dipped a finger into our wine. We splashed a drop, for each plague named. We did not rejoice. I BLOOD On hands, in every breath, in gullet and gizzard, in belly of whale, from every littered shore, we the seas incarnadine. II FROGS After ice-melt, I pulled three frogs, bloated and stinking, from the pond. Can we afford to lose them? Slugs will flourish in this unlikely spring. III FLIES Feast on our flesh, they wriggle their fatted way, before winging to offshore havens, leaving us a humanless world. IV WILD BEASTS In Chernobyl, wolf-law rules empty dachas, factories. Bears refill forests. Here, Adonis Blue butterflies will thrive on Salisbury Plain. Rats and dogs will shelter in car shells. V CATTLE PLAGUE Play-barns with swings and muzak, and no place for chickens. Carousel feed-troughs rotate past cattle. Pigs gaze through gratings at a crack of sky. VI BOILS This winter virus has no end. The people cough their way into summer. Vaccinations, rumoured to be toxic, do not help. An unreliable source blames chemtrails. VII HAIL First, snow, so deep. That night, rain. By morning the window – solid ice. On the ground, black ice, invisible. We could not step outside. Next day, hail thuds onto the roof. Hail, snow, a sound like falling corpses– these are surely plague times. VIII LOCUSTS Gobbling hoards turn Friday black, as they swarm through shopping malls, stampede for their white gods, trample one another for plasma screens. IX DARKNESS A firmament of LED glare and twinkle of red and white lights thread highways through the undarkened night. The only visible stars are on the ground. X DEATH OF FIRSTBORN Floods destroy the power station. Fish without scales, tumour-ridden, cover the ocean to its farthest coast. There will be no offspring. XI PARTING OF WAVES Red the ocean, gone the ice, gone coastline. No more trips to the seaside. No sandcastles. No fish to fry. No bargains to buy. No creatures to catch. No trees. No insects to bite. No birds to shoot. No property to buy. No planes to fly. No God to part the waves. Just burning bushes. Publishing credits Plague Times: Shearsman (Issue 121/122) Girl Golem: Tears in the Fence (No. 67) Rewilding the Body: Riggwelter (Issue 18) Author photo: © Jinny Fisher

Hear poet Polly Walshe read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Polly Walshe back next the poet Polly Walshe is a poet and painter, whose pamphlet, Silver Fold , was published in November 2024. Her poetry has appeared in PN Review , The London Magazine , 14 Magazine , Shearsman Magazine and The Spectator , and has been longlisted three times in the UK's National Poetry Competition. In 2019, a selection of Polly's poetry featured alongside Melissa Ruben’s paintings in Night Vision(s) at the Atlantic Gallery, New York. That same year, Polly won The Frogmore Poetry Prize . She also scooped a Betty Trask Prize in 1995 for her novel, The Latecomer . the poems One Small Case Only 00:00 / 01:11 Have you ever packed your bag before a war, Grabbing a few things hurriedly, Paperwork, some underwear? What, you wonder, will you really need? Will it even be possible to change your shirt During the war while on the road With nowhere to stay? You throw In a hairbrush, lipstick, evening shoes But who will have time for these? You know That in a day or two you’ll be laughing Dryly at choices you’ve made, At your ridiculous ideas. As if anything Will be normal! As if washing in clean Water might occur, or going to bed At a predictable hour after a meal. Something inside you knows this dance As if by memory, the need to thrift And thrift to pay a slave’s remittances And how there’s always someone more Forced out of you, a hedgerow poet Or a hidden priest, a conjuror To heal those wounded by their shame, Uncover words that fit when hope expires And cold stars offer no grace. Brand Sharpening Section A: Core Concepts (i) Now 00:00 / 00:49 Now is your only home And will make you authentic Across all platforms Not franchised to the future Or the past As many operators are. The progress of shadows Cuts up the hour But Now – and who knows how? – Has seamless power. All representatives and strategists Must beware of actioning Precise time terminology When Now is always streaming Perfectly, Licence up-to-date. Our Now is flashier, A great deal more Kardashian, Than tomorrow, Next week, Or the endless wait. Extraordinary Rendition 00:00 / 01:43 There was a woman who turned into a shadow, You could pass your hand through her quite easily. It was her desires, she could not overrule them, They chaperoned her everywhere and wore a hollow In her and the hollow grew into the whole of her. Mostly she longed for random retail objects, Heart-breaker shoes or a small Norwegian table, But her longings also looked for unprotected people Who lacked the strength to pull against the pull of her. This person drifted round a little spitefully and yet You pitied her. She was so small, so guinea grey, And getting greyer, more transparent, every day, While the