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Enrique Martinez, Lesley Curwen, Victoria Spires


THE LEADING LIGHT, ENRIQUE MARTINEZ
THE LEADING LIGHT, ENRIQUE MARTINEZ

LOWEST OF THE LOWS

Lesley Curwen


The bay is a sucked mouth.

Pincers break the nap of wet.


Boots above his head, the sea captain sighs

anticipating a springs low


whose extreme absence will dry 

the heart.


Dreaming is free: visions are expensive.

Passion appears


jagged. Its score is two right angles

out of true, curlicued quavers


sprigging vertical staves,

a diminuendo decoration.


The mariner’s white ruff turned pink

in blood moon at lowest ever 


tide. There is such shame in going 

aground.


Hold fast. Pilotage will sing you to deep 

soundings, a thousand fathoms of green  


under the keel.

Maybe the poison is out.









A HAWK FROM A HANDSAW

Victoria Spires



come Hernshaw, come Hragra, come, 


              Falconer. & I,



                                           hard ride these 


           uncommon blue skies


                                                                                    north-north-west, the high flight - 


                                                                                                         

                 hollow-boned, comb


                      powder-down, 



                                                              preen 

                                                                   

                                                                      breast & rump 


                                                              suitably lustred


                                                                                                        stoop, characteristic dive


                                               banquet-me


                                          half-fledgeling


                                     half-brancher



                                                                                          hunger is a learned behaviour 


                                                                                                       devour 

                                                                                                                         this grammar of now


holes for winged thoughts 


               to pass through 



                                     a copper ring, once liberated


                         & I, your quarry, 


                                                                                                 

                                                                                                    knapped,


                                                                                           suitably authored


                                                                                                       with a belt of firs


Enrique Martínez Celaya is an artist, author, and former scientist. His work is held in over sixty public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. His notable projects and exhibitions include those at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia; The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.; the Museo Marino Marini in Florence, Italy; the Berliner Philharmonie in Berlin, Germany; the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana, Cuba; and the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig in Germany.


Lesley Curwen is a poet, broadcaster and sailor who lives in Plymouth, UK. She often writes about loss and rescue. She won the Molecules Unlimited Poetry Prize and was a finalist in the Wales Poetry Award. Her pamphlet Rescue Lines is published by Hedgehog Press and an eco-chapbook, Sticky with Miles is published by Dreich Press. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Other work has been published by Bad Lilies, Broken Sleep, Atrium, After Poetry, Black Bough, The Alchemy Spoon, East Ridge Review and Ice Floe Press.


Victoria Spires’ poems scribble in the margins of remembered philosophies, overheard ideas, nature, motherhood and desire. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in various publications including Berlin Lit, Suburban Witchcraft, Ghost City Review, and Dust. She was commended in the Ledbury Poetry Competition 2024 and shortlisted for the Aesthetica Arts Creative Writing Award. She is also a contributing editor for this magazine.

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