Author: Word and Colour

words inspired by colour wordandcolour.com

“The North Star” – Shagufe Hossain

The Universe_hires

We wake up
and walk streets
comforted
in fit-in-or-leave boxes
disillusioned into belonging
but You
my dear
were born to wage wars
simply by virtue
of your existence
on all cages with bars
made of traditions, rituals, and values
none.
You
are like the North Star
shining light on the path of the misguided
navigator
looking to find his way
back to values.
You
burn in passion
and desire
and love that conquers all
so the rest of us
can see light
head home.
So on days
when you feel lost
and losing
sight of north and south
east and west
right and wrong
remember
you are the compass
that burns brightly
in the nightly skies
to shine light
to guide home
the rest, lost
and the North Star
knows no direction
for she does not need one.
Remember my dear
you shall be your own
compass,
light,
guide,
so the rest of us
can find home.

 

these words by Shagufe Hossain were inspired by the work of Shanna Strauss

“An Ode to My Vibrator” – Fiona Williams

Lethe for Word and Colour magazine 2017

Blue may be the warmest colour, but Purple is what makes me cum.

Many have come and gone and it is only you, my love, which remains constant.

You are
            my confidant—never have I known a greater intimacy

You are
            my paramour—you listen to direction well and never disappoint me.

I am Thankful (to all the gods I don’t believe in) that the stars led me to you, my love.

It has been a journey of self-exploration and

You have taught me the importance of learning to love myself.

 

these words by Fiona Williams were inspired by the work of Sylwia Kowalczyk

“Displaced” – Jess Goldson

Sylwia Kowalczyk Chicas Blue wall

Golf balls
Clamour away in my stomach
Creating a burdensome, sinking feeling.
A stillness
Brings the collision of emotion to a halt.
What’s forward
But terrifying uncertainty
The impossibility of backward motion haunts me 
A cry for help:
Find me
Hold me
Release me

 

these words by Jess Goldson were inspired by the work of Sylwia Kowalczyk

“glass” – jesslyn delia smith

Sylwia Kowalczyk_Chicas_Fox

i can will what
will come
in here

where
i’m some
how better
left
to breathe

what remains
of air,

where the
time stops, where
we’re left to know the

season
only by the light

this room is cold
and i am cold
but it is
mine, the

coldness too,

and though the perfect
light is warm

it’s some
thing better
left
to burn

 

these words by jesslyn delia smith were inspired by the work of Sylwia Kowalczyk

“Little Trophies” – Michelle Kelm

unspecified

I wanted to run to the smaller car, the older model Toyota, its front end crumpled like a paper bag. I wanted to run to the aid of the grey-haired woman who was visibly shaken but not visibly injured, hands over her mouth, unsure of whether to get out of her car or not. I wanted to ask if she was okay, had she hit her head, was she dizzy. I wanted to say don’t get up just yet, catch your breath, does anything hurt, help will be here soon. But I was worried she’d brush off my assistance. I was worried someone else would run faster, get there first, and I’d be left breathless in the middle of a wreck, everyone wondering what the hell I was doing.

I wanted to call 911 and report the accident, two cars, one pulling onto a busy street, poor visibility, a tough spot for a left turn, the other going too fast, but I was sure someone else was already calling, and I’d just clog up the line. I was sure someone started dialling as soon as the tires squealed and the glass fell like ice in a warm front. The operator would be audibly annoyed at another call about the same accident. I might be the third, fourth even. I’d hear it in their voice.

I wanted to help the old man sweep the debris from the intersection. He’d come out of the barbershop with a push broom and worked methodically in neat lines. He was used to pushing hair across linoleum, and the tiny slivers of glass on the rough concrete fought him, springing into the air like mist under a waterfall. He rested often, and I thought about offering a hand, but I didn’t know if he’d be insulted. If he would think I was suggesting him incapable of the assistance that he so freely provided. That he might scowl and shake his head at me, certain I must be too senseless to identify my own way to be useful.

I wanted to comfort the passenger from the other car, the newer model SUV. She was probably the girlfriend or wife of the driver, the tall man who was pacing, concerned only about his vehicle. The passenger, the woman, was now sitting on the curb, shocked and in tears. I wanted to acknowledge her upset, to see what she needed. I could go in the corner store I was standing in front of and buy her a bottle of water, a package of tissues, but I thought maybe she’d think that was stupid or the ambulance would arrive while I was in the store and they’d wrap her in a blanket and give her water and tissues, leaving me to walk home carrying water and tissues that I didn’t need, left to sit on my kitchen table. How many days would I stare at them for? Little trophies of my ineptitude.