hollow in her grew insatiable, hanging Out of her like Bonnie Parker to suck the strangers in Who stopped to talk to her. The hollow Would swallow her too, eventually, her nose, Her rings, her smile and her broken-brimmed fedora, Closing its portal to the human world and shooing Its desires back to their dark stable For refurbishment, but not before enticing several More unguarded strangers, showing them the charm In her and dragging them to the far side of her Where they remained, lost in a modish purple fog, Not understanding where they were and dreaming That they still lived modern independent lives, Following the news, et cetera. Publishing credits One Small Case Only: Pennine Platform (No. 95)  Brand Sharpening: Shearsman Magazine (Nos. 131 & 132)  Extraordinary Rendition: PN Review 269 (Vol. 49, No. 3)

Hear poet Victoria Punch read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Victoria Punch back next the poet Voice coach and musician Victoria Punch is curious about voice and identity, the limits of language, and how we perceive things. She has had her work published in Poetry Magazine , Mslexia, Magma and One Hand Clapping – as well as in Christmas Stories: Twelve Poems to Tell and Share . the poems A cold striding 00:00 / 00:54 Bridled with ferns in April, a year uncurled. Up – yet feeling low on the blue fuzz of new rain – the brush of a wing on the eave The earth, it seems, has turned on the warming drawer and laid the plates inside, crockery carrots and cucumber, cutlery laid in lines and rows, potatoes, peas and purple sprouting broccoli babies The earth rises like dough. Proven, prickling with spring, the lick of blackberries prophesied, the implacable hedge, laden with strings of wildflower childlings, seeded by flight, small mice and hiding birds, a little shy I’m asking, but I can’t recall the question in the face of the morning an ode to the unexpected find 00:00 / 01:08 I marvel. oh my, oh you – small lime green lurker how did you – damp smirker – get there. armpitted and puckering gloop grip in my top sneak under my collar your squeaky sneaky ways and hazy origins amaze me you have umami, by the look of you tang of salt on my tongue, you tiny appetiser, so phlegmatic, enigmatic part of my one point five daily litres of mucusy nasal secretions little air crumb catcher, dust, dirt and pollen snatcher, crunchy bacteria beguiler you are crisper as you dry your quasi-spherically makes me queasy, I quease I am uneased by your tacky feel, your unexpected gloop your roundness – rolled who rolled you, oh green one? wherefore and what nose did you come from? oh how I’d like to know or maybe (s)not Last Flight on the Road 00:00 / 01:54 that morning – stung by cold blankets on and steam-breath in the air low motor hum of the old car, road ticker-taped and on for miles grey and dim in the husky half-light sidled by the frosted trees thick as thieves the trees stood, still and stoic, lime-cold leaning on the morning light that came in waves upon the air replicating pine for miles they lined the open, empty road we made our way along the road surrounded by the stream of trees counting down the miles and miles curled and hunched against the cold hats and coats and frosty air looking for the early light his silence was a kind of light he joined our vigil down the road cut through the still and lingering air the owl came softly through the trees I held my coffee long gone cold and I forgot about the miles I felt he stayed with us for miles orange wingtips in the light his face was braced against the cold level with my eyes, along the road he slipped like water past the trees gold and russet on the air I held his presence in the air carried it for miles and miles wings the colour of the trees wings the colour of the light eyes held fast along the road I forgot that I was cold his face – the air, his wings – the light I sat for miles in silence on the road I watched the passing trees and felt the cold Publishing credits an ode to the unexpected find: Invitation to Love – Issue 3 (the6ress) A cold striding: Magma (No. 85) Last Flight on the Road: exclusive first publication by iamb Author photo: © Erika Benjamin

Hear poet Lesley Curwen read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Lesley Curwen back next the poet Plymouth-based poet, broadcaster, sailor and winner of the inaugural Molecules Unlimited poetry competition , Lesley Curwen writes about loss in the natural world – loss she saw inflicted by the global capitalism she used to report on. Together with Jane R Rogers and Tahmina Maula, she collaborated on the pamphlet Invisible Continents . Lesley's solo work, Rescue Lines , was published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press in July 2024. A Wales Poetry Award finalist in 2022, Lesley has found homes for her poems with journals and publishers including Black Bough Poetry , Broken Sleep Books , After... , Atrium , Spelt Magazine , The Alchemy Spoon and Ice Floe Press . the poems Running