from the editor
field fares. crow sound. the path is lonely over the frozen marsh. time, thick, encased, blurs features. the geometry on bones. art constellates the senses, ice breaks. a shock of sea spray. an uprising of oyster shells. we feel the closeness of ceremony. words like pocked pearls. faces small fires in the moondim light.
the writers and artists published in ‘portrait’ are lighting up cavern water, collecting scraps of myth and mist. identities, sacred and profane populate our pages. it may be as a universe, a bard. a pantheon of keening goddesses, a hum, a song. homes and mirrors, egrets, ravens, dying mothers, devoted lovers. all are the subject. the rhythm. the one.
self-portrait as a universe for Kasia Conny Borgelionen IG@tender.rebellion It unfolds like a profound melody, through panpsychism’s lens, the essence of existence, all around. In realms of thought where consciousness takes flight, a grand tapestry, the mind’s vast, mystic land. And universe, where stars embrace the night. Consciousness, the essence, the web in which we all expand. From particles to galaxies in sight, the fabric of reality, is not confined to matter’s solid frame. But springs from consciousness, a boundless sea, gently sailing where truth and mystery plea. chasing effortlessness Daniel Lockeridge IG@danlovepoetry Portraits patter on the hands of their creators. Portraits enwrap abysms to form columns upon the portico engraved with Paris. Artistic doubts dance here, like iris threads that get the chance to feel their own energy when the sun spills its secret. Portraits pour. Marble is bright in its fear. Bodies are shaped like easels chasing the centre of every asterism-brush and pupil-evening. Portraits again form walls, like sky after mist, and, free of the weight, easels clap; easels are the size of Paris. shakespeare: the chandos portrait Julian Mann IG@jmannpoetry You can almost heare him: softly spoken; But a darke voice, flickering the dimme of tavern. Hair dragg’d like a net, catching blackest night on the highwaye. A puritan after worke. At eche extremitie Of fleshy features is the quarry Of blushing lovers, ere they woo. (The earring a conjured candle flame, curled.) Keen-eyed listener, as if about t’inquire, I am a writer, And what is it you do?
seaweed Damon Hubbs IGtwitter@damon_hubbs “Hm! Call us not weeds— We are flowers of the sea.” -A.B. Hervey The tide gives, and takes and in first light the rock pools squint with cockles and clams. I walk the tideline, gather sea lettuce from bright green beds, slippery fronds of bladderwrack bind the rocks, Irish sea moss slides past my knuckles like brown corduroy. I tally the wind, clip harvest above the holdfast, but what does the tide think of me, washing and arranging collecting scrap to press between the lips like flowers in the pages of a book. sand woman Cassie Fielding IG@rhombus_head_twinned Veils of water in her hair In the breeze of her face Her smile is a harp string Yellowing sands accumulate horizons In a pocket of glass and there She stills Wrapped in black billow clamouring for her skin Hummingbirds unfold from desert dips and flee The pure tone of crystal waves The cactus flowers close Their lips around silver beetles Her hands, her hands have flown away Clouds spill from her face, her brow, She observes heavy, empty, and her watching It hums It hums the song that always travels Jai Michelle Louissen IGtwitter@bornonadarkmoon before- i was pine resin and ash asterisms and copper earth deluge of mandala’s in pearled ice domed music of a whale concave tuft of salt water whirling a birch half eve half myth a memory of deerprints a swan call echoes spilling backwards leaves seeding lyre sounds this is how a prayer becomes a body
summons Saraswati Nagpal IGtwitter@saraswatinagpal Across the cold river that mists and foams, she waits. Dark moon eyes, old as Wolf and mane of silver. Across the cold river, I hear her split the mountain, open the labyrinth. There is no turning back. Her bony fingers beckon. dislocated Halley Kunen IG@halleyk1987 Have you seen the walking skeleton temporal bones poking out the cloth a hint at being alive a smile seeping out elusive skin so soft without even knowing itching to caress your face in spite of the barricade consciousness the edge of isolation the jagged and brittle wickets of morality a brief touch rattling every fiber at the graze of a single nerve ready to pull out a knife pocket previously unperturbed shuffling through a ditch in the inseam like a path to a river a gap unraveled there and touching your own skin forgetting you had flesh under the protection. spinster ailment Emma Tyler IG@briar_and_bramble_ Cobbled breasts. Bones powdered between fingers, but oh! the arrest of her; Winters hair, each line mouthed. Every woman a hunter, the fossil of a moon. Dressed in river, ashen volumes of refer. Bells in the manes of horses, a mother’s knot- opposable. Each year a binding- the curl of a trunk. Coltish stand. Break of bow. Earthy songstress, paint me in the fairest notion of my sex. Is this a withering? Limbs of elm. The untoward a crest feathering the gullet of a lark, loft-less in the art of hatching.
