Issue 2 Poetry

oh sunshine,
you are like a companion in the days of dark.
you comfort me when I can hear the singing lark.
but most of all,
you are a reason to live,
to see the hopeful future
and my past mistakes I can learn to forgive.

– a best friend in the sky

Homecoming

“I looked upon the sea, it was to be my grave”

I am in in London,

I am longing for the sea.

The truth of the sea,

(relentlessness of it,

inevitability of it).

Cancel my prescription,

take me to her.

Salt. On tongue, on skin.

But it’s never enough, somehow,

like catching that whiff of petrol,

we are wild in a quest for more of it.

This exquisite stench of real life,

like the way the room smelt when the dog gave birth –

These are the things which remind us that we are not much at all.

Chopped waves, white and brown, slap the slanted wall,

with green sea spit and slime,

that you weren’t allowed to climb

because “you will fall!”

Oh, but to fall?

To slide down under a wave and stay there?

That’s coming home,

when you realise

what has been lacking.

It’s just like this:

When I was a child, crying, and the nursery teacher held me against her chest.

When she spoke, I heard the insides of the words.

Do you understand?

They were louder.

-Megan Hassett

Beauty

Eyes like promise,

lips like Satan,

like a whisper

the promise of pleasure

Looking into your face is like looking into water

that shine from the surface

A glow you can’t measure

you just treasure

as your eyes get drunk

gulping down that trace

that somehow, impossibly

shines off your face.

I wish I could touch your body

Because your face already sold me a dream.  

– Georgia Cassidy