Sonnet: Susan McLean, ‘Day of the Dead’

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As if the day took on her warmth and calm,
above the blazing maple trees extends
a sky serenely blue. While kin and friends
assemble, breezes gentle as a balm
flutter the tablecloths and vibrant vases
of cannas and zinnias. Do we still remember,
given our lively chat and smiling faces,
we’re picnicking in volatile November?

Above the tableful of photos flies
a vee of geese, still low, in close formation,
honking in concord as they carry on
their sociable long-distance conversation.
We pause to watch them as they slowly rise
and fade until, like Mother, they are gone.

*****

Susan McLean writes: “My mother did not want a funeral, so when she died, my siblings and I were trying to find a way to commemorate her in a celebration that her family and friends could attend. Though she died in late October, the weather in Maryland had been freakishly warm for that time of year, so we chose to hold a picnic at her favorite park. I had learned about the Hispanic tradition of celebrating the Day of the Dead from my colleague Lupe Solis, so I thought that holding the picnic on November 1, with photos, flowers, and my mother’s favorite foods, would be appealing. Fort Washington Park is right on the Potomac River, and just as we had finished setting the tables, a vee of geese flew over us, still very close to the ground. The moment felt surprising and symbolic as we all stopped to watch them depart.”

This sonnet was originally published on Ken Gordon’s Substack The Sonneteer.

Susan McLean has three books of poetry: The Best Disguise, The Whetstone Misses the Knife, and her latest, Daylight Losing Time (Able Muse, 2026). She had also published a book of translations of Martial, Selected Epigrams. Her poems have appeared in Light, Lighten Up Online, Crab Orchard Review, Able Muse, and elsewhere. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

Photo: Flying geese Jiaqian AirplaneFan Creative Commons Attribution 3.0

Susan Jarvis Bryant, ‘The Dead Fox’

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Her zest has been buried for too many moons.
Tonight, she has risen to nocturnal tunes
That thrum in the hoot of a shadowy owl
And hum in the howling of wolves on the prowl.
 
She weaves and she skips beneath flickering stars
Beguiled by the bustle of bistros and bars.
Imbued with the spirit of mischief and pluck
She hoodoos the heart of each hot-blooded buck.
 
She hovers and wuthers and wafts through the crowd.
She’s hauntingly naughty and shawled in a shroud.
Now loose from her tomb with the battiest brain
She kisses the stunned Casanovas insane.
 
With sass in her sockets and snap in her bones,
With scarabs adorning her decomposed zones,
She perks every pumpkin-packed, fiend-friendly scene –
This fustiest, flirtiest trick-or-treat queen.

*****

Susan Jarvis Bryant writes: “I will admit to being a bit of a Halloween curmudgeon… unless it comes to treating and tricking with words. Every Halloween my Muse is inspired to sing of witches and warlocks and the odd dead fox… and I simply have to dance to her spooky tune.”

‘The Dead Fox’ was originally published in Snakeskin.

Susan Jarvis Bryant is originally from the UK and now lives on the coastal plains of Texas. Susan has poetry published on The Society of Classical Poets, Lighten Up Online, Snakeskin, Light, Sparks of Calliope, and Expansive Poetry Online, The Road Not Taken, and New English Review. She also has poetry published in The Lyric, Trinacria, and Beth Houston’s Extreme Formal Poems and Extreme Sonnets II anthologies. Susan is the winner of the 2020 International SCP Poetry Competition and was nominated for the 2022 and 2024 Pushcart Prize. She has published two books – Elephants Unleashed and Fern Feathered Edges.

Photo by Kegen Benson, BLM Wildlife Biologist. BLMUtah – Public domain – Kit Fox at Night (51191359677)

Sonnet: ‘Maz’ Griffiths, ‘Archaeology’

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Chink-chink, clunk-clunk, there’s no escape.
You spade us from the ground, then scrape
our skulls and excavate our teeth,
spread naked what once lay beneath
mute earth. You want to learn our name.
Ah, we are levelled, made the same.
This bone-yard bursting at the seams
is one deep bed of blended dreams.

Our bodies are transformed and rotten,
and what you are, we have forgotten.
We wish to feed the shrubs and trees,
to nestle wild birds as they please.
We are all light now. Do not weep.
Heap heaviness upon us. Let us sleep.

*****
Reading through ‘Maz’ Griffiths‘ poems collected as ‘Grasshopper‘, this piece felt suitably Halloweenish to share at the end of October.

Photo: One of the Batavia mutiny (1629) victims, excavated on Beacon Island and now displayed at Fremantle Shipwreck Museum. Wikimedia Commons, 7 April 2014, 06:19:51, Guy de la Bedoyere

Semi-formal: ‘Maz’ Griffiths, ‘Falling’

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In the library,
you fell over me.
You said, So sorry.
I said, Ouch.
Later you fell over me
on the couch.

