Grand Place, Nice Lights
By Julie Landers
Stories of a bunker
In a Ukranian city you cannot remember
Turned into an underground bar.
If you know the password
Doors are opened to you, song in a language you
Don’t understand.
I lean towards what lies above ground,
Sing the songs I know I
Cannot get wrong.
For both of us this is a new city
With new myths.
We walk through La Grand Place where small talk crumbles away, reveals soul.
The thrills you seek
On these cobbled streets
Which give way to nightclub dance-floors where we smoke and sway.
Under these red lights there is only you,
My confidante, my healer.
You smile like you carry plumes of smoke behind your teeth.
This moment of night terrors in new tongues.
I inhale my new home.
I look to you and deduce how light my lungs could feel.
Take solace in the secrets that we keep
In incompatible dialects,
Under streetlights veiled in early autumn’s mist.
I
By Claire Aherne
little mountain, big
sheep, eating shepherd alive,
each possessive limb
little chest, big heart
attack, weeping or dying,
can’t tell them apart
little sea, big fish
hunger in a stomach-full
of microplastic
little man, big black
shadow, though when i try to
touch, he is nowhere
II
By Claire Aherne
kissing pretty girl
tasting her back and forwards
year of many masks
there is no remorse
and he would do it again
if boredom arose
what is appetite
how come you smell like flowers
i’m dripfed my pride