No one asks me about my favourite dinosaurs,
now my teen boys shut themselves away
to chase electronic prey.
They were the first toy phase I enjoyed,
after years of crashing cars, train track frustrations.
I read them the long lists of facts,
Walking with Dinosaurs on constant replay.
We googled the latest finds,
so many new discoveries since my time
of Triceratops and Brontosaurus.
It’s Stygimoloch, by the way,
the hard-headed, crown of horns Styx Demon.
My eldest still lectures me on him,
the petulant teen stuck
between child Draco Rex
and adult Pachycephalosaurus,
stubbornly finding his place.
And Liopleurodon, not strictly a dino,
but a marine reptile, splendid in his own right,
splashing and singing the seas
like my youngest, a boy of few consonants,
who first wrapped his reluctant tongue
around the name in the bath.
I tuck away the plastic models and books,
tidy the nest of cast-off socks
from my dinosaurs’ rampant growing feet,
aware I am slowing turning to fossil.
Bio: Gerry Stewart is a poet, creative writing tutor and editor based in Finland. Her poetry collection Post-Holiday Blues was published by Flambard Press, UK. Totems is to be published by Hedgehog Poetry Press in 2022. Her writing blog can be found at http://thistlewren.blogspot.fi/ and @grimalkingerry on Twitter.
Flashes of ears and backs
twist above the shorn hay stalks.
They dance off the winter dust,
limbs loosened in their sun-frenzy.
Not our garden friend,
dozing with fat content.
As soon as spring cracks free
he claims his scrape
beneath my morning gaze.
He chews my apple tree bark
beneath a snow-speckled coat,
indifferent to the cold slaps of takatalvi*
that haunt us well into May.
I throw myself into the season.
Soap suds and vinegar
strip back months of grime,
clearing space for me
amidst the clutter.
I stock up on elbow grease,
beat the stale carpets until I ache.
Open finger-printed windows,
let it stream in, biting crisp.
Impatient daffodils wake
gnarled with frost,
hoar-shattered stems at my fingertips.
With the lean, wild-eyed shock
of the beguiled hares,
I’m itching to dig.
*Finnish for the return of winter weather during springtime
Bio: Gerry Stewart is a poet, creative writing tutor and editor based in Finland. Her poetry collection Post-Holiday Blues was published by Flambard Press, UK. Totems is to be published by Hedgehog Poetry Press in 2022. Her writing blog can be found at http://thistlewren.blogspot.fi/ and @grimalkingerry on Twitter.
A Poetry Showcase for Gerry Stewart
I slip into the new year with a hare’s sleekit long-limbed lope.
Leathery ears alert, pelt tipped with winter silver, I am a blur breaking the shadows, a wisp in the darkness.
I move from distraction under the raw-boned hedge to merge with the season, undisturbed in purpose.
Tuned to the stars, spinning yet pinned firm to the anchor of the north.
I am not Janus splitting my vision, to worry the past with scrutiny and regret, but scrabble into the open, eyes wide to capture every notion of light glittering before me.
Bio: Gerry Stewart is a poet, creative writing tutor and editor based in Finland. Her poetry collection Post-Holiday Blues was published by Flambard Press, UK. Totems is to be published by Hedgehog Poetry Press in 2022. Her writing blog can be found at http://thistlewren.blogspot.fi/ and @grimalkingerry on Twitter.
A Rare WomanInspired by the self-portraits of Helene Schjerfbeck,
Finnish artist, 1862-1946
The primitive spark of her gaze
cannot be silenced.
It demands a dialogue.
She starts with a soft palette
and a reminiscent pose,
the quiet youthful notes
shaded with a crayon.
Her eyes, stark and peering,
hint at what drove her to the easel,
taunting us to ask why and how
her art lifts her from obscurity to Paris.
Even her mother wondered,
why not just dabble.
Gifted with more than talent,
she is unafraid,
exposes her strength
in heavy lines, a mustard splash,
brazen magenta slicing.
She builds face upon face,
scraping each clean before moving on.
Traces lurk below the surface,
bold in what she shares
and what she hides in paint.
A stubborn witness as her country falls,
independence into discord,
she best documents her own advance,
war after war waged upon her body.
Age rips her apart.
Eyes now haggard and hollowed,
pared back to shadow,
stalked by time.
Her final statement, her fury
never fading to a whisper,
leaves us raw.
