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2010 - 2026 - 17th A n n i v e r s a r y

P O E T R Y & W R I T I N G Free Online Magazine From Village Earth Volume One November-December 2026

Terry McDonagh

The Road Out

Cover photograph by Joanna Longster McDonagh 2026 November-December POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

LIVE ENCOUNTERS MAGAZINE

©Mark Ulyseas

Photograph by Mark Ulyseas. © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING Volume One November-December 2026 Celebrating 17th Anniversary

P O E T R Y & W R I T I N G

Volume One 17th Anniversary November-December 2026

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Donate Now and Keep the Magazine Live in 2027 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:

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Contributors

P O E T R Y & W R I T I N G

Volume One 17th Anniversary November-December 2025

Terry McDonagh – guest editorial Angela Costi David Dephy Edward Caruso Elsa Korneti Frances Browner Ian Watson Jane Downing Kit Willet Lincoln Jaques Ma Yongbo Michael Durack Michael Farry Piet Nieuwland Richard W Halperin Roisin Browne Sally Breen Siobhan Harvey Susana H Case

2026 November-December POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

GUEST EDITORIAL

Terry McDonagh. Photo credit: Joanna Longster McDonagh © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING Volume One November-December 2026 Celebrating 17th Anniversary

TERRY MCDONAGH Terry McDonagh, Irish poet and dramatist has worked in Europe, Asia and Australia. He’s taught creative writing at Hamburg University and was Drama Director at Hamburg International School. Published eleven poetry collections, letters, drama, prose and poetry for young people. In March 2022, he was poet in residence and Grand Marshal as part of the Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations in Brussels. His work has been translated into German and Indonesian. His poem, ‘UCG by Degrees’ is included in the Galway Poetry Trail on Galway University campus. In 2024, Two Notes for Home – a two-part radio documentary, compiled and presented by Werner Lewon, on The Life and Work of Terry McDonagh, The Modern Bard of Cill Aodáin. His latest poetry collection, ‘Two Notes for Home’ – published by Arlen House – September 2022. He returned to live in County Mayo in 2019. email: terrymcdonagh,writer1@gmail.com 00353 (0)86 8861853

Terry McDonagh The Road Out

Having been asked to write this editorial, got me thinking back – back to the late eighties in a Hamburg café with a friend who, simply, asked me, how do you see yourself? Taken aback, I pondered for a moment. What do you mean? He didn’t reply immediately but stirred his coffee three or four times – if a stranger asked you about work – how you earn a crust, what would you say? It wasn’t something I’d thought about. Teacher, I’m a teacher, I replied. But you write, don’t you? I took time over my response. I do. Yes, I suppose I do, but it’s not my main focus and it doesn’t put food on my table. This was no epiphany moment where scales fell for my eyes or my dance turned to a jig. It had nothing to do with a second coming, but it was a moment when I began to think of how well we wear our disguise. Back then, it was not easy for me to come out and say, I’m a poet. I could have said, I’m a poet who teaches, I suppose. I remember his words: wear the hat and, perhaps, you’ll see yourself and your writing in a different light. We grow up imagining a state of mind or place we always thought could be our own and from which there could be no return. It would be special – nothing meek or mild about it, like a search for water and rest in the riddle of sun and rain. It’s a kind of calling – in my case I call it poetry. I can say it, now, without fear, qualms or misgivings. I am first and foremost, a poet.

GUEST EDITORIAL

A newly-founded English language publisher, Olaf Hille Verlag Hamburg, came calling and a new journey began. In 1992, my first collection, The Road Out, was published. An exciting time. My relationship with the city of Hamburg was firmly established and even though I, now, live in Ireland, this relationship has remained. I once wrote, those many storms have cut my boats adrift. And I am grateful for this unease. In response to the publication of The Road Out, Armin Schwing of Norddeutscher Rundfunk, wrote: Roads, independent of standpoint, are two directional. I took the Road Out and passed beyond the Elbe Roses – way beyond. My return was followed by the gaze of an Irish twinkle which turned opaque with nostalgia. The trip was lovely.