free 00:00 / 00:59 rippled mane spits white beads sun gifts endless diamond flash on stippled flow sheets pulled iron taut a cloud-line shadows Plymouth slides south to Spain my boat tips and yaws I ride her like a gaucho rockinghorsebronco through seas finite but giant a cornflowerblue bling robe to cool a planet my boat and I plough through plastic, oil slicks, submarines shit, bodies, melted ice fleets of sardine, shark whale and cell-wide life in celebration, grief, what you will A parent never known 00:00 / 00:42 In the gym, mirrors meet at a dark seam where body is apprehended but face is half a line of flesh, a ghosting, nothing real. Impossible to see whose breath is misting glass. In this fashion, the unmet father/mother is present and concealed. The solid whole that lies beyond the join feels close, a step away, just missed. Faceless, the kin we lost and lose again. Ocean City 00:00 / 02:52 We are on the edge of the world. Always the draw of water’s tinselled margin, urgent roar. Tattered pigeons bleach bronze heads of mariners who left Mayflower steps flush with gold and hard tack. Spattered eyes look to ocean’s light its crooning, sweet unknown. Monuments to the infinite spivvery of seizing new worlds not new to inhabitants not worlds at all same planet, same air, same cursed seas. We are on the edge of everywhere at stone steps beyond pasty ‘n’ fudge shops decorated by a dozen plaques copperplate or fat capital. A toxic pink sprayed across the globe from here this nub and den of chancers, rogues astride their wooden barkys aching to leap over the edge. It is not the ocean’s fault. It skitters in morning sun without intent, tides swung by moon’s slide at gravity’s dictate. Blameless it sighs, waves rainbow-flashed by diesel meniscus sucking at particled air. No launches now from Mayflower steps though exploits persist. Three frigates anchored in the Sound, tankers hauling fossil juice, dark fin of nuclear sub. A multi-storied cruise ship squats the bay its orange shiplets bound for pirate shops. The ocean is not what it was. Neoprene swimmers lash arms through green soup herbed with heavy metals from dead mines fine solution of faeces from overflows swarms of plastic iotas rinsed and smashed by diurnal tides. In the dusty Minster clouds of purple fish swim sunlit glass. A creation window hurls scarlet atoms on cobalt sea. Harbourside, loud horns call. Another vessel docks in Plymouth’s endless back-and-forth. The swell licks iron ring in weathered stone, blurs a rusty edge. Publishing credits Running Free: Invisible Continents (Nine Pens Press) A parent never known / Ocean City: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Heidi Beck read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Heidi Beck back next the poet Heidi Beck grew up in a small New Hampshire town – emigrating to the UK in 1998, where she now lives in Bristol. She holds an MA in English Literature from the University of Chicago, and an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University. Her poems have been published in The Rialto , Magma , Poetry Ireland Review, The North, Butcher's Dog , Finished Creatures , Under the Radar and The Alchemy Spoon . Heidi also has poems with The Friday Poem and And Other Poems . She was longlisted in the 2020 UK National Poetry Competition. the poems Hunting Season 00:00 / 02:35 A girl steps from a yellow bus at Loon Pond Road, anticipating a long walk home—down the hill, around the pond, past the swamp with the beaver dam, the final stretch just woods—with her heavy bag of books. It’s hunting season, and the men are out in pick-up trucks, stalking through the woods with ammo, scopes and shotguns, dressed in their camo, carrying coolers stuffed with cans of Budweiser, Coors, Tuborg Gold. The girl puts on a safety vest, flimsy fabric in fluorescent orange, begins to sing—Supertramp, Fleetwood Mac, all the lyrics to Evita —loud and long, so they hear she is not a deer, so loud she does not hear the pick-up truck slow behind her. It pulls ahead, stops, just past the swamp. Hello, Honey, where you heading to? She smells the beer as they corral her. Let us help, all smiles and hands. The book bag drops, the vest falls off, she’s on her knees, white rump to the air, trying to keep her tail down. She shakes her head, now fuzzy and furred, nose dark as dirt, everything narrowed. Her ears stretch, eyes widen, gaze becomes fixed, the world slows. She remains still, their laughter like an echo, then lifts herself on spindly legs, fragile bones at risk as she attempts to kick, hooves flailing. She tries to buck and punch, awkward in these limbs. Flanks damp, she spins, all panting ribs, spins again, falls. A girl steps out of the forest, arriving for dinner, late. They glare at her clothes, her hair, her wet, evasive face. She tries to describe how she was a deer. Stop! they cry, stop with your lies, your make- believe tales. Don’t bring this trouble here. All the Things Flying are Overwhelming 00:00 / 