We’re putting together a mailing list to help us keep up with our most dedicated Kumquateers. If you’d like to receive occasional updates from Kumquat and get the 411 before everyone else, please send us an email to kumquatpoetry@gmail.com with Mailing List in the subject bar.
We can’t apologise enough for how long and quiet we have been. Life caught up with Kumquat earlier this year, but rest assured we are firing up again. This afternoon we’re beginning to sort through our emails and will be getting in contact with some very exciting new people who you will meet shortly… yes, that’s right - we’ve got some new blood coming along! Keep an eye out and expect to hear from us shortly!
To our dear Kumquateers, Readers, and supporters,
We can’t apologise enough for the last few weeks of silence. Life has caught up with Kumquat recently. For this reason, we will be back in May, when commitments to our studies, amongst other things, have eased off a little bit.
Please bear with us, and we’ll get back to our contributors as soon as we can about your submissions. We appreciate every single one, and taking some time out now will mean that we can do full justice to your wonderful and worthy work in future.
Many thanks for your patience and continued support, and we’ll be back as soon as we can.
Love,
The Kumquat Team X
We found E. Smith Sleigh’s ‘Stolen Mobile Masterpiece’ captivating.
.
stolen mobile masterpiece
.
I become the touch screen Adam of the Sistine my wrist limp my forefinger darting across a ‘lectric blue pad touch screen chatter unfrescoed images uncreated generated pulses of vibrating electrodes become the creation no consecration here no scaffolding I have no plaster in my eyes no gasps of awe from below il papa not on his toes we do share the propagation of myths though I’m trying to decide which one wait
do I have to choose is it what it does not appear to be I refuse to choose is this theory of life really the universe in a chest the stolen weave of the Nornes and all
connection interrupted
information rubbed out
.
.
.
e. smith sleigh writes poetry and historical fiction. She lives by a lake in Robert Penn Warren country, and in a desert, where she draws inspiration. Her most recent work can be found in the December Paper Darts and the January Squalorly. On her website THESE THINGS ARE A ONE THING http://bit.ly/iionKS , she blogs about Poststructuralism and poetry.
Linda Morgan Smith steps on the scene today with her amazing Kumquat debut, ‘Winter’.
.
Winter
.
The sky is a sheet of ice dripping into a pail
The cold is the embrace of my dead grandmother
Her voice the call of the crows in the sleeping trees
The black feather I found on the steps is her letter to me.
i am a voice with no song.
Down the path and up the hill are the remnants of a house.
The foundation outlines a square on the ground.
Stones cemented into the last of the chimney splits the wind in-two.
A hawk circles over the place
The chalk-line collapsed.
The level unlevel.
I hum.
.
.
.
Linda Morgan Smith is a painter and writer in New Orleans Louisiana. Her poetry and micro fiction has been published in Full of Crow Press and Stage and Screenwriters Magazine.
Today Ali Znaidi returns with the incredible ‘Fire Doesn’t Break Its Promise’.
.
Fire Doesn’t Break Its Promise
.
a promise is broken
.
.
.
Ali Znaidi (b.1977) lives in Redeyef, Tunisia where he teaches English. His work has appeared in The Rusty Nail, The Tower Journal, Mad Swirl, Stride Magazine, Red Fez, BlazeVox, Otoliths, streetcake, Ink Sweat and Tears, & elsewhere. His debut poetry chapbook Experimental Ruminations was published in September 2012 by Fowlpox Press (Canada). From time to time he blogs at – aliznaidi.blogspot.com
Spring seems to be seeping in, so take a moment to sink into Bob Beagrie’s wonderful ‘Slow Recovery’, recorded here for Project Lono with guitar by Glenn McDougall and production by SJForth.
.
Slow Recovery
.
Nothing hurts like the stroke of the sun
With Winter’s clasp a discarded memory,
So I sit in shade to watch the wavelets run
The beach, knowing in each rolls a story,
And know that one of them is mine, or his,
Lost somewhere among the scars and rocks
When the whole sea shook in raging malice,
Left him, me, drifting, in lines and lobster pots,
A broken man, washed up, without a name.