estuary (our house) Beth Vermander IG@bethiewrites This house holds the salt and saltless, the thistle and the briar; each keenly sharp and difficult to navigate. River reeds and cold clouds, garnet and gray here where the water trees have ceased their bright mating dance, the blood and fire lost to barren wood until the words form again, brackish, between us, rising up along banisters, dipping down under doors, traveling the same shifting lines of trust and recollection, like the path of migrating birds. untitled image (a haibun) Victoria Spires IG@jitterbug_writes Imagine you had spent your whole life admiring the sky through a letterbox, and then someone came along and opened the door. Would you feel afraid? Would you cling to your letterbox, unable to let go of its aperture of reassurance? I am half launched into the stratosphere before I stop to think what I’m doing, chemtrailing this bold new expanse of sky for all I’m worth. You told me that we were mirrors of each other, which I suppose has its own profundity. But what kind of mirror flings back what is hidden rather than what is visible, mercuric hand deftly tugging away at the most provisional versions of ourselves? I was always taught that the truth has no windows. I experiment with pulling a hair on my own scalp and wonder if you feel it. My fingers form speculative maps of where you might find me. I locate that place above your collarbone, and breathe a slow condensation of thoughts there. I spend a long time looking at your image, searching your left iris for the matching freckle to my right one. When I find it, I can’t tell which of us is vindicated. It’s only later (much later) (much, much too late) that I realise whatI found were twin black holes. The door flung open To threshold, making no pause - Sky shows me myself.
reflection Anni Rannisto IG@reveries.of.atlantis I used to be open— Open to the untamed, to the vagabond, to the unnamable figures, reaching, until it dawned on me— they all came solely for their reflection, with no intention of staying longer than the run of an insect’s reverie. And now you, inkling of otherness, conveyor of wonderment— you have found your way to my side from the midst of confused elevators and synthetic laughter, unaware of the pull of this opalescent heartbreak: every beat a thrust of an edgeless needle suturing a sky-wide wound. Pay attention and tell me— you concrete-borne wanderer, you conveyor of wonderment— Did you come solely for your reflection? self portrait as a black lake selkie Kait Quinn IG@kaitquinnpoetry Patterns of insincere phrases litter our bedroom floor like dead tulips. I am not a corpse of timidity. I lean toward wilt of tenderness; write the loss into a poem just to spite you. I don’t need to sleep with the lights on. I am not the dog cowered in the corner farthest from thunder. I rest peacefully with a knife under my pillow. I man the front porch in pressing heat, revolver in my lap, calico at my side, valley of my sternum wet as a mason jar of iced lemonade in the sun. This is me on a good day: shadowed in my melancholy, writing girl contused vignettes and sipping coffee that tastes like Twin Peaks and campfire smoke. I am not a warm- blooded animal. Not a hero of forgiveness nor a stagnation of reserve. You're the last thing I'd save from a burning building, first I'd toss to the shark in my water. Hold me to the heat and witness my narrative unfold like chrysanthemum mouths gaped and ready to swallow sun like a vitamin pill. Hold me underwater and watch my legs metamorphose into fins, gums grow razor blades between my teeth. Spot the difference between siren song and seagull call. How fast can the absence between your toes propel you? How wide can your mortal lungs swell? portrait of a bluebird Richard Davidson IG@aubade_49 I paint in biro , unforgiving for the subject. Bluebird I tattooed you onto the corner of my fist . It was everything I thought that was wrong about love .