01:34 Even here, which feels like home, I need to be ready for the planes, the sucking sound and roar, the possible explosion— I’m mapping the trajectory of falling and flame while trying to track the flamingos, their splayed-out necks, the pink under wings as they jockey and speed, then they’ve gone too far and a flash of godwits whistling past, turning white turning black left white right black white black and he shouts You’re missing the spoonbill, just over your head! Didn’t you get it? and I swing my lens and there’s only an egret flapping to splash too late but then storks, Shit , my settings are all wrong, wheeling higher and higher, keep calm, find the pattern, pull them into the frame and keep on walking past the mountain of salt to Iberian magpies in the pine tree shade and don’t startle the hoopoe on the manicured grass, then the bright yellow spot of a weaver bird calling from the reeds by the lake, but look up, maybe an osprey or eagle, how the gulls squawk and lift in a tangle and a pintail duck crash-lands by an ibis, startling a grebe and everything’s flying and the crack of a golf ball and I flinch, remembering that man and the blood pouring out from under his hands. Family Bible 00:00 / 03:00 GENESIS On the first day I watched The Flintstones , The Jetsons , Sylvester and Tweety. I created sculptures from slices of American Cheese. I climbed up my slide and saw that it was good. EXODUS And so 2.6 million men were sent to Vietnam; another 40,000 fled to Canada. LOTTERY The Law said birthdates should be placed in capsules, mixed in a shoebox, transferred to a glass jar. NUMBERS The birthdates of three of my uncles were chosen. GEORGE He raised his hand when they asked who could type, and stayed behind the lines, tapping out words like defoliation. He didn’t know about the truce between Agent Orange and his chromosomes until he was nearly sixty, when we learned how acute lymphocytic leukaemia could kill you, and how quickly. HARRY He remained in combat, first with ‘the Gooks,’ who took out part of his intestine, and then with Benedictine and brandy and blackouts, with nicotine and nightmares. The hemochromatosis turned his skin grey, the liver cancer waited for the lung cancer to get him first. He died on the bathroom floor, haemorrhaging from a shot of chemotherapy. 1 PETER He once kept a pet duck and ordered a crocodile by mail. He could recite the statistics of every attack by a Great White Shark. He met the love of his life over there, Heroin. He married her, became a panhandler, settled down to a lifetime’s free access to methadone. 2 PETER He sits in a classroom of medical students at Yale, Exhibit A, a shrunken, shivery gnome in a beanie, insisting that everyone would be happier with Heroin. WIDOWS Katheryn and Antoinette. REVELATION On Christmas Day my father is on his seventh mission, flying cargo out of Okinawa, with seven Vietcong shooting at his tail. I visit Santa on his Throne in the belly of a Lockheed C-130 Hercules, the seventh child to sit on his knee. I beg him please could he bring me a Barbie. He gives me this Bible, full of Good News, instead. Publishing credits Hunting Season: Live Canon Anthology 2020 (Live Canon) All the Things Flying are Overwhelming: Finished Creatures (Issue 6) Family Bible: The North (Issue 63)

Hear poet Frances Boyle read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Frances Boyle back next the poet Frances Boyle (she/her) is a prairie-raised Canadian writer, long settled in Ottawa, Ontario, whose third collection is Openwork and Limestone . Her debut, Light-carved Passages , was republished after ten years in 2024 as a free, open-access eBook. With her poetry published everywhere from The Fiddlehead and The New Quarterly to The Ekphrastic Review and The Honest Ulsterman , Frances has received a number of prizes – among these, This Magazine ’s Great Canadian Literary Hunt, and Arc Poetry Magazine ’s Diana Brebner Prize . She was a long-time member of the editorial board of Arc Poetry Magazine , and is now on the boards of The League of Canadian Poets, and VERSe Ottawa, which runs the VERSeFest international poetry festival. the poems The Whole Tall World 00:00 / 01:07 A column of light, not steady but scintillating. I listen for its faint scratchiness, its syncopated silences, its airy breathing. Exhalation of pores, the inhalation of mountains and the sea’s unceasing bellow-lungs. Surf, like horses that rear and mane- shake, rush in, retreat. And spume a spiraling cylinder. A rising, a lifting, finest droplets hovering on the air. What tuning will bring me past static to clarity, to that thrum of silence, voices chiming, twining, a braid of sound within that space between breathing, behind the exhale, pulling the inhale into animate energy, that silent moment that might be death but for the animal compulsion willing our squeezebox lungs to echo ocean, and breathe. Water and Stone ‘When viewed in deep time, things come alive that seemed inert ... Ice breathes. Rock has tides. Mountains ebb and flow. Stone pulses. We live on a restless Earth.’ ~ Robert Macfarlane, Underlands ~ 00:00 / 01:23 Inside your house, the radiator ticks, floors shift and mutter. The skeleton of struts and beams is clad with plaster and paint. You’ve adorned the walls with more paint —on canvas, on paper. A visiting friend admires the art, the book-crammed shelves. Talk turns to what she’s read, what you haven’t. Excuses for uncracked spines. Your dog’s steps are halting now, nail- clack on hardwood more syncopated than staccato. You hear him sigh. In the driveway, a crunch as tires compress the snow. A squirrel traverses wire and bare branches. The tremble at leafless ends. You feel the slow flow of tidal rock how the current supports you, carries you. Pacific Rim Park, 1984 00:00 / 01:04 An amble of half a mile down to the beach, green on both sides as I carry my pack. I emerge to wave- rush that washes out speech, and set borrowed tent on the sand near sea-wrack. I came on my own to wrench from the mire of my shame over deeds which should have stayed hidden. The campers next site watch me struggle with fire. That woman craves quiet they shush their children. I beachcomb for hours, sand under my feet. Pared down to sorrow, guilt grows slowly leaner. My feeble campfire still gives me some heat while grit, whipped by wind, works to scour me cleaner. Lone nights under canvas deliver release; slow rot, woody moss-scent their own kind of peace. Publishing credits The Whole Tall World: Prairie Fire (Vol. 41, No. 4) Water and Stone: Rust & Moth (Autumn 2022) Pacific Rim Park, 1984: exclusive first publication by iamb Author photo: © Curtis Perry

Hear poet Susan Fuchtman read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Susan Fuchtman back next the poet Currently living in Iowa, Susan Fuchtman writes poetry, memoir and short stories. Her work can be found in Plume , Emerge Literary Journal , Stonecrop Review , Stone of Madness Press , Reckon Review and elsewhere. the poems Weight Bearing 00:00 / 01:30 Before I took a breath, before my blood rerouted, while my eyes were still closed, my parents argued about their individual visions for me, and after hours, days, after questions and explanations, they stepped into each other’s dreams and chose my name. Adam and Eve’s first responsibility was naming the animals, and even then, before sin and brokenness, before the veil was torn to make things right again, sitting there in that paradise they proposed and compromised and did the best they could. I visited my parents yesterday, and if you were there, at first you might only notice their faltering gaits, knobbled fingers, and unwavering opinions, but as the day progressed, you’d see they’ve not forgotten how it felt to hold me, stroke my hair, kiss my baby cheeks, to sacrifice a lifetime— to give me a name. I thought about all the names written in all the world in all time— charcoal on cave walls, quill and ink on papyrus, blue ballpoint on number ten envelopes, crayon on school papers, typewriter ribbon on essays, sharpies on name badges, pixels on phone screens, fingers in red dirt— How does the earth bear the weight of them? Riders 00:00 / 00:54 I think you, meaning the gray-haired audience in a dark bar on the north side of Chicago, will like our arrangement of this song. The guitar glisses into space. From closed eyes I see stars pulsate down to a green pasture, mating-marked sheep grazing, dead tree in the center. Out of the ominous sky, lightning. Tree flares flame, grass too wet to catch. I open my eyes, sit back. Irrelevance hangs in the air like smoke. The singer’s voice softens to a whisper, tapping out riders on the storm like impatient fingers on a table, waiting for the next bright blaze. What If Wars 00:00 / 02:02 were fought by old people say, 60, who have retirement in their sights and grandchildren they hope to see grow up— so they take vitamins and do exercises or maybe yoga, and eat organic and get eight hours of sleep— what if those old people were dressed in camouflage and sent to basic training where they climbed over walls and crawled under barbed wire while live ammunition was shot over them and then, having demonstrated their fitness, were given guns and 50-pound packs and loaded onto planes to go to a country they may or may not be able to point to on a map, a place where they may or may not understand what is being fought over, a place so far away that they can’t come home for Christmas and little ones will cry and say, ‘I miss my Grandma.’ And what if the other side did the same, and the battlefields were filled with grandmothers and grandfathers and great uncles and aunts and brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers, all in camouflage and all with guns— You’ve already guessed this poem isn’t very clever because you know what would happen: The grandmothers would bring sugar cookies and the grandfathers would share cigars and talk about baseball or soccer, and the guns would be forgotten as big picture albums were pulled from back pockets. They would forget what they were supposed to be fighting about, and host each other in their respective homes, maybe a container on base here or a tent there or a foxhole in between. Because by the time you are old, it’s not that you’re so feeble that you can’t remember, but you know there are some things better not remembered. And by the time you are old, what you must remember is that time is short and life is precious and life is short. I apologize for repeating myself but it’s so easy to forget. Publishing credits Weight Bearing: Emerge Literary Journal (Issue 16) Riders: exclusive first publication by iamb What If Wars: won an Honorable Mention in the Sinclair Community College Spectrum Awards 2015 and was published in the awards booklet

Hear poet Jim Newcombe read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Jim Newcombe back next the poet Born and raised in Derby in the heart of the English Midlands, Jim Newcombe moved to London in 2006. Since then, he's lived in every quarter of the capital – enjoying an active cultural life of concerts and visits to theatre productions, museums, galleries and taverns. Jim's writing has appeared in numerous publications, and was shortlisted for the prestigious Bridport Prize, as well as for the Pendle Prize for elegies commemorating the First World War. the poems Eight Owls for Hieronymus Bosch 00:00 / 01:43 I Between the inward and outward wave upon the shore a rhythm in feathers that wasn’t here before called into being its substance and its law. II Between the masculine and feminine, between the how of her and why of him, came one with wings who shamed the seraphim. III Out from opposing poles that brought us here with eyes of sun and moon that knew no tear a tremulous presence maintained the biosphere. IV Between one nation’s customs and the next a primal entity that left the scholars vexed denied in its descent the doctrine of each text. V In the skewed trajectories of time and space it roosted aloof and in the darkest place rotated the clock of its expressionless face. VI The wood has ears, the field has eyes, and dawn reveals the eyes in every ear of corn that scans our thoughts, their verdict full of scorn. VII It is the decoy to all you think is true, to everything you ever thought you knew; the one note in its voice asks Who-are-you? VIII Both the signal to a secret and a lure, it hears the silence of a spider on the floor and sees most clearly when it’s most obscure. The House 00:00 / 02:16 Boundaries were defined by harsh words and bolted doors, yet by night I snuck past sleeping sentinels, the dark air pregnant with unanswered prayers, the page of each wall scripted with shadow, seeming to swell with pressure, as though something passed through it. Rain tapped at each window where the gloating stars peered in like patient voyeurs, the rhubarb blanched in moonlight as the clematis loomed, scaling the house, rending foundations I could not fortify. Spiders were hatched from cracked corners. I searched for clues, listened at keyholes for conspiracies, my memory mapped with creaking floorboards that betrayed my presence. I would spend hours in prayer and soliloquy trying to subsume the guilt I had inherited. Before they could be caught or killed the spiders would scuttle back to their dark dimension, as though a gash could suck up its own blood. Somewhere in hiding was the eight-legged mother of them all, her deftly strung web a grid of carcasses; wings, shells, corrupted husks mauled and festering. I couldn’t sleep for fear of it. Sometimes I would try the cellar door: deep and forbidding, that underground lair, where steps descend into a darkness that writhed with apprehensions. I couldn’t reach the light switch to dispel my suspicions which grew like rumours of a secret sin. One day I would confront whatever was down there and return victorious (if return at all) to where another, like me, would dare to descend along the cellar’s corpse-cold walls, dank and mildewed, the treacherous gloom now bristling, bristling and black with all that is unassumed. The Moon and The Sea From A Shake of the Riddle 00:00 / 01:00 VIII The moon and the sea – are they in harmony or at war? The martial marriage of the pale satellite and the brisk lush rasp of breakers – their sickly scurf and slosh, the weft and warp of crawling froth, and the pendulum tide like a nag gone berserk in its bridle, while the blind pupil of the milky moon dumb and vacuous, dimpled with craters, barren as the soul of an atheist. Holding dominion over the toiling water, that wormy, comet-scuffed wafer, that shrunken bauble of colourless light, still separate despite its travelled distance, its clean light of clinical intellect frozen from shadow, whose oblique brilliance does not illumine, but only reflect. Publishing credits Eight Owls for Hieronymus Bosch / The Moon and The Sea: exclusive first publication by iamb The House: Eunoia Review