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

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.