We live today wondering how yesterday could have happened. The future is today with a feeling that nothing can change yesterday. And so, it goes on. I am the land of others and my own land and I try to commit their city and my land to paper. I am their journey and my own and there is no turning back. Turning back would be like trying to put words in a place where the wind was born. Wind howls across hilltops and lost valleys – it tosses and tumbles into corners where education gets in the way of learning. I think a lot about yesteryear. I think of my uncle, Tim McDonagh, who took me up to the High Fort in the townland of Cill Aodáin where he told me tales about my great grandfather, Thady Conlon and about Anthony Raftery, the blind poet and the last of the travelling bards in Ireland. I, too, was born in Cill Aodáin and, have returned to it.

TERRY MCDONAGH

Door Through Time This particular uncle was timid with a slight limp that must have grown out of sadness. He was a teacher but not in that way. He used to climb down into out stolen wilderness and among centuries of involuntary tales he’d stand on the Hill. We’d listen to the victims of the Púca, peer into the sealed cave under the High Fort and on down to Thady’s headstone in Cill Aodáin graveyard by the river. In puddles among the rushes Under the Easter moon I saw footprints of the poet.

My uncle would often stand long as if trapped in something far away. As he had come, he went – screaming. His voice only half used. Those hills and bushes though smaller now still dance.

Armin Schwing said, the trip was lovely. The trip is lovely. As I’ve already said, I’m in Ireland now. That friendship in a Hamburg coffee shop was a Hamburg friendship but the conversation has remained. It comes back to me in most unlikely places – eating an apple at a football match or over a pint in a cosy establishment. It took time but I did get round to wearing the hat, owning up to the poet in me. At first, it came out as whispers, but it gradually found its way into mainstream until it was taken for granted by me and others. In the meantime, I have published 15 poetry collections – In Ireland with Arlen House but I never tire of repeating that Hamburg coffee conversation when talking about my work. © Terry McDonagh

2026 November-December POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

THE RELATIONSHIP

Angela Costi © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING Volume One November-December 2026 Celebrating 17th Anniversary

ANGELA COSTI Angela Costi’s poetry collections include Honey & Salt, An Embroidery of Old Maps and New, and The Heart of the Advocate. Her chapbook, Adversarial Practice, published by Cordite was commended in the Wesley Michel Wright Prize 2024. She won the University of Canberra’s Health Poetry Prize 2024, the Katherine Sussanah Prichard (KSP) Poetry Prize 2022 and has been placed or shortlisted in a number of prizes, including the Newcastle Poetry Prize 2026. Over the years, her poems, micro fiction, essays and other creative writing have found homes in literary and academic journals.

The Relationship When she first brought me into her rooms she said, welcome home. But everything about her home is not my home. I hate myself for feeling ungrateful as I was birthed in a sludge of fire and debris, trapped and zapped into isolation, injected with iron, mined with bomb and drill, torn from rock, shackled and traded by heartless wallets, slapped with price to finally come to rest by her pink-tassel, bedside lamp. Each night, after she brushes, flosses, stretches, sips chamomile tea, pops a pill or two or three, she places me in the cradle of her palm, and says, I call upon the highest vibration of unconditional love to fill this Amethyst, may it radiate spiritual light strengthen my core to receive healing.

And I oblige. I muster my crystals to send forth sparkles. Her eyes seem to get larger as if they are homeless and unfed. They hunger for my purple glow. They stare at me for seven minutes (according to her timer). Their energy is made from panic and despair, I can sense their oscillation from blue to grey to teal. I can feel her pupils deepen with darkness. Our energies wrestle in the space between her nose and my highest point. I’m exhausted by the time she places me back on her bedside table. Switches off the lamp. Gets into her bed.

After she stops fighting with the blanket and sheets, my crystals emit a silent sigh as they huddle in the solace of night. This is the precious time for me to focus on what is left of me. I forget about the grit and dust lurking in my crevices. I shine remnants and make them glow wild violet. I am writing to my mother in the only way I know how.

T H E S E R A P H...