lament Letitia Jiju IG/twitter@eaturlettuce Strewn in Sabbath light. Sullied by desire. God, cull me holy. Myrrh me, shin and tabernacle. I have begun wanting the silver spile of moon-rivers. Broach the night’s breath unto me; I want the Nile of everything. A basket of Moses. Wrapped and unwrapped into prophet. Sea that sears me till Sinai and back, lapping at my limbed shore. God, I am so stupidly human. Heart that stuns itself at the enormity of all that isn’t. Worn by my own will to flock toward each morning-door that creaks. Each boulder, thinking it is you. Seamed back in a sac a shriek until skin again. God, molt and melt me to manna. Render me crescent, let me snow in. (originally published in Moist Poetry Journal) the edge of a moon-song Seraphine Saintclair IG@seraphinesaintclair She’s the edge of a moon-song Sung by ravens bathed in the Levitation of abysses Her hands are ruby-winged ghosts Her feet are reckonings with eyes of lullaby blue And her heart is the wind that silently Screams paradise into a kneeling silhouette And she says This world is my poem To write, unwrite To unwrite, write To write, unwrite To write Unwrite untitled Melanie Hass IG@alohamonkey A rush of clove-scented air the gurgling croak of a raven with hooded citrine eyes and feathered cape Morrigan is it you? Look – I am checking the fit of my chalky death mask my bloody thirsty lips cannot speak of this thing that must be named this thing hell bent on killing me Morrigan, seeress, have you come in cloak of death or as light amid my battle carry my soul in your blackcurrant wings from this liminal twilight to rebirth her smile, a benediction: you will never be more alive than in this moment
before the interview Sun Hesper Jansen IG@sunhesper Metamorphosis is very private, yet I will let you watch because too many of my shapes are being hunted to extinction. You cannot capture me but try your best to sketch me before all my teeth are torn out and someone hangs my pelt in cold storage, to be fondled furtively whenever the urge for wildness haunts them. I am now in the business of haunting, of harrying, of filling heads with voices that once filled canyons. My song doesn’t belong here, and it raises all the hairs you fail to keep shaved. But record me if you can. It’s okay if you scream. But best if you howl. medusa RS Kendle IG@rskendle I am sick of living in the shadow of men. Growing withered, twisting to see the sun, Thighs still sticky. Prayers dissolve into the sand with the waves Through long nights, self-taught I wrest the sorrow from my bones. Sovereign of this tangle of flesh Vassal to an apotropaic magic – self-serving Pulsating righteous fury. God’s will. Pyrrhic. Screaming mass of hair Withered stumps, blackened. Effigy of my own ashen longing Yearning calcified. Salted earth bears no fruit. shuttered self Claire Booth IG@everywordisamemory Inward, Horses and roses, Cottages bright In the twilights of her mind Break the inner tears Like reminiscent Particles of herself. Strange pipes, Of thwarted melodies, Call beauty to rise and fall In gospel's mourning. A melancholic feather Flew the distance. The spine trembles. Is it the gold in your plume That traps the tangerine wind ? Rising to jasmine, Split plumage. Never to be herself again.... ......these waves of joy draw back Weaving again her track. Is it the gold in your plume Or is it the moon That sinks inwards and outwards That traps the tangerine wind?
reflection Devika Mathur IG@my.valiant.soul Throbbing against the water. Circulating moon. The ink jitters. My feet so small to dance. My hands – a wire connected to the mouth- I see my mother when I see the Wind- (I)- {A CERULEAN PRONOUN} This. A body so white, useless and wild- untamed blob of Sun stuck inside. As I glance, humans- I think of vomit and disgust. As I see the river, I wish to be one of it. Photograph thumping, dripping my face pores- myself. There is this ink held in my wrist, lost in the process of running. What is left for me now to sniff? This earth already a huge ball of vomit- I dance with my stinky feet, a dark cobweb hidden inside the room- a black telephone a black widow, a black night- this is how I see myself through a transparent sheet, a thick cellophane dance track- fevers of mind- fevers of skin- cascading against the earth, A portrait so weak, so futile- almost like a lost tongue. With black henna on hands, I have known no other language but to hear- to synchronize my arm with my fist there is no other way to see, to walk or to rotate inside these scrawny walls, a yellow tune to sing on, a yellow blurred photograph that sits inside the almirah. Does it entangle my mind to it? Does it have me? Does it see me? Does it know the sense of my plural presence? Mother! Mother! Everything is illusionary here. This space of time. Time eating us. Together. I am an extended loop of an elongated hope. I have no sense, perhaps. No shape- spreading like waters in all directions. ancestry E.M. Davis IG@ifgoldrusts I see traces of my Aunts emerging, like my own face is carving itself from the inside out. I find this terrifies me, all nose and chin and skull. Why not be as bones dictate: speak French, cook stews, make music like the pealing of bells, to be always and never alone. I am so solitary, shallow I paddle solo in sea water. Cool salt barely breathes upon my body I dream I am a muse. Dreams are useless, I live through a lens. No one is looking. I wonder whether this is a blessing or a tragedy. Why not be. i am not MaryAnne Bernardo IG@mar3plus3 I stare at the page and wait Yet the longer I stare the more vacant I feel In the silence I can almost hear the taunt of the empty lined page There is nothing here to see As I've given it all away Yet still I remain A tower of clouded silk The voice of the morning mist I am here but I am not In the looking glass five hundred faces Throb in silver of my lazy eye and those I have held in my sleepless song Those who have nested in the folds of my skin But Myself never was The self dissolves We all dissolve
