All creatures great and small
Issue 3
Keith
with apologies to Christopher Smart & Jeoffry
For I will consider my son’s hamster, Keith.
For at the first glance of the glory of his dish being filled he worships in his way.
For this is done by filling his pouches with elegant quickness
with a total of 6 brazil nuts, 12 hazelnuts, or 16 peanuts.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.
For secondly he kicks sawdust out of his cage all over the carpet.
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.
For, though he cannot fly, he is an excellent squeezer
and goes in quest of food, even under the floorboards.
For he will do destruction, although well fed, most particularly upon electrical wiring.
For on the carpet he is Tiger, chaser of undefended feet,
to which he is magnet-drawn, despite peril to himself.
For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon—
although that does not extend as far as cleaning out his cage.
For should he meet another hamster he would beat seven bells out of it (so it is good
that he doesn’t).
For when our day’s work is done his business more properly begins.
For he counteracts the powers of darkness by running on his wheel.
For in his morning devotions he twangs the bars between his teeth.
For he is tenacious of his point.
For he can bite.
by Dorothy Yamamoto
Dorothy Yamamoto grew up in Barnet, north London, where her Japanese father and English mother settled after the war. That divided background is the source of many of her poems. She now lives in Oxford, where she helps to run two local poetry groups and organizes readings and poetry workshops. She works as a freelance editor and writes non-fiction books about animals as well as poetry (for example, Guinea Pig and Wild Boar, both published by Reaktion Books).
Dorothy’s first collection, Landscape with a Hundred Bridges (Blinking Eye Publishing), was published in 2007. Since then she has edited Hands & Wings, an anthology in aid of the charity Freedom from Torture, and her pamphlet Honshū Bees (Templar Poetry) came out in spring 2018.
My Poppy Dog
Then
Circle runner
Squirrel chaser
Feet tapper
Fence jumper
Lead puller
Now
Slow ambler
Person follower
Leg wobbler
Bed sleeper
Reassurance seeker
Always
Food consumer
Comfort quester
Curious sniffer
Wet noser
Joyous welcomer
by Maureen Boon
'My name is Maureen Boon and I am a writer based in Devon in the U.K. I live in the countryside with my husband and dogs. I enjoy writing about nature and my dogs. My poem about Poppy was written only a few months before she passed away. She was a beautiful lurcher who I adopted from an animal rescue centre.
I have written books about dyspraxia, children’s stories, short stories and poems. My website is maureenboonwriter.com and I have a YouTube channel called ‘Maureen Boon’ where I read my children’s stories.'
蝸牛村
The Snail Village
（1）
蝸牛慢著步履
請歲月先走
牠們生成日落的地址
在星空下集村
The snails snail
and let time go first.
Born into sunset’s abode,
they cluster in a village under a starry sky.
（2）
雨停
月亮從蝸牛村升起
蝸牛探出觸角
盤點星星
The rain stopped.
The moon rose over the snail village.
Tentatively the snails counted
the stars with their tentacles.
（3）
失眠的蝸牛數著村子裡熟睡的蝸牛
將牠們的夢連成一節一節的車廂
像印象派畫廊
午夜的風景
在原地前進
The sleepless snails counting the sleeping snails,
joining their dreams carriage by carriage.
A gallery of impressionist paintings.
The midnight landscape
moves on in the same spot.
然靈 (by Ran Ling)
translated from the Chinese by Florence Ng
Ran Ling graduated with a master's degree in Chinese from Providence University. She has worked as an editor and a part-time instructor at university. She now works as a writer and an illustrator. She is the author of two collections of poems.
They Make Me Laugh
I saw a collared dove once
impersonating a barn owl –
they all do that, nicking each other’s songs …
Then the swan, swooping down to land on the river,
dragging and slapping
in noisy faked panic
like a first-time amateur on water skis,
wobbling and skidding on touchdown
just as it had always planned.
The strutting little wren, the cocky robin;
the fretful oystercatcher –
convinced that the food will run out.
They make me laugh.
And the heron, pretending to be losing its fight against gravity,
dragging itself upwards in victory,
its Bobby Charlton comb-over whipping across its head.
Jackdaws too,
squabbling over rights to roof moss.
But it’s the long-tailed tits:
tiny puffs of pink and grey,
fluffy shuttlecocks,
back and forth in gangs between bush and tree,
in fear of missing out.
