Izabella Ortiz, Liz Kendall, John Chmura, K A Nelson

A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS
Liz Kendall
If the world sea is no longer the warm, salty womb we slithered from,
but turgid with glitter and prophylactics; unbreathable;
let us fill our new-grown gills with the hidden waters.
Trusting the sticky intelligence of these glistening pads,
spreading where the dry galaxies of fingerprints once were:
how they listen with tingles and thrummings to droplets
melodying over aeons, repetitive beauty of perfect notes;
how heard they are in the darkness of the deep caves.
Slipping whole through mossy cracks
we remember that to be invited, and welcomed,
and to discover, is the same moment.
As the right way beckons, stroking our belly with its rivulet tickle of yes,
a gleam flickers into being, giving our eyes their reason.
Today it is embedded as a diamond in a tooth,
this small sparkle on the brow.
Some tomorrow it may be a solitaire, proud of its acceptance.
Who knows how far before us it may lead in times to come,
this perfect instinct full of carats
our smooth undulating bodies have forgotten
that there ever were sticks we have forgotten
there is no loss in leaving them behind.
THE RIVER STICKS
John Chmura
Stands a glacial erratic
in mindless meander
worn smooth
more by age
than morose water
rounding subtly
as it contemplates
the obstacle
and mopes
along
humping beaver dam backwash,
river sticks penciling haiku
with chewed nibs
and leafy ends
erasing coherence.
Often I come to forget
were change itself forgetting,
birthed from tree line
into ecotone,
preverbal pareidoliac,
reading mirrored clouds
settling on still surfaces, meditation
and shiftless foci reaching balance.
Now the swirling mud ruckus.
Crack of a slapping tail
and the lean lunge a priori.
But soon as rivulets form in my ego
dutiful diggers appear, rough knuckled,
dragging phantom limbs,
slopping bloody muck
on axonic pathologies.
THINKING OF GEORGE ELIOT’S MILL ON THE FLOSS
K A Nelson
Tasmania’s Derwent River is full, sliding to the sea,
a flat, fast moving slab after recent floods.
Half the road is closed.
We wait at a red light, watch oncoming traffic
come through; note the jagged half-
moon embankment.
A cold gale makes the car tremble. We shiver.
Is this how she imagined the river?
Is this the kind of current
that drowns children? Is it a river that could
drag a mother’s heart from her
chest; an ending that
makes a reader throw the book at a wall?
Izabella Ortiz My mother is Australian and my father French-Colombian and, as a child I lived in France, in Australia and also in Alaska. My painting came to life in an unexpected way. One evening in 2009, like a sleepwalker I grabbed a painting I had at home and painted over it. Since then I have been producing in a compulsive way… This "trance painting" loomed up after a lung illness and has become vital to me. I have become what I am. Most titles contain the word "dream" because for me, our roots grow in our dreams… My dreams are my capacity of transcending everything I intercept, absorb, everything that impregnates me for me to better spill it all out when creating. All my paintings are "automatic" and therefore, take life directly on the paper: forms and materials whisper to me what to do...
Liz Kendall’s co-authored illustrated hardback Meet Us and Eat Us: Food Plants from Around the World celebrates biodiversity in poetry, prose, and fine art photography. Poetry publications include Candlestick Press, The Hedgehog Poetry Press, Flights, Mslexia, Tiny Wren Lit, Allegro, Thimble Lit Mag, Amethyst Review and Lighten Up Online. Find her online at theedgeofthewoods.uk, @rowansarered on X/Facebook.
John Chmura lives and writes in the Pine Barrens of Ocean County, New Jersey.
K A Nelson is an Australian poet who won the Judith Wright Poetry Prize for New and Emerging Poets in 2010. Since then she has produced two collections – Inlandia (2018) and Meaty Bones (2023) published by Recent Work Press; both shortlisted in local publishing awards. Her work has been shortlisted, anthologised and published widely in Australia.