 

these words by Michelle Kelm were inspired by the work of Sylwia Kowalczyk

New Poetry: “Guðrún, blind daughter of Louhi,” by Ilona Martonfi

Acorn-Gold-NEW-DIAMOND

Old Norse folktales
depicted in the Saga of the Maiden
the blind daughter of Louhi

living in Pohjola, a forever cold land
at the North Pole,
below the North Star
region of darkness

her mother becoming pregnant
after eating a lingonberry,
giving birth to Guðrún

powerful and evil queen
weaving enchantments
ruling over Winter

the world formed
out of eggshell shards.
Betrothed to Sigfrøðr
god of the sky and storms

the ice of the seas
encircling all lands

Sielulintu, raven soul bird,
protecting fair Guðrún
from being lost
on the paths of dreams:

“The stars are there,” it said.

Tuonela the land of dead.

 

these words by Ilona Martonfi were inspired by the work of Daphne Boyer

“Unplugged” – Josh Elyea

Smoke circle

When I was a child, my father would rake leaves in the front yard and when the pile was big enough, he’d pick me up and throw me (almost callously) into them. My father was wild in his younger days; he rode a motorcycle and played bass in an underground funk band. He settled down though, when he married my mother. He had a daughter, and found work as a cashier in a record store of dubious structural integrity but impeccable cultural acumen.

He killed himself when he was sixty-one.

***

There’s something slyly atavistic about the way the leaves, dried out now since they’ve fallen, feel against my hands as I rustle them gently. From behind the mountain, a small line of smoke stretches thin across the setting sun. Smoke signals at sunset, he says.

We’re quiet after that, for a long time. Uma Thurman had it right; you know you’ve found someone really special when you can just shut the fuck up and sit comfortably in silence, if only for a minute. Silence is a rare thing, and people don’t bother to make time for it anymore. How could they? There’s too many distractions, too many addictions. Screens everywhere, and sitcoms and internet dating websites, reality TV shows and political debate shows and the horrid, overwhelming cascade of contemporary pop music. There’s education and employment, no alternatives, and you’re left to choose between an outdated, meritocratic institution or the dreaded 9-5, an existence that’s so alarmingly mundane it’s turned an entire generation into alcoholics, assholes who waste their weekends on outrageously priced booze and horrific hangovers so as to forget that they owe their time, their lives, to companies who speak only in terms of profit. There’s internet pornography, advertisements and an endless supply of empty entertainment, assailing our senses and undermining our character, our concentration and our connections.

It’s all a joke, a joke with a vicious punch line that relies on the inherent irony of a situation whereby the most connected civilization in the history of humanity is destined to die alone, each and every one of us connected to the internet and nothing else. Where in this hilarious chaos can one be expected to sit and think on the endless potential of the universe, or even the endless potential of the self? I look again to the man beside me, and I tell him I’m afraid that not even the autumn leaves can save me from my vices, from my addictions both good and evil.

Don’t worry, he says. We’ll take refuge in the wilderness.

Don’t worry, he says. Once you’re unplugged, everything will be alright.

these words by Josh Elyea were inspired by the work of Daphne Boyer

“Basic Aid for Minor Scrapes,” by Finn Purcell

le_potager

CW: trauma, child abuse

The end of March smells like fresh wounds.
I wake up with wasps in my lungs, thorns at my feet,
the heat bleaches through my window
and I am back there but I am not back there.

It will take ten minutes of stillness
before the threat of the sting ceases,
before I can ease the air to my lungs.

In that nervous quiet,
I remember
I forget

✢

I was born a week too soon, the only on-time I’ve ever been.
You are rushing down the hall to get this shoe and that card —
“Come on, can’t you help me here?!”
My small fingers stretch over the table, clamp around your purse strap, and I pull
until the sack lurches and thuds and spills.

You are in the doorway, noiseless and on fire,
I am on the floor, tangled in handles.

“Are you fucking kidding me? What the fuck are you doing?
Look at this fucking mess! I can always count on you!”

In my uncle’s car, he is laughing. “What took you so long?”
“Well, you know this one,” you say, waving at me.

✢

I was fresh skin and tripping rocks,
wholly infant, tender and wild,
what did I know? what did I know?

✢

A shower is just a shower until a shower is
a white noise sanctuary
to drown you out, to drown me

until you become thunder
banging at a cracking door,
muffling demands, shimmying
a steak knife through the lock mechanism
to get me, to get my attention
again and again

23, I forgot.
24, I remembered.

