Picaroon - Issue #5 - November 2016
Welcome to Issue #5 of Picaroon Poetry, or as I've been affectionately (and unofficially!) calling it, 'the sex and death issue'. It's an unquestionably autumnal/wintry collection of poems for our last outing of 2016, bleak and unflinching in places (though there are some wry, hopeful, and funny moments as well). Still, as long as these things are being written down, everything keeps moving forward. Includes poems by Ava C. Cipri, Ojo Taiye, James H Duncan, Charlotte Ansell, Monika Kostera, Zoë Sîobhan Howarth-Lowe, Jackie Biggs, Lesley Quayle, Amy Kinsman, Derek Coyle, Cheryl Pearson, Bethany W Pope, Nenad Trajkovic, Jane R Rogers, David Susswein, Emma Lee, Jo Burns, Brett Evans, John D. Robinson, Shauna Robertson, Bobby Steve Baker, Holly Day, Courtney LeBlanc, Jessica Mookherjee, Paul Brookes, Pat Edwards, John Grey and Steven Bruce.
Welcome to Issue #5 of Picaroon Poetry, or as I've been affectionately (and unofficially!) calling it, 'the sex and death issue'. It's an unquestionably autumnal/wintry collection of poems for our last outing of 2016, bleak and unflinching in places (though there are some wry, hopeful, and funny moments as well). Still, as long as these things are being written down, everything keeps moving forward.
Includes poems by Ava C. Cipri, Ojo Taiye, James H Duncan, Charlotte Ansell, Monika Kostera, Zoë Sîobhan Howarth-Lowe, Jackie Biggs, Lesley Quayle, Amy Kinsman, Derek Coyle, Cheryl Pearson, Bethany W Pope, Nenad Trajkovic, Jane R Rogers, David Susswein, Emma Lee, Jo Burns, Brett Evans, John D. Robinson, Shauna Robertson, Bobby Steve Baker, Holly Day, Courtney LeBlanc, Jessica Mookherjee, Paul Brookes, Pat Edwards, John Grey and Steven Bruce.
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Black dolls<br />
Jackie Biggs<br />
She sits in swirling dust<br />
as she knits<br />
with fine black yarn.<br />
Only dolls.<br />
Only black,<br />
even their eyes.<br />
All day<br />
in a shaded room,<br />
where the motes<br />
float<br />
in rays filtered<br />
through tiny gaps in blinds,<br />
she crochets around coal dust,<br />
knots stitches in silk,<br />
makes tassels.<br />
Tiny fingers create Goya’s Black Duchess,<br />
covered in her mourning lace,<br />
from her hair to her tiny,<br />
pointed shoes.<br />
One plain one purl<br />
and there grows the Marquesa de Santa Cruz,<br />
mantilla floating in a breeze,<br />
veils and shawls, layer on layer.<br />
A fine figure in billowing skirts,<br />
a flash of scarlet pinches her waist<br />
above the frills and flutter of taffeta,<br />
twisted and woven,<br />
where lace rustles<br />
around the swish<br />
of satin.
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