Finding a pulse, she called me Driftwood,
Tended the bruises, eased the obvious pains,
But the bleaching sun turns a knife in the guts -
These wounds still leak salt water, not blood,
And there she goes, singing, between the huts
Sweetness, soothing, like the honeyed tea
We sit and sip together each dawn and dusk.
Calypso, as content as a pollen coated bee.
Him, dumb driftwood, me an emptied husk,
Who jerks awake in the night with a shriek
To see him floating out of reach by our bed
Within a dream of a war horse, one eye, a beak
Until she resumes her song, strokes my head.
One of these days I shall fashion some tools,
Go hunt for no one in shallows and rock pools.
.
.
.
Bob Beagrie lives in Middlesbrough in the North East of England, recent publications include Yoik (Cinnamon Press 2008) The Seer Sung Husband (Smokestack Press 2010), Glass Characters (Red Squirrel Press 2011). He has won A Northern Promise Award, a Northern Writers Time To Write Award, the Biscuit Poetry Prize and The Sentinel Poetry Prize. He is a senior lecturer at Teesside University.
We’re excited to publish this lyrical loveliness by Ana Maria Caballero.
.
The Clothes-maker
.
My clothes come from places that are not immediately obvious:
A forty-day South American Christmas, an attempt at youth in College, a place of blessing turned hard.
Embroidering is slow, so I mix patience with excess and comfort. Embroidering can be silent or loud, and it is inside and out; but it remains the single piece of cloth I choose.
At unexpected sounds, my thread sheers a right breast pocket to gently cinch the waist. A set of green grapes spilled from the cup of an already full Caravaggio.
.
.
.
Originally published in Boston Poetry Magazine.
Ana Maria Caballero currently lives in Bogotá, Colombia with her husband and eight-month-old son. During her son’s naps, she created a blog– www.thedrugstorenotebook.co – where she shares her poems and love of literature.
Mr Noon’s Kumquat debut bowled us over. Porter/poetry, same effect.
.
Introduction to a Congress
.
Now the lights on the walls are down,
permit me my minute or three.
I trust your skirts and trousers
have introduced themselves to the plush seats.
.
As you can see, I can’t see you,
and I’m blinking down at my script.
But before we hoist up our speakers,
if you need to abandon this dark ship
.
to offload all ballast and waste,
for smokes, smirks or secret plans,
our staff will brighten your way
like a searchlight stroking a Lancaster.
.
'Delete all words (said a Chinese sage)
and then you will have the true poster.’
'There is no such thing as a statement.'
'Am I asking too many questions?'
.
These are all quotes from our speakers,
who’ve logoed banks, or drawn their fonts
from inmates’ scrawl. One’s intrigued
by the tricolour bags of Hong Kong,
.
one’s crossed an elephant with a coffee pot
(Can horses gallop on tomatoes?
Bien sûr! barked Bréton’s dog).
Cuban film will receive some remarks.
.
The Botanical Garden, the Museum
of Natural History are their clients.
The Literature House. The Public Theater.
Please welcome this morning’s designers.
.
.
.
Alistair Noon lives in Berlin, and has travelled extensively around Eastern Europe and China. His first full-length collection, Earth Records (Nine Arches Press, 2012) was shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize. He was recently bowled over by the Berlin microbrewery Heidenpeters’ Smoky Porter.
Robert Greer makes his Kumquat debut with a poem both unsettling and playful.
.
As a Boy, a Tentacle
.
The size of an oar slapped down
from the sky onto the patio
and seeped battery acid
across the empty porch
.
Disembodied Octopus limbs
Make for fine birthday pie
My tongue was green and the napkins were untouched
and music rose up slow from the garden trees
.
Holy swing balls falling from up high:
Me and the fish are doing the twist,
I should not have licked the homeless tentacle
that I found camping on my patio
.
I swam in the mind of space
and scrambled through a thick field of mung beans
and saw all the classic shows
in the feeding tube
.
.
.
Robert Greer is a writer of poetry and fiction based between Barcelona and London. He has been published in Limbo Quarterly and You Stumble Into A Room Full of Poets, and also writes for Dada Magazine. He is 23.
Kumquat Poetry is a new webzine dedicated to publishing the out-there, the experimental and the best frontier-fracturing new poetry around. Hook us up on Twitter (@kumquatpoetry) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/kumquatpoetry).