Skip to main content

Pareidolia by Jennie Farley

She sees faces in clouds, cushions, car wheels,
the froth on a cappuccino. She’s seen
the Virgin Mary’s frown in a cheese sandwich.
But never the face of God.

In Church she feels the glory all around her,
golden and sticky like brandy snaps,
the Saints are glaring, stern as glass.
But where is the face of God?

She searches town and country,
the patterns in pavements, grazed
walls, the tread of steps backs of buses,
rain-streaked windows, puddles.

In the woods one day she is caught by
a sudden storm. A hurtle of wind flings
her against a tree, eyes black and staring
from a Wanted poster nailed to the trunk.

---

Jennie Farley is a published poet, workshop leader and teacher. Her poetry has featured in many magazines including Under the Radar, New Welsh Review, The Interpreter’s House, and online journals. She has performed her work at Cheltenham Literature Festival, Cheltenham Poetry Festival, Swindon Poetry Festival, Cheltenham Everyman Theatre, Bristol Berkeley Square Review and other venues. She founded and runs NewBohemians@CharltonKings providing music, performance, poetry and workshops for a local arts club, and has held workshops at festivals and schools. Her first full collection My Grandmother Skating was published by Indigo Dreams Publishing 2016 followed by
Hex 2018.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Home by Jessa Forest

Home scratches at her shingles with tree branch fingers, pulls the air conditioning unit close to her grimy aluminum siding, and keens an empty song of mourning. We found her wandering the tornado snarled wild three months ago, starved and lonely. She doesn’t know how to take care of herself, you see? We fed her shards of dining room tables, kindling for the fireplace, and cast iron bathtubs clawed feet first. She was slow to recover so we gutted her plumbing, ripped out her nerves, and rewired the electricity. She let the water in every time it rained so we put a new roof on her and let her out for regular walks around the wolf pen. Let her mingle with the vultures, I said, let her feel useful and clean up the dead but no one wanted to listen. We found rot an mold in her corners, infused her insulation with antibiotics, and quarantined her for two weeks while she belched ladderback chairs, sofa cushions, wind chimes, and broken bookcases. She still has her bad days. After feeding time...
97 comments
Read more

Prints by Penny Ayers

A child’s mark before letters— sticky red palms, ten tiny petals, two flowers patted on white. Already they’re telling her story— the whorls of the thumbs, the dips and stretches of lines of life, of the heart. She’ll leave them everywhere— on the skin of lovers, knives in the kitchen, the riffled pages of library books, on window glass, wiping raindrops.   Will she reach out to touch things no longer there, make her mark for others to find like her sisters whose hands were caught in crushed ochre on cave walls, among running horses, the haunches of bison, 35,000 years ago?* *It’s now believed that many cave paintings were made by women, judging by the size of the handprints.   ---   Pe​nny Ayers lives in Cheltenham.   She has been published online and in various magazines, most recently in ‘Ink, Sweat & Tears’, ‘Snakeskin’ and the summer edition of ‘Spelt’. She helps run the Gloucestershire Writers’ Network.
1 comment
Read more

Smoking and Swearing by Ian Manson

He’s stood outside, he’s on his break. He’s unsure whether to be smoking or swearing. He decides on both. Inhale. Fuuuck! Inhale. Fuuuck! A person, a visitor, or a patient. Heading to the hospital, sees his scrubs and scowls. “ It’s not very professional for a nurse to be smoking and swearing. ” But he doesn’t care. He’s already done his good deed for the morning and by midnight he’ll have done a dozen more. Yesterday was a paltry four. Tomorrow’s shift will be five or two or maybe eight, and another night of finishing late. Inhale. Fuuuck! He breathes a cloud of smoke. Watches it swirling, ascending, a spirit en-route to heaven. The person’s saintly sanctimony means nothing to him. Because he’s on his break. And he’s smoking, and he’s swearing. --- Originally from Scotland, Ian has lived and worked in Worcestershire for the last 11 years. He can normally be found performing his poetry and prose at events on the Worcester spoken word scene...
25 comments
Read more