THESE PAGES SING WELSH LITERARY MAGAZINE Angela Arnold. Carl Griffin. Caroline Renkes. Cheryl Beer. Elizabeth Lockwood. Ines Benelghazi. Jack Rendell. Jude Brigley. Leigh Manley. Lloyd Edwards. Mike Everley. Nick Pallot. Ryan O'Neill. Aneeta Sundararaj. Lindsay Comer. Jamie Harper Harrison. Ian Forth. Cori Smith-Pimlott
WINTER 2025 | ISSUE 02
THESEPAGESSING.CO.UK
Table of Contents. POETRY
Angela Arnold Climbing the Past Dark Carl Griffin A Welsh Churchyard Caroline Renkes Honour Killing National Trust National Betrayal Cheryl Beer Rising Lark Elizabeth Lockwood Due Date
Ines Benelghazi Ceffyl Dŵr Jack Rendell Nightly Undisturbed Dryads’ Prayer Jude Brigley Safe The Scrumpledina Leigh Manley Momentum Golden Boy Lloyd Edwards The Vanishing Mind Mike Everley Gravity Restoration Nick Pallot ANAMNESIS Ryan O'Neill our year / ny resolution
978-1-300-60215-6 Imprint: Lulu.com
SHORT FICTION
Aneeta Sundararaj Son Of Lindsay Comer (Dis)Enchantment.
Perry Wyatt Editor Kornelia Urbaniak Cover Designer
Jamie Harper Harrison Lamplight Ian Forth Dickie de Veer’s Last Serenade Mrs Clocker’s Lament Cori Smith-Pimlott King of the Dead
CLIMBING THE PAST ANGELA ARNOLD
That head-on slope, nibbled to green, slippy. OK. That particular gorse scrub, though, as if it could still be nevergrown, a barrier unthickened? Could still be the scratchy funnel, breakthrough point, to otherwhere? Ankle twist then would be a sure-as-hell break today. But here’s the giddy downward now, strewn with sharp glints, every step still negotiated by the same explorer, identical sun striking the lone Silverwashed Fritillary, basking for a whole tweny-year day. There now as I power past the turn, do the whole trudge of What Was for a fast four miles. Until nan’s garden intrudes with its lesser set of butterflies, newly marshalled grass.
ANGELA ARNOLD IS A WRITER, POET, ARTIST, A CREATIVE GARDENER AND AN ENVIRONMENTAL CAMPAIGNER. HER POEMS HAVE APPEARED IN PRINT MAGAZINES, ANTHOLOGIES AND ONLINE, BOTH IN THE UK AND ELSEWHERE. FIRST COLLECTION IN BETWEEN: ‘INNER LANDSCAPES’ AND RELATIONSHIPS (STAIRWELL BOOKS, 2023). SHE LIVES IN NORTH WALES.
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DARK ANGELA ARNOLD It's not enough, this beside-me-sitting, all cosy and sofaish and sharing. Take, you say. But I need what you don't get: dark, darker. It's disorienting, this no-overlap, all barbed with misunderstanding. Go on, you say. But I can't compromise on darkness. It's no small thing, this under-ripe chocolate choice you insist on: milk, you say, why not? But I can't imagine life together at less than 70%.
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A WELSH CHURCHYARD CARL GRIFFIN In the absence of your body, mine never moves and is never still; my gossamer bones are pulled to this churchyard intermediary. We can’t lament what is dead without raising our glass to life, without carving a falling leaf’s trajectory. A Welsh churchyard, it always brings you to mind, your smile the blade of grass sticking to the epitaph, your kiss the creak in the gate. You attend each time I run to church. Since the escape of your soul, mine’s a pew minus a hymnal, secret passage minus a torch. Help a tired grump to stand, flare a dream into the fog. Give it something else to dig, this old spade I call my hands.
Carl Griffin is from South Wales. His first poetry collection, Throat of Hawthorn, was published by Indigo Dreams Publishing in 2019. His booklength poem, Arrival at Elsewhere, written for charity with the help of one hundred poets, was published by Against the Grain Press in 2020.
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