April 2016 | poetry
It’s nice to be me
she wonders
when you do not know
what the time is
at any shade of day.
When the dreams
bring down
the leaves of scorn
blown by the bluster
of those
that know what they do.
It is so nice to be me
on my own
to walk the trails of private gardening.
I rustle round the grass
like a whisper.
In the blue forget-me-nots
that flutter in my company
Who needs people?
if you have sown
the pretty pinks
to keep the head warm and cosy
in its bed of confidence.
I am so special I know
there are places to fly
to say the crazy things I say.
Nigel Ford
Nigel was born in 1944 and started writing age 14. Jobs include reporter for The Daily Times, Lagos, Nigeria, travel writer for Sun Publishing, London, English teacher for Berlitz, Hamburg, copy writer for Ted Bates, Stockholm. Several magazines in UK and US have published his work, including Nexus, Outposts, Encounter, New Spokes, Inkshed, The Crazy Oik, Weyfarers, Acumen, Critical Quarterly, Staple, T.O.P.S, The North, Foolscap, Iota, Poetry Nottingham, and Tears in the Fence.
April 2016 | nonfiction
An April morning, or maybe March, my children and I were enjoying the medium-low sunlight, when my son, Jacob, found a roly-poly. We congregated and proclaimed it a fine representation of its species, clumsy in its armor, as if playing dress up in its grandfather’s old army coat, and concluded that it was most likely on its way home from a sleepover, whereupon I returned to my writing, they to their explorations. A few seconds later I turned my head to a quick succession of three strikes: the first soft, the second and third with a consecutively sharper snap. Jacob crushing the roly-poly with a golf ball to a gray paste.
A stunned second and then I was yelling, “What are you doing? No No!” and sent him on a big timeout. This from my gentle boy, my movie-time snuggler – this unprovoked devastation, exercise in the superiority of breadth, unfortunate example that even the sweetest boy will instinctually destroy what differs from himself.
Crying not just from my admonishing but because he really didn’t know why he had done it, head in his killer’s hands, smear of the murdered insect and the crushing ball at his feet
My daughter, Olivia, sauntered over and inspected the pulpy remains of the roly-poly. “Oh,” she said, her voice skipping over a pool of sadness, and then standing before the penitent boy on his timeout, began berating him, “No Jacob, No!” Her tone transcended her usual bossiness, and was not a mere mimicry of my tone, but rang of something deeper, something issuing from her that was innately feminine, of unprotected life and the mourning of common tragedy; she who insisted upon vanquishing every spider from the house was whipping my son with words, her body jerking with spite.
Chilled now in the warm yard a sister waits for her brother’s apology.
Josh Karaczewski
Josh’s stories have been published in several literary journals, a couple receiving Pushcart Prize nominations. His books include the seriocomic novel Alexander Murphy’s Home for Wayward Celebrities and the collection My Governor’s House and other stories.
April 2016 | poetry
On the way to see lavender flames and bloody cow tails,
a bunny runs from beneath my car, tears in his eyes as if he had heard me
screaming inside my room minutes before
Some mornings I weep instead
Ashlie Allen
Ashlie Allen writes fiction and poetry. Her favorite book is “The Vampire Lestat” by Anne Rice. She is friends with the Green man and some other weird creatures.
