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Izabella Ortiz, Paul atten Ash, Martin Kennedy Yates, Christopher Martin, Agnes Cserhati


DREAMS, IZABELLA ORTIZ
DREAMS, IZABELLA ORTIZ



HINTERLÄNDER

Paul atten Ash


I have stravaiged,

journeyed back into the land

where the path peters out.


I have come to know

its unmappable traces,

borders ghosted, half-erased.


Silver-black, torn, the rack breaks,

the upland once more unsunned

folds in upon itself, forlorn.


I am benighted, dreamspun

in the grey-licht mirkshut,

crossing over into beacon.


I have become silent, solitary,

slowly disappearing from the landscape,

Obsolescent.


Transmuted into ashes,

scattered across the hinterlands,

the ghosts of us.



      

FABRIC Martin Kennedy Yates




THE RING SHEPHERD 

Christopher Martin 


Near the graves of St Leonards hospital,

where lepers once loosened in the shadows 

of leaves, a leafless shadow 

of a former self, silvers

around its rings, 

as if a Shepherd Moon, herding, 

through a thick, sylph starred reduction 

of time.

Retracing veins, komorebi's kiss;

scent of salve still dressing wounds

where suffering shouldered lambs 

into light.

               And there in Druantias mirror, 

where wood whispers of wound, I see 

the tired image of a saint, orbiting 

a silver chain around my neck;

a Prometheus pirouetting moss motes 

from memory;

sere, sapped roots wrap around 

bent double bones, while names soften 

on green stone.




FATHOM

For P.M

Ágnes Cserháti


The earth’s shadow eclipsed the moon’s full form

in the red-brick kiln of late November—

its smoldering lens a pagan rite

or God’s fierce expulsion of Adam

from the Garden of Paradise?

He watched the moon rise east over the fjord

and ridge of Indian Arms, his arms

wrapped around the close abyss of night’s

first silence, until the word love formed

in his mind’s eye, the fragile Eve of my.


*


Supperless to bed, the visions swirled—

Porphyro setting across the moors

bringing a hundred flaming swords, also jellies

soother than creamy curd, quince and plum, and gourd,

and lucent syrops

tinct with cinnamon, manna, and dates—

all with oatcakes and a soft heart

for the night’s pious moon and candlelight,

Coltrane’s brooding noise a wonder

to the beadsman’s aves told a thousand times.


*


Sight is sensation, a spear of some form

(or other) of relief from time—

his beauty a plunge into clouds

torn and transcendent, the soul’s intention

my only anchor. Summer’s sun speaks

of February, light on light,

his flame my body stripped bare, a like vision

of Casson’s nude left standing, her eyes

fixed to the floor, the beaded frost

of winter’s lace long forgotten.





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...


Paul atten Ash is the pen name of Bristol-based Paul Nash. He has been published by Broken Sleep, Butcher’s Dog, Magma, and Shooter, among others. Searchlight Seasons, his debut poetry book, will be published by Atomic Bohemian in October 2024. campsite.bio/northseanavigator


Martin Kennedy Yates was born on Merseyside and raised in the Black Country region of the Midlands where he currently lives and works. His recent poems have been published in The Rialto, Stand, Magma, Poetry Wales, Butcher’s Dog, Anthropocene, The Storms, Finished Creatures, The Alchemy Spoon and elsewhere. He is the winner of The Broken Spine Chapbook Competition 2024: This Wilderness and Other Concerns will be out in 2025.


Christopher Martin is a Best of The Net nominated poet and Buddhist living by the mouth of the Tyne on the North East coast of England. His work has been featured in various publications and events. His debut collection is due out with The Black Cat Poetry Press in 2025.


Ágnes Cserháti’s writing has appeared in the New York Quarterly, PN Review and Acumen, and won the Hart House Poetry Contest twice. She is associate editor for the Alcuin Society’s book arts journal Amphora, and founder and editor of Rufus Books Publishing.

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