name all the ways a body changes B. L. Bruce IGtwitter@b_l_bruce Name all the ways a body changes. Ash-colored hair begins to appear at the nape and temple. We mark it, poison it; it slowly learns not to listen. There is a certain economy with time. Yet, still, we are astral bodies—it stays in our very marrow. I can’t remember where my grandmother was born. I can’t become feverish as I am in dream. It seems most of the doors to my body closed long ago. There are so many unmentioned things we bury behind them. A milk-white egg comes from every female body but will eventually stop. The dog is dying, her busied body slowing. For three days I drank the cool water from a High Sierra stream, expecting it to join my blood. Evening presses down over the mountains. If I sit here long enough, the birds draw nearer. The stream will call my name. The trees will lean in as if to tell me something. i see it now, tenderness Agrene Bouwman IG@the_tale_of_xu_wei a lock of you rests against the hairs it has a place in remembrance it tries to fill the soft edges of my mind you became a day in winter, shorter still I count the ones with sun you, living, curled towards surrender ‘I will not live, you said, beyond my life not touch the rim of yours my breath moves only a feather my breath is not my own’ death flutters against my chest and I wished it to be life once when life was all I had now that darkness too is day I do not know my longing bent over your unwilling body we hushed its stubbornness we sang to it, lamented that life is worth living I cannot comprehend the edge of that thought as it slides towards its opposite still I can see how it can be tenderness to hear a body sigh, to see it silenced, lifted over time in calm and certain hands heart/ache Ingrid M. Calderón-Collins IG@ingrid_de_lamatepec we lay in the Midwest sun on an empty lakefront a lighthouse the size of our Los Angeles studio apartment sits in the far reaches of my periphery the moon reaches its peak right after a tempest and we nap drenched in storm water by the fireplace your mother sleeps on the red velvet couch, I picture her like you painted her on those linoleum tiles one summer; dreaming of Ireland, somewhere far away, someplace green you worry she’ll die before we reach home, you worry you’ll feel good about it you realize you’ve painted her this way before, on those linoleum tiles dreaming of Ireland, somewhere far away, someplace green
ode to a lone dandelion in a grassy field after Pablo Neruda Ken LeMarchand IG@kenlemarchand Here, inlaid before the hedgerows, this vermillion standing all alone, a butter catching sun, leaves melting in a dead heat summer. Slathered in a fieldy green—these grassroots, tickled toes—only you know the pleasures of this garden, laughter in full-color, the springtide jewels, the dew on the lips, the endless daydream. El sueño sin fin. Only you: floral, honeyed verdured, amber in the daylight. Only you: lion’s teeth snarling from the pitch, smoking barrel tea-leaf on the tongue, always reborn, swaying in the wind. Silver hairs like wishes of another life, of another time, in the grassy knolls, like a magical lamp, gilded djinn, an all-knowing wise hermit. Alive as the sun’s new, golden rosette of my rusted plow; never lost to the far horizon set in teeming blades, once plucked and savored, treasured, now pressed decaf espresso. In the grassy field your loneliness was the only light directing my wayward plow in this salted rain, in a drought you are a hope for the wreckage among these dying weeds, your neck and brow, romance and adulation, as if you were the only godsend from the sky; the only fervorous promise to the field: reconciliation, peacemaker, tender gardener of wandering hearts. serendipity’s reward Andy Perrin IGtwitter@andyperrincycling breaking dawn along the inlet’s lifeblood bubbled blue-green glass seaweeds anchored to ancient boulders determined frozen breathlessness rangy static jet black stems ivory plumed illumination piercing onyx eyes penetrate deeply golden dagger lightening plunged returned empty this time but steady she readies herself again
how could you only dream otherwise?
Howard Young IG@brighton_typewriter_poet
As I sat waiting to draw, a dragonfly landed on my empty page, called out “Noah” and was gone. Being human and carved from curiosity I tried to follow him, walking miles in pursuit, clawing back the afternoon with open fingers, stumbling boots into dusk made sodden by October rains. Snails and slugs were passing strange and curious, watching my failing steps in the pale tones of moonlight.