They’re the ones that make me smile.
by Sean McSweeney
Sean McSweeney has written for the stage on and off, and has had fiction published by www.cutalongstory.com.
lament for trumpets
through the jungle through the fire along the long long road
we walk and we walk we walk
forward forward
in the heat
past the smoke
towards the rainy plain
and we keep going forward
trunk to tail no one left behind
we breathe as one
we march
towards the rain
such a heavy past bears down on us
but we walk forwards onwards
despite the grief despite the weight of what we lost
we walk forward towards the rain
we are dusty we are hot we are ready for the rain
for the water for the sea
we are ready for relief
to arrive but until such time we walk
towards the rain
towards the rain
towards the rainy plain
by Laura Theis
Laura Theis grew up in Germany and writes poems, stories and songs in her second language. She is the author of how to extricate yourself (Dempsey&Windle) which was selected as the winner of the 2020 Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize. Her work has been widely anthologised, and appears in journals such as Rattle, Strange Horizons, and Mslexia. An AM Heath Prize recipient and current Elgin Award nominee, she has also won the Hammond House International Literary Award for Poetry, the Mogford Short Story Prize and was shortlisted for over twenty other international literary awards including the 2021 Alpine Fellowship .
I want to be a cat
After Selima Hill
I want to be a cat
and not chase after anyone.
I want to be a cat
and still come to comfort those deserving.
I want to feel free to rub against your legs.
I want to be a cat who goes to places
where nobody knows, then slinks back home
like a shadow against a wall,
a cat who meows expecting you
to give her what she wants, and you do.
I want to be a cat,
her quietness held to high regard,
able to lie down and bask in her own glory
whose territory is marked with claws
that can give a light scratch
as much as a deep cut,
can draw blood
like paint on a canvas,
skin scarred: to make a mark.
They say everybody wants to be one.
If I were a cat I’d be a bengal;
wild and fun-loving, exploring
and investigating, arguing
until the cows come home. Standing
out from the crowd in spots
and stripes from leopard ancestry.
Don’t come looking for me.
Don’t come walking into the shadows,
with a torchlight and nepeta cataria.
Don’t pin up signs with my mugshot.
Don’t call those who try to own me.
Don’t put out tins of meat for when I come home:
I’m not coming home.
I’m going to be the cat that walked by herself.
by Carmina Masoliver
Carmina Masoliver is a poet from south London, and founder of She Grrrowls feminist arts nights. Her small chapbook was published by Nasty Little Press in 2014. Her latest book Circles is published by Burning Eye Books (2019) and is an illustrated long-form poem, and she recently self-published Selected Poems: 2007 – 2012, a mixed media pamphlet of poems. Her poetry has also been featured in publications such as Popshot Magazine, The Rialto and Brittle Star. Carmina was long-listed for the Young Poet Laureate for London award in 2013, the inaugural Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowships in 2017, the Out-Spoken Prize in Performance Poetry in 2018 and the Grindstone International Poetry Prize in 2020. Alumni of the Roundhouse Poetry Collective, she has featured at nights such as Bang Said the Gun, and festivals including Latitude, Bestival and Lovebox. She performed internationally whilst living abroad, in Singapore, and in Spain. www.carminamasoliver.com I/F: @carminamasoliver T: @CarminaPoetry
Bastet
What are these siren voices
my cat hears
when I hear silence?
She detects the rustle of ants,
the utter stillness of the frog,
frozen as a dry leaf.
She dances to the music of the spheres.
She watches as I trip,
reflected in steel emerald camera eyes.
A photographer recording each stumble,
pot shattered,
violas spread like broken coloured glass.
She idly stretches her paws
on the afternoon grass
and in slow motion
curls her body, snail impersonating,
to doze.
She notes that I swipe off midges,
glare with fury at weeds that come up from nowhere,
that I wish for another garden,
an Italian oasis of box and juniper.
She relishes the clammy soil,
the catnip and rotten apple cores,
the massed confusion of scents.
She knows
the creature reflected in pond water
is preserved in golden temples,
half feline half female,
that there are other beings
whose purpose is to open tins and pour milk
as if they have free will.
There is a life force in her still,
a hedonism,
even if blurred by age and habit,
an anarchy
of wild strikes and sabotage.
We lived by a city churchyard,
heretic washing hung out.
She sat statuesque on tombstones,
staring through picnicking priests.
