Kumquat Poetry

We’ll be back…

Kumquat is currently down on person- and computer-power. We’re going to take a week or two to get ourselves sorted out, and then we’ll be pumping out poetry once more.

Apologies to all our wonderful readers and contributors for this, and thanks for your continued support. Keep sending in your submissions, and we hope you’ll enjoy perusing our back catalogue of amazing poems for a bit. Keep checking here, and on Twitter and Facebook - you wouldn’t want to miss our glorious return!

It’s ok. Count down the days and it’ll fly by. People + computer back online in a week or two. Then poetry will be happening. Keep the faith. 

Love Kumquat xo

Melancholy by Sharon Woodcock

It’s been an exciting week full of new Kumquateers! Today is Sharon Woodcock’s Kumquat debut. Take it away Sharon!

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Melancholy

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Show me how melancholy magnifies on the surface

and reduces, how it oozes from cookery, spills

from pages, slips from your Chardonnay,

how work resolves it when harbored into twelve hour days,

and returns in evenings when the shadows shorten.

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Read about meditation, mountains, Tao, 

and taking seaside walks, read how

chocolate satisfies and heals, how yoga feels 

charged from salutations to the sun, glamping

in a bright orange wigwam, swapping black tea for ginseng.

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Revive hobbies, parties, travels and the smile

of rhythmic feet, how you capture life through lens,

choose angles, try to find sun-ripened brambles.

Show me windmills, sparkling seascapes, wild flowers 

now that you have shown me melancholy.

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Sharon, a project manager living in Norwich, studies Creative Writing with the Open University. She has two poems published in Sea of Ink anthology. Another will be published in a What the Dickens? anthology in May 2013. She plans to edit two draft novels and two short screenplays this year. ‘Melancholy’ can be found in the anthology Sea of Ink by Ink Pantry Publishing. 

Illume by Sarah Driver

Kumquat is honoured to welcome Sarah Driver to our pages, especially as this is her first publication!

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Illume

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We’re all passing into the light,

Trees, humans, animals.

We rest below the falling rain,

Teardrop

Shards

Patter

They anoint our soft heads,

As we lay covered by a

Cold cocoon of Earth.

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The yawning sky

Paints with secret knowledge,

Ancient pacts

I realise she is afraid,

And so am I.

Large damp eyes

Peer across space,

All space is empty

And full of the unknown. 

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He lies in a bed in the garden,

We lie in a bed nearby.

Fallen backwards into slumber,

Into the solid arms of the Earth.

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The trees are silhouetted warriors,

They watch, they wait.

He will return into the garden,

And they will bloom again,

Sending forth shoots and buds,

Aching fingertips

Reaching endlessly into the new sky.

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One sky above, another below,

Each an abyss

We long to fall into.

As above, so below,

Our sounds, shapes and colours

Rush and vanish,

Re-emerge,

In nightly wails and moans. 

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Sarah Driver is a writer of fiction and poetry. She loves reading, music, travel and nature. This is the first time her work has been published. She lives by the sea.

Love Lives in the Basement by Matt Miller

Another inventive piece from Matt Miller!

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Love Lives in the Basement

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Love is an Italian wine taster,

tends bars along the Tiber for free,

writes travel pieces for magazines,

patronises Palladio, Via della Pace,

flies private, one house in Rome

a second by the Ionian sea,

wears drooping eyes

and open shirts like trophies, we

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went to visit love in Sicily.

Met him at the airport.

The reek of Armani silk

and inside pocket leather,

the something off-hand said

about the weather

that sounded like a poem,

and we felt our veins jump up

and changed places.

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Messina to casa d’amour in an hour

He parked the Ferrari in the garage,

trailed fingers like piano keys

across the bonnet, took us see

the gardens, the lake, the ivory baths,

white sand beach, silk sheets, gold taps,

served champagne, played games

with the hairs on his chest.

Sung us to rest in beds fit for his guests.

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That first night, I dreamt of love

and saw him naked,

heard his tip-toe escape downstairs,

latch click,

smelled the disappearance

of his terracotta lips,

felt his Sergio Rossi boots kick

the flagstone path,

tasted the chestnut door slam back.

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I stepped onto the landing,

snatched the staircase,

three steps with each step,

stood in the kitchen, distraught,

lungs rasping.

Love was nowhere,

and everywhere but here.

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The open basement door tutted,

invited me into the gloom.

