Founded 2010 P O E T R Y & W R I T I N G Free Online Magazine From Village Earth February 2019 Jack Grady a celebration of poetry Cover Artwork by Irish Artist Emma Barone 2019 february POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net L I V E E N C O U N T E R S M A G A Z I N E P O E T R Y & W R I T I N G February 2019 10th Anniversary Year 2010 - 2019 Support Live Encounters. Donate Now and Keep the Magazine Live in 2019! Live Encounters is a not-for-profit free online magazine that was founded in 2009 in Bali, Indonesia. It showcases some of the best writing from around the world. Poets, writers, academics, civil & human/animal rights activists, academics, environmentalists, social workers, photographers and more have contributed their time and knowledge for the benefit of the readers of the magazine. and technical aspects of the publication. 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Bali, Indonesia. © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING february 2019 Celebrating 10th Anniversary Year 2019 february POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net P O E T R Y & W R I T I N G February 2019 10th Anniversary Year 2010 - 2019 Contributors We are the music makers* Christopher Merrill Pippa Little David Rigsbee The title ‘Jack Grady Christopher– a celebration Merrill, of poetry’ Pippa Little,reflects David the author’sRigsbee, John Sibley Williams successJohn Sibley in inviting Williams, the Jeanninefollowing Hall smashing Gailey, poets Tim Cumming,to contribute Graham their unpublishedAllen, Joel Deane, work Hugh - Hazelton, Ken Meisel, Liz McKeane, Angela Jack Grady Topping, Kevin Higgins, Susan Millar Dumars, Lorna Shaughnessy, Jeannine Hall Gailey Jean O’Brien, and Edward O’Dwyer. Tim Cumming Graham Allen Thank you Jack. ThankCathy youAltman, smashing John W poets. Sexton, Miceál Kearney and Joel Deane Mary Guckian Cathy Altman We are grateful to for coming aboard with their effervescent work to Hugh Hazelton join the emerging lyrical juggernaut that is LE Poetry & Writing. Ken Meisel This year the world is faced with yet another string of mindless Liz McKeane violence, political ineptitude and a self-degrading twisted morality. Angela Topping and around us. Music created by poets to celebrate the soul, the All that we have is the music to remind us of the beauty within John W Sexton Mary Guckian very essence of life, that is Nature, that is the Universe. Miceal Kearney ThankOm Shanti you Shantifor the Shanti music. Om Kevin Higgins Susan Millar Dumars Lorna Shaughnessy Mark Ulyseas Jean O’Brien Edward O’Dwyer *Salaam to Arthur O’Shaughnessy © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING february 2019 Celebrating 10th Anniversary Year 2019 february POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net O N O R T H O D O X Y C H R I S T O P H E R M E R R I L L Watch Fire, Christopher Merrill has published six collections of poetry, including for which he received the Lavan YoungerOnly thePoets Nails Award Remain: from theScenes Academy from ofthe American Balkan Wars, Poets, Things and Boat;of the Hiddenmany edited God: Journey volumes to theand Holy translations; Mountain, and sixSelf-Portrait books of with nonfiction, Dogwood. among them, He directs the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program. On Orthodoxy Save the original, Devoted to the deadlythe docent consequences thinks After the opening of an exhibit About the provenance and profane nature Of politicians resurrecting rumors Over which blood was spilled to purify Of an illuminated manuscript The language of the tribe—which is to say: To__________ strip from common usage words and phrases Adopted from a foreign tongue and faith. Right worship was the sword the faithful wielded Against the unbelievers in their church, WhichOf a disastrous had been war. built What with heresy stones and pillars salvaged From temples razed and burned in the aftermath Is worth the loss of life religious wars Exact on individuals unwilling a policy ToWorthy change of imitation.the way they Heed pray his or words. do not pray? The__________ Founding Father called for Please specify the penalty for the sin Of bearing false witness against your neighbors, The ones who raised a rainbow-colored flag OnOf blueprints Independence for a Day, revolution. expecting—what? No, Death, resurrection, and the drawing up TheyIn every would last notdetail, tell andus where so we theyfound hid their guns. The map they gave us was inaccurate Photograph Pixabay. Acontinued darker routeoverleaf to the interior. © Christopher Merrill © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING february 2019 Celebrating 10th Anniversary Year 2019 february POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net