POETRY JONATHAN EDWARDS

Gen

So here they come, around the corner, bouncing, flouncing, boho beehives, tattooed, corduroy-looned, sneakered scumbags, skinheads, brogue-shod uni fools, or look, they’re me, they’re you, but slightly cooler, lust- and roll-up-fuelled, artfully spectacled idea junkies, pushing, selling, any one of us could be John Lennon, Jesus, coke and sneezes forced through nostrils that are pinned or pierced. Look, these feather-boa’d vegans or these leopardskinned animals, with their X-rated bodies, their needs never sated by hands-free friends or look, their palm-held search engines, their razor’d heads turned by beauty or a global crisis, these masters of their own devices. For every word they’ve #’d or abbreviated, each god they’ve never worshipped, every song they’ve downloaded, shook their arses to or sung, I say bow down, bow down, the young, the young.

ALISON DENNY Night Shelter

Exiting the back door past eleven on a dark, chill night, we are satisfied the work’s done for now.

Benevolence in numbers: fifty-three dinners served; eighty-one hot drinks laced with sugar; eighteen beds bagged by fortunate first-comers.

Here at the door our calculations pause. Three young men, lean and hooded scuff around aimlessly, and ask for a final hot drink to take away – where? These unlucky ones have no bed tonight. I read fear or bewilderment behind their truculence.

What to do now?

The stone streets of Bristol don’t care.

They must be all of eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old. They could be my sons, my students, my lads. They are all of our lads. They are no-one’s lads. Guilt, dismay, small talk as we drive away.

Holly Ewing

Waisted Bones

Didn’t look twice at her reflection. Scared to wake it. Her skin was marked with its anger and frustration as to why she wasn’t perfect.

Its voice a constant reminder of what she wasn’t. A need to see the bones. Each day it cried out its wish for acceptance.

She watched it. No matter how hard she tried to impress it, there were flaws she couldn’t hide.

It tried to fix her. Its clammy hands clawed at her waist, pushed bone to bone in a bid to tighten the sides. Pulled at the skin. Its grip on her hair –her head pounding, caught in a loop of disappointment, of failure, and parts of her which were unwelcome.

An hourglass counts the time it takes to let go, to stop pushing for perfection and breathe again.