Things were falling into place,
thigh to thigh and face to face.
Earth was falling
through the night
falling into birds and light.

As the sky unrolled
another day,
you kissed me,
then you walked away.

But walking,
I’m told,
is merely
falling
controlled.

*****

The always delightful Margaret Ann “Maz” Griffiths published in a huge range of voices: formal sonnets of wildlife and of the illness that finally killed her, blank verse rants against warfare or injustice, sad songs of the female loss of innocence, flippant anti-establishment sarcasm about the British Royal Family…

‘Grasshopper’, her 350-page collection of poetry (and also one of her nicknames) was assembled by fans after her death and published by Arrowhead Press in the UK and Able Muse Press in North America. It is readable and rereadable. I post the occasional poem in this blog.

Illustration: Wikimedia Commons: https://www.flickr.com/photos/alexisnyalphotography/5183318315/

Semi-formal poem: Mervyn Peake, ‘To Maeve’

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You walk unaware
Of the slender gazelle
That moves as you move
And is one with the limbs
That you have.

You live unaware
Of the faint, the unearthly
Echo of hooves
That within your white streams
Of clear clay that I love

Are in flight as you turn,
As you stand, as you move,
As you sleep, for the slender
Gazelle never rests
In your ivory grove.

*****

‘To Maeve’ is the final poem in ‘Mervyn Peake, Selected Poems’ published by Faber. Peake and his wife Maeve Gilmore were both artists and writers – after Peake’s death in 1968, Gilmore fleshed out a fourth book for the Gormenghast Trilogy from Peake’s notes and ideas, eventually published as ‘Titus Awakes: The Lost Book of Gormenghast‘.

Isabel Chenot, ‘driving by an Orchard, late October’

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Behind repetitive, recessive rows
of almond trees, radiance stutters:
an open phoneme that won’t close.
It flickers to the west, while lateral gutters

of long shadow interrupt its strobe.
The orchard’s shadows diagraph the road and flare
across to dust and scrub.
My inarticulable thoughts are there:

fleeing, opaque, colliding with the sound of glare.

*****

Isabel Chenot writes: ” I like to let the words speak for themselves as much as possible.”

‘driving by an Orchard, late October’ was originally published in Pulsebeat Poetry Journal.

Isabel Chenot has loved, memorized, and practiced poetry all her remembered life. Some of her poems are collected in The Joseph Tree, available from Wiseblood Books.

“Almond trees” by mental.masala is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Damian Balassone, ‘The Lunar Dance’

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You dance with her from dawn to dusk,
but when the freezing night is done
she pecks your cheek and flies away
towards the great nocturnal sun.

*

And what became of you, young man?
Did you become a rolling stone?
Were you condemned to roam the earth
and never find your way back home?

‘I trekked the earth to find the one
who danced with me so long ago.
And now my bones are frail and weak.
And now my hair is white as snow.’

Your rambling days are almost done.
The final hour is drawing near.
And now, my child, the time has come
to see the one you held so dear.

*****

‘The Lunar Dance’ was first published in InDaily Poet’s Corner. (Submission details in link.)

Damian Balassone is the author of three volumes of poetry and reflections, in Strange Game in a Strange Land (two editions), Here, Bear and Everywhere (illustrated by Jess Racklyeft), and Chime (two editions), while his collection of short poems and epigrams, Love is a Weird Cat, is forthcoming. His poems have also appeared in more than 100 other Australian and international publications, notably in The New York Times, The Australian, The Canberra Times and The Spectator. In noting Damian’s work, Australia’s uncrowned poet laureate, Les Murray, described Damian as a ‘a virtuoso’. More about Damian and his work can be found here.

Photo: This image is from Unsplash and was published prior to 5 June 2017 under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

Thomas Love Peacock, ‘The War-song of Dinas Vawr’

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The mountain sheep are sweeter,
But the valley sheep are fatter;
We therefore deemed it meeter
To carry off the latter.
We made an expedition;
We met a host, and quelled it;
We forced a strong position,
And killed the men who held it.

On Dyfed’s richest valley,
Where herds of kine were browsing,
We made a mighty sally,
To furnish our carousing.
Fierce warriors rushed to meet us;
We met them, and o’erthrew them:
They struggled hard to beat us;
But we conquered them, and slew them.

As we drove our prize at leisure,
The king marched forth to catch us:
His rage surpassed all measure,
But his people could not match us.
He fled to his hall-pillars;
And, ere our force we led off,
Some sacked his house and cellars,
While others cut his head off.

We there, in strife bewild’ring,
Spilt blood enough to swim in:
We orphaned many children,
And widowed many women.
The eagles and the ravens
We glutted with our foemen;
The heroes and the cravens,
The spearmen and the bowmen.

