Dear Reader

Your disappearing act is staged for the time when clouds of cow breath  rise above early Autumn mists. It begins beneath seven geese  flying a low ‘v’. That breath  and those birds  are your conjurors. What they puff and drop will take hold in you, carry you to the coast where your edge waits where lonely people stand to send out their cries. What is shallow now in your lungs can be flung wide above the sea, made small between water and air. --- Sue Finch lives with her wife in North Wales. Her first published poem appeared in  A New Manchester Alphabet  in 2015 whilst studying for her MA with Manchester Metropolitan University. Her work has also appeared in a number of online magazines including:  The Interpreter’s House ,  Ink, Sweat and Tears, Dear Reader  and  One Hand Clapping . Her debut collection, ‘ Magnifying Glass’ , was published in October 2020 with  Black Eyes Publishing UK .

She’s letting herself go,  unsettling her friends with the bare-faced smile she deploys  these days. She’s dropping the habits that fenced her in for years, ignoring her scales and letting those killer heels  gather dust. She’s letting herself go further than she’s ever dared, right on out the door, back to the self she’d left  behind. --- Michele comes to poetry from a journalistic background. Her first short collection, ‘From a Sheltered Place’, was published in August 2020 by Wild Pressed Books. She also has poems in a variety of anthologies and other publications. She is a member of Leicester Writers’ Club and is the 2020 winner of both the Club’s Ena Young Award for Poetry and the Chris D’Lacy Endeavour Award.

(a poem for Ella Fitzgerald)   Her voice is a way out of the ghetto, the gutter, the likely fate of a poor black girl in New York City.   Her voice is a way in to the sounds she’s already formed in her head, the rhythms that beat, beat, beat in her heart.   Her voice is a way past the doormen who would block her path, questioning her right to own the night.   Her voice is a way through pain and loss and despair, connecting her to the pulse of life.   Her voice is her way of speaking to the world depths of meaning beyond words.   Her voice is her way. --- Michele comes to poetry from a journalistic background. Her first short collection, ‘From a Sheltered Place’, was published in August 2020 by Wild Pressed Books. She also has poems in a variety of anthologies and other publications. She is a member of Leicester Writers’ Club and is the 2020 winner of both the Club’s Ena Young Award for Poetry and the Chris D’Lacy Endeavour Award. ...

I am pushing the brake  as hard as I can. I did not waste a second  flooring that pedal,  getting it firm on rubber matting yet I am accelerating backwards.  I have never been this fast. The straight road taunts me with cartoon endings: a canyon to fall in, a brick wall to hit. The brake still threatens to rise. I am sure I could not  press any harder yet I cannot stop. All my strength is standing down. --- Sue Finch lives with her wife in North Wales. Her first published poem appeared in  A New Manchester Alphabet  in 2015 whilst studying for her MA with Manchester Metropolitan University. Her work has also appeared in a number of online magazines including:  The Interpreter’s House ,  Ink, Sweat and Tears, Dear Reader  and  One Hand Clapping . Her debut collection, ‘ Magnifying Glass’ , was published in October 2020 with  Black Eyes Publishing UK .