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There I saw him, more clearly

Than my own hands before me.

He had less hair and was rounder at the waist.

More luggage under his eyes

than my rucksack and suitcase combined.

I asked where the other face was,

the one with the voice like bubble bath?

Away. Recruiting. Not due back.

I looked at love, his heavy back pressed

to the peeling brick, saw something

change places in his trenched face,

behind the ice-cream smeared across his lips.

He took another mouthful, offered me a spoon.

 .

In the morning, there was not a sound

in the house above us

as I lay curled into love.

The basement door was shut.

I couldn’t tell you

whether or not it was locked.

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Matt Miller has been performing poetry and facilitating workshops in Nottingham since October 2011. He has also performed in Newcastle and at the Olympic Park. He is studying Creative and Professional Writing at the University of Nottingham and is into green pesto in a kinda big way.

Tea-flowers by Cameron Brady-Turner

Cameron keeps it short and sweet today with ‘Tea-flowers’.

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Tea-flowers

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In the morning
I press out tea-flowers -
the calming ink bloom and blush
crushed from the blunt of a tea-spoon -
and distill myself to seamlessness
with this dreamscape that’s
bright-to-squinting.

You say something
I can’t remember, like
This is a jacaranda tree

and I crawl back into bed.

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Cameron Brady-Turner is a Barbican poet in London, a student from Loughborough and a person from Grimsby. He is published online and in print.

Midsummer in Naziland by Julie Maclean

Today we welcome new Kumquateer Julie Maclean!

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Midsummer in Naziland

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Her ringtone was out of The Exorcist

coming through the fairy-tale wood

where I half expected to see the wolf

chasing Little Red Riding Hood on

to the rocky outcrop where a sacrificial

slaughtering using honed canines

would have been just the thing.

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In a folksy ring, ivy leaves wrap

their arms around a maypole that could

have been hiding a Klan crucifix

for all we knew. It was the same shape.

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(Feminists dance around a vagina.

Call it Dancing round the Mayhole)

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But not while waistcoats and knickerbockers

take charge with the Oompah band,

get us dancing to The Frog and The Wiggly

Hat.

It’s a family thing. Trad. Cute.

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Later downtown a schnapps-happy

yobbo kidnaps one of our boys

for his ugly daughter. Frontline locals

go over the top in full frontal attack

on the girls. Come midnight

they’ll wring the neck of a chicken.

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Originally from Bristol, UK, Julie now lives on the Surf Coast, Australia. In 2012 shortlisted for The Crashaw Prize, (Salt, UK). Her debut collection of poetry, When I saw Jimi, will be published in June 2013 by Indigo Dreams Publishing, UK. Poetry and short fiction features in US and leading Australian journals including The Best Australian Poetry (UQP). She blogs at juliemacleanwriter.com

Vultures by Matt Miller

Lyrical, playful and disturbing, today’s leaf on the Kumquat tree of poetry comes courtesy of Matt Miller.

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Vultures

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Flung like warm butter across the sand, he marbles the sun

with all his skin. The ocean waltzes secret jokes to his toes,

hopes to coax a wiggle. The woman he buoys

(and who bollocks him more than each grain

she stamps on) harrows over his face,

wet-cements her mouth to his, again and again.

Tastes salt.

Breeze-blocks his heart, her hands draining deeper

into his concave chest than the holes her nails dragged,

she bellows down the seagull’s laughter,

ransacks an answer to the sea’s siren call.

Everyone musters.

They cycle in like a tide,

draw their hands to their mouths,

rip what they need and

collapse.

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Matt Miller has been performing poetry and facilitating workshops in Nottingham since October 2011. He has also performed in Newcastle and at the Olympic Park. He is studying Creative and Professional Writing at the University of Nottingham and is into green pesto in a kinda big way.

Forty Looks At Fourteen by L. L. Kelly

Today we welcome L. L. Kelly to the Kumquat scene with her ‘Forty Looks At Fourteen’.

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Forty Looks At Fourteen

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We are adrift on an ocean of hormones. 

Trapped in the doldrums,

a silence eerily unfamiliar. 

Abandoned by the muse,   

we inhabit worlds of our own,  

where the plundering of chocolate hoards 

is a common cure for mood swing whiplash. 

Hers is a world of untapped potential

and grand dreams, where time is on her side.

Her  teenaged angst is like living alone

in a house full of strangers. 