We brought away from battle,
And much their land bemoaned them,
Two thousand head of cattle,
And the head of him who owned them:
Ednyfed, king of Dyfed,
His head was borne before us;
His wine and beasts supplied our feasts,
And his overthrow, our chorus.

*****

The first lines are so catchy… the poem is so barbaric… I recognise this is where we all were 2,000 years ago, and where many Russians and Israelis are still today…

Thomas Love Peacock (1785 – 1866) was an English novelist, poet, and official of the East India Company. He was a close friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and they influenced each other’s work. Peacock wrote satirical novels, each with the same basic setting: characters at a table discussing and criticising the philosophical opinions of the day. Let’s assume his war-song doesn’t represent his actual view of the world. In fact, we can get a better sense from his “A Day at the India Office”:

From ten to eleven, have breakfast for seven;
From eleven to noon, think you’ve come too soon;
From twelve to one, think what’s to be done;
From one to two, find nothing to do;
From two to three, think it will be
A very great bore to stay till four.

Illustration: ‘War-song’ by RHL and GPT-6 Astra Light (aka Quill). Quill decided to substitute a token gold crown for the king’s head, and I let that stand.

Semi-formal verse: RHL, ‘Conversation with the Beast’

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“And what are you?” asked the all-seeing sightless beast
bearing me on its back through vast seascapes,
going somewhere, nowhere, ceaseless as droning plane or priest.
“Are you one of the great lizards? Or the little apes?
The winged skylords? The many-tentacled?
An ape-displacing metal monster?”
“Of those,” I said, “ ‘Ape’ has to be my answer.”

“I talk with all of you,” it said, “you’re all identical.
You are all struggling up, and lying back and down,
and all are living with some lilac crown
on heads and clothed with your purple gown
while all your world degrades to brown.
This you all do, will always do, have always done,
always, while seas seem to run,
and while I seem to carry you with seeming motion.”

“What is this sea?” I asked. “Time, that we’re moving through?”
“Why not?” it said. “There is no Time, nor Ocean.
All is more dream than stream;
I am not as I seem
and nor are you.”

*****

I’m very happy to have this in the latest edition of Cerasus – “now published and currently available to buy at a special discounted price:

In the UK: CERASUS Poetry Magazine # 6: Amazon.co.uk: Wilks, John: 9798160784458: Books

In the USA: CERASUS Poetry Magazine # 6: Wilks, John: 9798160784458: Amazon.com: Books

(For other countries, click on a link then change the .co.uk or .com in the address bar as appropriate.)”

Thanks, John Wilks.

Sonnet: Richard Fleming, ‘Boy’

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He closes his eyes while, around his head,
like playground shouts, a flock of angry birds
explodes. He feels an overwhelming dread,
remembering his irate father’s words
and what the words preceded: those first blows
that pummelled his thin shoulders and his ears,
left him confused and with a bloody nose,
his much-loved, navy T-shirt stained with tears.
He blinks, refocuses. The birds have gone.
And, looking at his wristwatch, he can see
hours have slipped by like buses missed. A pawn
on life’s great chessboard, he stands helplessly.
Time flows around him. In it he will grow
to strength while it diminishes his foe.

*****

Richard Fleming writes: “I’ve written a great deal of verse over the years, much of which I’d happily disown, but amidst that unruly scrub-grass a few flowers have blossomed. The bouquet presented here comprises a mixture of formal and informal verse, including a number of older poems that have appeared elsewhere: there are also several more recently written ones that have not previously been published.

          “The Russian poet, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, is quoted as saying: ‘a poet’s autobiography is his poetry’ and that may be true to a degree but let’s not forget that poetry is a creative art, a flight of fantasy, therefore poems that, at first glance, may appear to be autobiographical will almost certainly have been embellished by the writer’s imagination.

          “The selection leans strongly towards rhyming verse: my preference, despite the fact it seems to have fallen from favour in the world of modern poetry. What odds? I’ve never been one to run with the pack.”

‘Boy’ was published in The High Window.

Richard Fleming is an Irish-born poet and humorist based in Guernsey, a Channel Island between Britain and France. Widely regarded as one of the island’s foremost literary voices, his versatile work blends lyricism, sharp wit, emotional depth, and a strong sense of place. Drawing from his Northern Irish roots and adopted home, his poetry and prose explore love, loss, nostalgia, identity, and modern life. Collections include Strange Journey (2012), held in the National Poetry Library, and Stone Witness (Blue Ormer) featuring the BBC-commissioned title poem. His work can be found on

Facebook https://www.facebook.com richard.fleming.92102564/

or Bard at Bay www.redhandwriter.blogspot.com

*****

Photo: Boy Walking Contraluz by Wilfredor, Creative Commons Zero, Public Domain Dedication