THESE PAGES SING WELSH LITERARY MAGAZINE Carolyn Thomas. CJ Wagstaff. Ellen Davies. Luke Blake. Manda Eliot. Matthew M C Smith. Michael Kelleher. Nick Pallot. Paula Montez. Sarah Rowland Jones. Beth Webster. Dee Montague. Diana Powell.
SPRING 2025 | ISSUE 03
THESEPAGESSING.CO.UK
Table of Contents. POETRY
Carolyn Thomas Toasting Muriel with Ice Cream Dydd Sul y Blodau CJ Wagstaff Ode to My Dying Prayer Plant Heron Song Next Door’s Dog Barking Ellen Davies It will help Luke Blake The Queer Ghost
Manda Eliot Stolen Matthew M C Smith A Canvas of Dimming Light Crazy Horse (The Best Rugby Season) Michael Kelleher Allotments I only wanted a book Nick Pallot SCENT AND THINKING Paula Montez 'Taith y Gwynt' Field of sorrows Sarah Rowland Jones Harvest
SHORT FICTION
Beth Webster The First Wave Dee Montague Ableist in Aisle 3 Diana Powell The Keeper of Hand-Me-Down Tales Luke Blake The Cemetery Walk
Perry Wyatt Chief Editor Cori SmithPimlott Short Fiction Editor Tom Pimlott Cover Designer
TOASTING MURIEL WITH ICE CREAM CAROLYN THOMAS
Demands beyond grief: paperwork, practical arrangements, family to see. Essential, sombre, social. Enervating. Consolations fall soft like confetti, professional, well meaning, generous, and everyone has stories, warm, humorous… Escaping for a few hours, we walked by the sea ruffled by a light breeze, enough to stir the rhythmic clink of halyard against mast on yachts berthed at Knab Rock. Among familiar sights: curving down into the bay, the Neath and Afan valleys; nearby, Mumbles pier and lighthouse… Among holiday makers, locals enjoying late Easter sun; among snippets of conversations, a snatch of Cymraeg, insistent mews of circling herring gulls; among waves’ slap on hulls at this high tide we sat quietly at Verdi’s, guiltless truants from responsibilities: the consolation of an unexpected peace. ‘She would have loved this,’ you said. As if you read my thoughts, you disappeared; came back with strawberry sundaes, lavish, sweet, glasses loaded with her favourite treat oozing with fruit. As if choreographed, we raised them, silent in a precious moment: toasting Muriel with ice cream.
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DYDD SUL Y BLODAU CAROLYN THOMAS I see you now, a tsunami of yellows, festooned in forsythia, bedecked in broom, your basket fat with daffs: all ready to stream into the sea of gold engulfing angels, wooden crosses, Victorian funeral urns, epitaphs in English and Cymraeg. Among the women, faithful to the dead, you lay gifts for family, but also bring eccentric kindness to the ritual: a profusion of spare blooms for the unvisited, lest they remain forgotten. Citrus, ochre, saffron, gold caress untended plots, a glowing flood. Each headstone has its story; each woman, her history, yet all share a secret communion flowing through veins like blood or ichor. Some say a silent prayer; others arrange their flowers, move away. You smile, nod, satisfied; wipe soil from your hands, call us from chasing lizards on the churchyard wall.
Carolyn Thomas is from Tonna, a village in the Neath Valley in South Wales, but has lived on Tyneside since her days as a student at Newcastle University and is now retired after a career of teaching in Further, Higher and Adult Education. She has reviewed for Stand and published poetry in Anthropocene, Dreich, The Ekphrastic Review, Impossible Archetype, These Pages Sing and elsewhere as well as stories in two anthologies published by Honno Press, Lipstick Eyebrows and Painting the Beauty Queens Orange, which contains her account of life as a gay woman in the 1970s. She lives with a misanthropic cat, still thinks of Wales as home and, stereotypically, sports a dragon tattoo.
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ODE TO MY DYING PRAYER PLANT CJ WAGSTAFF
Each night you come alive in shaking praise, rake heaven for a pale ration of moon. I’ve learned that a north-facing window is what does it for you: a view of the garage, its asbestos roof, a tomcat at large in the flat dark of the garden. But you can’t stand to look at our happy streak of bay curling into steeltowns miles to the southeast, and every sunrise makes you feel like you are going to be sick. I respect it: this drama, your High Camp sulk. Each morning all your faces turned away, nonbelievers.
CJ Wagstaff is a poet, musician and non-fiction writer from Neath in South Wales. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Wales, Swim Press, Buzz Magazine and others. In his practice, CJ is interested in exploring interpersonal relationships to place. He is currently studying for a PhD in creative writing.
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