Inspired to be something less than pure evil,

she has firmly established

that screaming, “Fire Truck!”

 will aid in avoiding profanity fines.

Mine is an insomniac’s nightmare. 

Abandoned by the muse,

time is no longer on my side. 

The silent hours offer only infomercials,

nothing good to read, and

not a thing to stop my empty head

from luxuriating in this pauper’s bed. 

Except someone screaming ,“Fire Truck!”

to avoid profanity fines.  

She is a prize among the daughters of the world- 

especially when she is sleeping.

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L. L. Kelly lives in Denver Colorado.  She spends an enormous amount of time day dreaming of wandering off into the foothills with her notebook, but she always comes back in time for dinner.

l’Étourneau au Touquet-Paris-Plage by Imogen Cassels

Today’s poem is an absolute delight of linguistic play from Imogen Cassels. Enjoy!

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l’Étourneau au Touquet-Paris-Plage

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Star-ling, speckled with your very own points

of holy light. It is unusual

for stars to linger by patisserie

doors and beg – but these times are hard, I know.

I address you, and you hop out ‘’comme ci,

comme ca,” impatient for an un-paid due;

the tossing of shining mouthfuls, baked gold

and marbled silver. In your world, birdsong

takes second place to the music of bright

madeleines shattering against the starved

pavements, a dozen jewels, vivid little

discs, spilled, they are a treasure trove to you.

And, quand les étoiles brillent, it must be

hard. You might have joined them in some other

flight of life, lit the coin-strewn skies and been

adored, maybe watched over some little

feathered fellow, waiting on the kindness

of a cake crumb for a living. Well, we

are all stardust really. One day, dear Star-

ling, one day, when your dusty corpse turns in

upon itself, when you are just a long

lost thing, tumbled onto intricacies

of frost - then perhaps particles of you

will find the feathered, inky, speckled night.

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Imogen is sixteen and lives in Sheffield. She is a member of Sheffield Young Writers and was recently accepted into The Writing Squad. She was Commended in the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award in 2011 and recently in 2012. She has been published in The Crocodile poetry e-zine.

The Hollow by Matt Miller

We found Matt Miller’s ‘The Hollow’ compelling and uplifting. Enjoy!

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The Hollow

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You sit there, in a deep hollow in the tree roots.
You sit and tend the fire which keeps you alive, and has always done so.
It kept your parents and their parents alive before you.
You gaze intently into its encapsulating flames
as you feed it with your surroundings and your time.

You know there is a big, dark wood outside of your hollow,

refuge. Sheltered prison.
But your fire is warm, comforting, familiar.
There are better and bigger fires, you are sure,
and better and bigger hollows,
but this is yours and you are in it
and so are your flickering flames.

You glance over your shoulder,
from time to time,
to see that the wood is still there,
shadowed, mysterious,
intimidating, vast, possibly.
Bleak, surely.

You hear the pat-drip-patter,

the cold stark light around the edges,

out there in the wood;
Raindrops hammering down,
and you are glad of your
blinkers and shroud,
To keep you from the mercy of those grey clouds.

Yes. It is good here in my hollow.

And yet sometimes you wonder,
What might be out there in that tangled, thorny space.
If you were to blunder outside, lose your way,
For, let’s say, a day,
Would it be such a dreary place?

The thought itself scares you.
Turning back around,
You find the fire’s glowing comfort,
Its reassuring crackling sound,
Both sooths and warns of danger.
Stay close, dear friend, or for ever be a stranger.

The fire needs you, and you need it.
Though now and again,
I’m glad, relieved
To admit,
The mind wanders.

You took the step.
You crept out there,
While others slept,
You walked, stalked,
Saw, heard and talked.

You felt rain on your skin,
And found it to your liking,
In an odd sort of way.

You ran, tripped
Over a rut in the path.
It healed,
You lived,
The bruise didn’t last.

And how much bigger and better
Is this sunlit wood,
Compared with that dingy hollow
You used to call the world?

Night set in at last.
It always would.
The rain returned,
As did you in the end.

To say you crawled back is unfair.
The fire, once found and stoked,
Welcomed your homecoming,
With wide open arms
And a wild dance of brand new shadows.

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Matt Miller has been performing poetry and facilitating workshops in Nottingham since October 2011. He has also performed in Newcastle and at the Olympic Park. He is studying Creative and Professional Writing at the University of Nottingham and is into green pesto in a kinda big way.