✢

I am fourteen and I am asking why you hate me.

You are hurt, indignant, asking
“when am I so horrible to you?
when I buy you clothes? when I cook you dinner?
when I let you have friends over?”

I am fourteen and you are right
and it’s only me, ungrateful.
(I am ungrateful still
and maybe I should be better.)

and when we fight, you are saying “let me guess,
you’re going to make me the big bad wolf,
you’re going to twist me into a monster
when you’re the monster!”

so I am being quiet
and I am on the floor
and already my skull is a pulse in a spin cycle,
bleached for nine more years.

✢

A recurring nightmare started at six:
me and several others, shadows creaking,
trapped in a house we couldn’t leave.
A monster slips and slithers the halls
while I hide in low corners.

Sometimes, someone disappeared
and the courtyard statue would bleed.
Sometimes, people would visit the outside
and I would scream from the upstairs window.
They never heard.

✢

School pictures, grade four. I am ten.
You are showing me how to put on concealer
because this is what happens when I won’t stop crying.

I stop crying.

✢

One of my exes stopped coming over the day you threw a plate at her.

“I was aiming for you” you told me,
and “What’s the big deal? It’s just a plate”
so I told her the same.

✢

The ashes I have become
will carry, will scatter,
will soot all they touch.

✢

I’d been moved for months before anything came out,
before “that’s just my mother”
became “oh” and “wait” and —

Now I am mechanisms, symptoms.
Now I am “what else have I forgotten to remember? what else have I? what else?”

Some scars have exact stories,
others appear in the morning, throbbing without explanation.

✢

Do you remember the time
you and Dad removed the training wheels
and I, overexcited, took to the sidewalk,
sped up and down the street from one corner to another?
Hot July sweat tickled, stuck the hair to my neck.
Black leaves willowed against one another in the sun.
The spokes whizzed and my legs churned
until I hit the rock.

The handlebar seized, I flipped,
and you came running.
You cradled me
while I held my scraped palms to bleeding knee.
Soft, warm tears.
You rocked me back and forth, pet my hair, sang to me,
and Dad rummaged for the First Aid.
I wished I could scrape my knee every day.

If I remember you are my sunshine, my only sunshine,
will I forget the skies are grey?

✢

The end of March smells like fresh wounds,
smells like eggs cracking and butter on toast.
In the midst of the spatter, I am shivering.
My hands are not my hands.
I am the nest, the keeper of the wasps, only the container,
the bodily visceral memory
that I can’t remember,
I can’t forget.

I am crying over eggs and I don’t know why.

 

these words by Finn Purcell were inspired by the work of Daphne Boyer

New Poetry by Francine Cunningham: “Whales can’t save us all—but they try”

blue_bird

The child waits,

drawn with shaky fingers
the thick lines of a blue whale’s eyes come into focus
out of the abyss of the great white ocean
the form is coaxed into being
and with the life ink has given stretches its fins

scratchy and ruthless the strokes of the pen dig into the paper
tearing tiny holes into the surface of the water
but nonetheless,
the whale grins as bubbles tickle its thick heavy body

the sound of thudding boots on carpet makes its thunderous arrival outside the door
and still the child waits
shoulders hunched around ears
eyes trained on the figure
silent in the middle of the page

a splinter of sound against the door
the pen lifts, the child listens
thrashing in the stagnant water
the whale gasps for the breath of true life
follicled mouth
begging for movement

the pen smashes down against the eye
and in desperation, blots more black against it
willing it to see, to see, to see
to witness
and for a moment out of the blackness
there is a hazy figure, blue paint, red carpet, pictures shaking against the wall

but then suddenly the pen digs too deep
crashes through
and the whale sinks
deeper, deeper, deeper
until neither can see
only wait

 

these words by Francine Cunningham were inspired by the work of Daphne Boyer

New Poetry by Jeff Blackman: “Client-facing”

blow_13x9

Today called myself an idiot a lot.
It’s fine. I’m fine. They and we’re fine.

When wise, I delete my posts
but generally settle for clever. At work

I’m perpetually perfecting an expression
that affirms I had nothing to add. I joke,

“Whaddya mean end-of-fiscal? My
calendar says it’s March thirty-fourth.”

I colour code what’s to be done.
My white noise play list skips.

“Whaddya mean end-of-fiscal? My
calendar says it’s March thirty-sixth.”

 

these words by Jeff Blackman were inspired by the work of Kelsy Gossett