by Peter Finch

North of Rogerstone on the
canal drip of the Sirhowy Valley
the houses backing
this algae flytrap celebrate
outdoor life with permanent
barbies and patios onto
which the drizzle falls at the
Rising Sun with no sun visible because of
anvil head cumuli the path goes
up through the bog leaf mould of
Coed Mawr woods.
Here Dwr Cymru are routing
a main drain gouge the trees
drop the yellow pipe stuff it all
back scar of contractual restitution
for at least a year
all this for faster shit beyond
lies Mynedd Machen
radio mast and bracken thin
man smoking with a greyhound
do this next.

by Peter Finch

In 1972 Brian Wake
read at the No Walls Poetry Club, in a spare room
above the Marchioness of Bute (now Boots),
beer, words & passion. In the celebration
that followed a briefcase carrying
his complete typewritten texts was mislaid, left
on a padded bar–stool, on a table,
or against a toilet wall.

VALUABLE LITERARY
WORKS LOST REWARD OFFERED
ran three nights in the Echo Personals
nothing.

Through the years Wake got most things back
carbons, notes, copies —
most bar two, naturally life’s best.
Memory the trickster told him that,
greatest things he’d ever done.

He reads me a new poem made thirty years on
from faltering memory, crackles and slugs,
but not as good as the lost, Wake’s sure.
Can’t get it back, the gone.
We look at the past — smudgy thing —
and we love it, full of hope.
Didn’t know what love and death were then. Do now.
Here’s another new one, Wake says,
and it’s mature pain and coded order,
quiet, fits the way our faces hang.

What was it about despair and joy
and fervour that we used to know?

by Peter Finch

a work created by the recording the output of dsh’s adapted Bell
Fruit machines as exhibited at the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastleupon–
Tyne in July and August, 1972 — finally processed in 2020

skin trip bash
echo trip them
acid down sail
skin ring bed
night down west
dream trip path
skin leaf poor
night star poor
smile guru west
slip gay help
when gay path
sea frame them
smile cake wave
bird ring path
acid gay west
slip left fear
array trip path
blue earth nude
flow fear doom
truth cloud slip
junk bright love
hole storm sun
blood slow fly
drop star doom
blood bright sand
junk storm tea
bone tantra legs
bone finger deep
bone tantra doom

(1972 – 2020)

by Kate Colby

What’s more opaque:
mirror or milk glass?

Depends what happens
at the end (in your face).

My eyes milk up
with cataracts.

(What you think
you’re looking at?)

All I know is that
much is apparent —

a surface turns
as needed to seem.