A Recipe for the New Year
Christmas leftovers tidied away,
the last firework embers sizzle out
over a white spread of snow.
Clean as my grandmother’s linen,
ironed crisp with starch,
the table left undressed,
but for her empty plate.
Our family’s women send me recipes
as condolence cards,
her life marked with banana bread
and yeasty cinnamon twists,
baking our language in love and grief.
Shuffling around the kitchen
in a house coat and worn slippers,
she faded into isolation
without other’s needs to tend.
Ingredients gathered,
I stumble to follow the method
as I could never repeat her prayers.
Her fingers no longer warm the dough
that wilts under my impatience.
The oven remains cold.
I crack a fresh notebook,
eggshell emotions sticking to the pages,
ink the surface with I want, I want
to heap my plate with the new,
the uncertain.
I am not ready to become memory,
sugared and warmed.
Diary of the Unnamed MaidFirst Victim of the Great Fire of London, 1666
Mistress learnd me my letters
so I might read her lists at market.
I scratchd on Miss Hannas old slate
by firelight or with a wet finger in bed
until their shapes filld my dreams.
I share my attic room with the cat
too old to hunt mice. He warms my feet
when frost catches on the eeves.
In the morning I haste my errands
down the rows of wood houses to the stalls
After I run to the river and scribble
amid the tugs and shouting sailors.
Mistress never asks for the paper
sure it is dropped in the gutter.
My day is the kitchen.
Chop and peel wash the pots.
I only enter the bakery with Masters lunch.
His booming voice roars with heat
enjoining me before the oven.
I collect the family bread and cakes
sometimes a fresh biscit for Miss Mary
and a blackd one for myself.
I long rise early with that flour and warmth
but Master has a man to help.
I return to dishes and peelings.
Tonight I workd my letters in a sampler
A gift of thanks to my good lady and sir
who gives me a job, food, a safe home.
Master says we must off to bed.
I can hear him fixing the locks.
But he has not stoppd in the bake-hous.
The cat purrs my name
mongst my scraps of writing.
Voices echo in Puddin Lane below.
London never sleeps.
St Tenue, Mother of Glasgow
Remember me, a princess raped
and thrown away again and again
for the shame of my swollen belly.
Twice condemned by my father to death,
my life begins anew as my chariot
tumbled down Dunpendyrlaw.
A survivor, I was called Witch,
then abandoned to the Firth’s waves.
A shoal of fish silvers beneath my coracle,
washes me onto blessed shores
to birth my son, my dear one, Mungo.
I share your pain, my daughters
beaten and branded, cast aside by men.
Come, my hermitage, my arms offer shelter.
For centuries you visit my bones,
my sacred well in my son’s green city,
leaving coins and rag wishes,
praying that I give you peace.
Even when I am gone, you will find me
in this cathedral of metal and glass,
beneath the modern trains’ roar.
Whisper my names they have buried,
Thaney, Theneva, Tannoch, Enoch.
Whisper to me, Mother.
I will lift you up
above the grinding heels of men,
you unbroken queens.
History of a Nesting Doll
Her first face, serene is stamped with flowers
beneath time-yellowed paint,
but her garish colours don’t match the interior.
A clichéd spinster librarian in the corner at parties,
1950s tight perm and chunky plastic jewellery,
spitting and muttering like her Siamese cat.
After death her story cracks open,
the early loss of her mother hollowed her out,
family shuffling in from next door to fill the gaps.
The details blur more on the next Matryoshka,
features cramped, eyes anxious to speak.
A touch of a smile, her flushing cheeks.
Engaged to an unknown boy in WW2
who didn’t return, she never dated again.
Discouraging other widows, she chided
that only one mate exists for each.
Her next expression holds the unsaid
behind pursed lips. The paint simplifies,
spotted headscarf and one large, loose bloom.
Unearthed sepia snapshots with her father
at US road-side attractions, Old Faithful,
the biggest ball of string.
He bought the cars, she drove
as her brother moved on to family of his own.
The last three matrons are pared down,
wood fading, fewer dots and colours
on matronly aprons and kerchiefs.
A beloved community soul, layers hidden.
She paid for niblings’ educations,
took the grandkids to local pow-wows,
feeding her love of turquoise with the hard beat
of dancing feet, sweltering summer days.
Trinkets of her solo trips packed in boxes;
wooden shoes, a twisting Thai dancer
and a Flamenco dance in a sweeping skirt.