At the edge of a wood I held hands with morning, falling willow leaves thinly spinning the air into wind. I clutched at branches broken and bare until I arrived at Spring, spread out like a Victorian blanket across the fresh grown field before me. Falling among the buttercups and sipping on the dew, I asked them “Why Noah, do you know?” The buttercups said “Yes” and nodded back to silence.
So I stumbled shoeless across the meadow, tattered clothes hung from my back, brushes and paints abandoned upon the floor. I knelt down asking every living being I could find that same question. All said “yes” none said why. After more days than I could count, slaking my thirst from the wild streams and hunting for berries and wild apples, I collapsed across a fallen oak and slept at last.
In my sleep I had a vision of a dream. The oak now stood and was full of leaf before me “Why Noah?” I pleaded. The great tree said “You are the last of your kind - This woodland is your boat - Sink it and you will drown”. Then I awoke skimming across the water.
The tree was my conscience - I was the dragonfly - The dragonfly was Noah.
After some moments I sat back against the fallen tree. I had become a human again. I began to gather about me, everything left alive on the sinking earth.
self portrait as the back room walls Christopher Martin IGtwitter@martintimations A haunted hyperborean hunger scape, pressed from a preta’s palm reaching through bars of being, broken life line bled dry, with small birds limed in brush marks. Split like a field full of frightened rabbits fissures in faith going nowhere, memory on display like ghosts in the eclipse’s third eye. First breathless in Icelandic blue then thawing slightly in Swedish, not north enough for the daylight to last but north enough to remember. Now, brought back to life, the back room walls breathe. Long, crisp exhalations, skin smooth, dawn bare. Like herse taut vellum, lunellum scraped night after long night, until whole and white—suffused with soft window light. Not the piercing, brilliant white of the bird who visits our windowsill each morning, but the presence warm, white glow of bone sweet bone. as float as Hiram Larew twitter@hiramglarew One reason this note is whatever floats by as can be Is man alive inside me with as much try as I might Because I’d give this heart to see a hey chance waving or tree believe me sounds So that from clear to bright these what-dreams-are-made-of ways may shake wake me In fact whenever must do calls me Or yes right now swoops in to ride my song Along Then yes indeed -- again and again And when forever dives deep down time as it should Then yes again another loop-de-loop of mine goes larking fully the one in the looking glass Sandy Cove and Poulpie IG@sandy.cove & @poulpie.fr — I can make you out in the brightness shaped between the sycamores leaves. Into the lair of my ribcage, an autumn woodland waves to the rhythm of your cool breath. Steams with flaming reflections, blaze trails edged with shamrocks, just like the ones with which I adorned your hair. You are the salted and metallic taste on the tip of my tongue. Rubies drip down in drops and coagulate in a red thread, and two, then in a multitude, woven in silk. I look at you, into the scarlett looking glass, a white swan is gliding over it. Right here, on the surface of my heart, from which the crimson ink springs, laid there for your quill. I can feel you while my fingers caress the opaline. — There are your sweet hills. I go there every chance I get, when my spirit becomes feverish and bushy. Their draped forests hug my shoulders for protection. Unique and precious are the landscapes where you feel at home in every season. Each promenade there reveals sugary bird songs, satiny lakes and fragrant reliefs. Their curves form an open book. I immerse myself, body and soul. To read it, I use my hands to brush the soft, damp bark of the conifers while their vaporous foliage is being crossed by a lascivious breeze. Luscious pages whose human senses form the alphabet and my instinct the words. A harmonious flow, from the source of the angelic summit to the refreshing streams where I let myself float pleasantly, overflowing with life. There, the magic always drizzles with a palpable embrace.
in praise of
Meribeni T Murry IG@hiccupsforreal
To marvel
To gaze at the face of beauty
As if for the first time
The big and small of wonder
This grandeur of life
What’s lovelier than a waking song?
A hum
Quiet and gentle
A calling back home
And butterflies-
Blue winged and grand
Little trove of gleeful trembles
Joy is a worship of the heart;
A burst of unrehearsed chorus leaving the lips
And this-
The old trees bowing
The slope of green hills rising
Slowly, in no hurry, in a trance
A whistle, long and clear,
Your voice
In the low rustle of leaves
God
This beauty-
The sheen of gold evening light braiding your hair
To commit to heart this face
Do not make me forget
Dear Lord
To remember
To praise
Many thanks to Editor Louissen for her support to poets. Yes!
How fantastic! What an inspiring theme so well aproached here! Congratulations to all talents, keep on inspiring, bravo!