O N O R T H O D O X Y C H R I S T O P H E R M E R R I L L On Orthodoxy continued An inventory of his imagination Salt-bitten and sea-bleached, the house remained Revealed how thoroughly he had depleted Intact and vivid in his imagination The source of his originality— Long after the Ash Wednesday Storm destroyed SandThat pushedshifting another in the dunes house where into the a house bay, stood The family home, carrying out to sea Until it was swept out to sea in the storm On waves of surging water what he loved— A vase of beach glass, his grandmother’s seascapes, Forming an island, which became for him A Louisville Slugger and a catcher’s mitt— An emblem of his thinking—circumscribed And what he feared—unorthodox ideas By__________ rising waters, sea wrack, and debris About__________ the central mystery of his faith, From hurricanes imagined, summoned, named. Which he observed less and less regularly. Claude Debussy said, Pleasure is the law Political correctness was the theme — OfA novelist a debate who that disdained generated literature, heat Until, that is, an authoritarian, Instead of light when the provocateur, Legally seizing power, writes a law To separate the chosen from the chaff, Praised inequality. And when a woman Who will be lockednoblesse inside oblige some. granary Rose to her feet to challenge him he took Unless the chosen rise up in defense A phone call on his cell, provoking her OfCowardice. liberty—i.e. The story ends predictably, To call out his behavior—to no avail. Don’t hold your breath. For cowardice breeds only He__________ left the stage, continuing to talk Over her protest until she sat back down. In blood and terror. Remember: you were warned. end © Christopher Merrill © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING february 2019 Celebrating 10th Anniversary Year 2019 february POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net L A S T M O M E N T P I P P A L I T T L E PippaOverwintering, Little is an award-winning Scots poet, editor, reviewer, workshop leader and translatorTwist, who(Arc lives2017), in Northumberland in North East England, Thewhere Spar she Box is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Newcastle University. (Carcanet 2012), was shortlisted for The Seamus Heaney Centre Prize, was shortlisted for The Saltire Prize and (Vane Women 2008) was a PBS Pamphlet Choice. She has been widely published in magazines and online across the world including, in the UK, Poetry Review, TLS, New Statesman, New European, and Rialto, and has worked on printmaking collaborations and filmpoems. A reviewer and translator, she has read at many poetry festivals and events including StAnza and Durham, and has won The James McCash Award, the Norman McCaig Centenary Poetry Prize, an Eric Gregory and others. She is a member of Scottish PEN. Last Moment Wolvscarn She is thinking of tunnels, I was born on a battleground howslides much into theshe onehates free them seat opposite son of the slain, my mother laid me when he melts through the tube train doors inI was my rearedfather’s up, butchered raised wild, arms and just before the dark begins, and hens when I starved, otherwise weird underwater gloom none would nestle me, I ripped bairns, hares that turns old women into fiends and children into moon-faced cats, they look at one another. kept low and close She always loved that place in his neck, to forest side, fell seam, any outer edge a shy dip between too-big collars. whereI was the humans shiver seldom in your go hearts She can’t recall his middle name but remembers pistachio ice-cream one night waves reared over the quay the grave-dirt rubbing in your eye huge green sea dragons last star falling with dripping fangs – and the day she saw him cry. now I am the song you will not sing your children old as hoar frost, my hoard, from a hard country. What do they do, in these grey strobedThey have shadows? survived, after all. AndAs the what train is slowsthere toshe forgive? rears up, Further on, her hand burns white presses her palm the length of his cheek. as a dusty lightbulb inside her pocket. © Pippa Little © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING february 2019 Celebrating 10th Anniversary Year 2019 february POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net L A S T M O M E N T P I P P A L I T T L E In Extremity A Woman Consoles an Orang-utan on a Cruise Ship From a black and white 1930s photograph My three stricken men are gone the dog died of old age I crouch in a cold pool of light don’t know what else to do but this knuckling and scooping Past her best but a looker once, of sea glass, my almost invisible runes she keeps herself in shape – marcelled wave, no roots, stolen from the endless pour of the sea brows like teardrops.