Enrique Martinez, Lesley Curwen, Victoria Spires

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.