She is a fluent speaker of disdain,
busy with the day’s distractions,
then gazing through the misted window,
she washes behind, impervious to impropriety,
content in her selfhood.
by Janet Sillet
Janet Sillett took up writing poems again recently after decades away. She has had poems and short fiction published in the Galway Advertiser, Litro, Poetry Plus magazine and Spilling Cocoa over Matin Amis. She works for a local government think tank in London.
Cazador
The curled white tip of his long black tail
flashes above the long grass, as he chases
squirrels and dreams of deer.
I see ancient moors and conquistadors
on Andalusian horses waiting,
as beaters and hounds drive their prey.
His long nose and pointed ears
mark him haughty as any aristocrat
and he runs so fast no-one would know
his leg was broken before he was two.
Some hunters in Spain do this so a dog can’t follow them home.
Are you homesick cazador?
Your dark eyes not yet meeting ours,
how will our eager kindness contrast
with your arid adolescence?
*'Cazador' is Spanish for 'hunter'
by Barbara Meredith
'I'm a retired social worker living by the beach in Shoreham by Sea, on the southern English coast.
I’ve arrived late to poetry and enjoyed some small success; with several commended competition and anthology entries.'
迎
三舅
最後需要住到
外公在廣州留下的
老舊的房子
努力把舊沙發刷得新淨
如果有人到來可以安心坐下
洗手間安上可以識別聲音的燈
照亮夜晚上洗手間的路
有次看到他養了些許金魚
養了算命說的指定數目和顏色
他們游到魚缸這邊
我朝着魚缸玻璃輕拍一下
他們就熟練地反身退開
後一年回去金魚消失了
可這次換了一條狗。
他第一次看到趨近的我
已經撲過來繾綣
我那幾天跟三舅出外
又摸黑回家
他都重覆一次
每次都纏得緊緊的
有次回家打開門
四周卻靜靜的
有沒感到
有團毛茸茸的東西
打腳邊竄走？
三舅衝進房子，在廚房找到他
他找到其實不應該打開的門
進去打破一些空啤酒瓶
然後把自己困在那裹
明天我們就往附近的小商店
買一些球，不會太大
又不會太小，能彈卻不太彈
在家中客廳這一邊
把球滾向他，然後
讓他把球含着
跑回來，把球給回我們
讓我們再來一次
這樣足夠讓他感到饒有興味。
葉英傑
Greet
My uncle
finally needed to live in
the old house in Guangzhou
left by grandpa
He tried hard to refurbish the old sofa
for everyone to sit at ease
and installed a voice-recognition light in the toilet
to illuminate the way at night
I have seen him keep some goldfish
Both number and color were specified by the fortune teller
They swam towards my side of the fish jar
I gave the glass a gentle tap
They turned around skillfully to retreat
Those goldfish had disappeared when I went back one year later
This time it was a dog
I came close and he saw me for the first time
He was drawn to me and twirled around me already
I went out with my uncle in those few days
and went home at night
He lingered near me
repeatedly and tightly
We once went home and opened the door
The house was dead silent
Did you feel
something furry
had scurried away from our feet?
My uncle rushed into the house and found him in the kitchen
He found the door that shouldn’t be opened
entered the kitchen and broke some empty beer bottles
then got stuck inside
We’ll go to the nearby shops tomorrow
to buy a few balls, not too big
and not too small, with perfect bounce
We’ll roll a ball towards him
across the living room, then
let him hold the ball
run back and give the ball to us
Let’s try again
It’s enough to create great fun for him
by Yip Ying Kit
translated from the Chinese by Sui Ping
Yip Ying Kit was born in Hong Kong. He won the 19th, 20th, 21st, 22nd and 24th Youth Literary Award, as well as the Awards for Creative Writing in Chinese in 2000 and 2010. His poetry collection Life as a Bystander won the 15th Hong Kong Biennial Awards for Chinese Literature. He blogs at http://www.poetyip.com. His work has appeared in Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine, Hong Kong Literary, Tai Tau Choi Literature Monthly Magazine, Qiu Ying Shi Kan, etc. A member of Wo Men Poetry Society, he has published five poetry collections. His sixth collection will be published in 2021.
Sui Ping is a poet, poetry translator, copywriter and traveller who was born and raised in Hong Kong. Her poems have appeared in several magazines like Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine, Off the Roll, Poetry+ and Qiu Ying Shi Kan, etc. Between 2012 and 2017, she was one of the editors of Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine. She received the Youth Literature Award (Poetry) in 2004 and 2005. Currently, she’s working on a creative project called 'Poetic Cuisine'.