Ten orders down, the smallest face
speaks with black,
depression, electro-shock therapy,
slivers of her memory lost
like the last doll,
an emptied space
in her heart-centre.
The Viking and The Maiden
No romance
but the sagas sung
in my head.
He was my warrior,
riding his motorcycle in the wind
like a longboat,
a stormy petrel.
We were young gods,
revelling in the sauna heat
of the dark disco.
Awaiting his arrival,
I brushed off sailors like flies,
breath held.
His oars rocked him in
on a wave of girls
who knew the course he charted.
I lashed myself,
sweat-rich and wild,
to the mast of his bones,
riding my longing tide
to the songs of the mead-hall.
I was willing to throw
myself from his cliffs,
to dance with his shield maidens
in blood-lust and love
until I broke apart,
timbers against his sword.
But he sensed
I was not battle-ready
and dropped his sails
to shelter me back
to the hearth fires.
I stole a kiss
from his sand-dry lips.
as he returned
to the pearling foam,
my last sun-hope
snuffed out.
Rebirth
When she drifted loose-paged
through the Idaho bookstore,
I imagined Europe’s narrow streets
followed at her heels.
She could never blend
into this backwater town,
an exotic wind in the tilt of her eyes,
her Mary Janes mirror-polished,
her uncombed hair.
She lived in sensuous melancholy,
a spirit downcast by her own beauty.
I wished to remain hidden near
to catch her spark.
Whispers followed her,
unemployed, unwed mother.
I dream her face stares back
through my window,
a maria of the moon,
her dark, silent surface
hiding upheaval.
I long for her wide cheekbones
to push me through the crowds.
DishevelledDa Vinci’s La Scapigliata
She rises from the wood,
the earthy paint,
clear and bright.
Paused over something unseen,
needlework or a sleeping child,
a thought pulls her away
and lights her from within.
Soft notes unwind in her hair,
the thread she’s following.
Unburdened
by painted background,
the strictures of fashion and time,
of man or home,
on her own she is raw,
falling loose.
Grace, not in her eyes
hooded and downcast,
not in her smile.
La Serenissima.
Bio: Gerry Stewart is a poet, creative writing tutor and editor based in Finland. Her poetry collection Post-Holiday Blues was published by Flambard Press, UK. Totems is to be published by Hedgehog Poetry Press in 2022. Her writing blog can be found at http://thistlewren.blogspot.fi/ and @grimalkingerry on Twitter.
2 poems about forgotten women by Gerry Stewart
I nursed you lazy, honey-pawed one, golden apple of the forest. Your gold cradle slung from fir trees, our nest forest sheltered.
I denied you teeth and claws as your grumbled and grew until you promised, Pride of the Thicket, never to use them in bloody destruction. I lead you into your winter sleep.
Men, full of bravado, whisper your names even when you slumber.
Roll over and the days lengthen. You rise hungry and forget your promise, my truculent foster-son. You and Man tussle like untamed children.
I bid them to make you the bridegroom, the honoured guest at your own death, hang your skull in a sacred clearing, imbibe your strength with bone totems.
You both must walk ever wary of this reluctant peace.
*Otso and other phrases are circumlocutory epithets for the bear, Artio is the Celtic wildlife goddess
Elia Vouvon*
Now a twisted sea hag, I tell you
my youth was wild, a daughter of Athena,
spear-planted into this earthquake-crumpled island.
I rode the tsunami that washed away bullish Minos,
dug my roots in against Venetians ships,
Germans and the constant Turks.
I withstood them all.
My marriage to a tsounati
domesticated me, but I still dance,
tossing my silvered head to the music
of the grinding stone press.
Though my heartwood withers,
I shed my blessings on your Games,
a millennium after that first race from Marathon.
A long vigil as witness, my oil lights
your procession from home to cemetery
in urns of painted black geometry.
Gift of the goddess, my children, my fruit
cannot be cleaved from your history.
Find here shaded rest from its turmoil.
*Elia Vouvon is one of the oldest olive trees in the world, between 2000-4000 years old.
Bio: Gerry Stewart is a poet, creative writing tutor and editor based in Finland. Her poetry collection Post-Holiday Blues was published by Flambard Press, UK. Totems is to be published by Hedgehog Poetry Press in 2022. Her writing blog can be found at http://thistlewren.blogspot.fi/ and @grimalkingerry on Twitter.
Fevers of the Mind 