David Dephy i © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING Volume One November-December 2026 Celebrating 17th Anniversary

DAVID DEPHY David Dephy is a National Award-winning American poet, novelist, and multimedia artist. He is the founder of the Poetry Orchestra. Named Poet-in-Residence for Brownstone Poets for 2024-2026. His recent books include Gemini Touch (a novella, Westbrae Literary Group, 2026) and Rays Never Were So Near as Now (poetry, Westbrae Literary Group, 2025). His poetry was sent to the Moon by NASA, Lunar Codex, and Brick Street Poetry in 2025. Dephy was exiled from his native country, Georgia, and granted indefinite political asylum in the U.S. With support from organizations such as the Artistic Freedom Initiative and PEN America, he secured asylum and reunited with his family in the U.S. His works have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies worldwide, including Kansas City Review, Hudson Valley Writers Guild, International Poetry Review (Tufts University and the University of North Carolina Greensboro), Stanford University Poetry Media Lab, Shenandoah, Sampsonia Way, North Dakota Quarterly, Straylight Literary Magazine, and others. He lives in New York and works as a Teaching Artist at the New York School for Art.

The Seraph of Heavenly Architecture The divine symmetry of the Empire State Building has fascinated me since childhood. Yes, it possesses divine symmetry— a 102-story Seraph of Heavenly Architecture with expansive wings of human stories and aspirations, rays from beyond, wishes, and untold secrets. It stands as a magnificent spirit of the city built on Earth, a symphony of mystery, the conductor of America’s great narrative, and a prophecy speaking of its time, its place, and its yearning for eternity. The Empire State Building is built on breath—on vision. The architects, the magi, revealed a mystery: that beauty is light dancing over the idea of life, an idea through which we’ve long sought to understand divine perfection and the omnipresent pulse of human desire. It embodies prayers, visions, and the passion to manifest order through symmetry and foresight, representing one of the highest forms of genius.

There is no other building on Earth that fascinates me more. Since my childhood, I have loved this building with a strange certainty—believing that to look up into its sky was to know Heaven and the Seraph had already granted my sacred wishes. I looked, and for a breath, the whole city held its light. I feel its presence—it is alive. It is a message, a novel, a poem. It carries the energy of a rock concert. Yes, it is a rock star building—it brings you an enigma. William Frederick Lamb was a prophet. As the principal architect of the Empire State Building, of the firm Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, he didn’t merely design a skyscraper; he transformed light, wonder, mystery, and passion into structure and stone, and yes, the Empire State Building stands as a Seraph of Heavenly Architecture—the celestial ancestral source from which all the buildings draw their breath. For just a moment, Herald Square fell surprisingly still as I walked with my wife and son that morning, and she took a picture of me. She said, “I’ll try to capture this fleeting moment of silent mystery. It’s so quiet in New York City; we must be very lucky. Yes, look at me, please, and make a wish.”

NOURISHMENT

Edward Caruso © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING Volume One November-December 2026 Celebrating 17th Anniversary

EDWARD CARUSO Edward Caruso has been published by A Voz Limpia, Australian Multilingual Writing Project, ‘La Bottega della Poesia’ (La Repubblica, Italy), Burrow, Communion, Kalliope X, Live Encounter P&W, Mediterranean Poetry, Meniscus, Melbourne Poets Union, n-Scribe, Right Now, P76, StylusLit, TEXT, The Robert Graves Review, Unusual Work and Well-Known Corners: Poetry on the Move. Since 2024 he has co-judged the Ada Cambridge Poetry Prize. In 2025, his third collection of poems, What Distance Means, was published by Hybrid Publishers. In October 2025, he featured on 3CR’s Spoken Word program.

Nourishment How often I’ve wished I could fight hunger by reading books

Whenever I’ve lingered too long in bookstores, ignoring hunger pangs to stumble out half-blind, too faint to decide what to eat, could poring over Nicholas Nickleby or Les Misérables nourish with a mineral boost? Could cramming tomes that promote millionaire fast lanes yield nutriment?

I’m dreaming, would come the reply as if in studying such epic leaves they’d ripen into sustenance after I’d shut my eyes

NOURISHMENT

Early evening splinters 1

Indian pop music a soprano’s rehearsals & jazz piano echo in a courtyard with Indian & east European migrants waiting for a soup kitchen to open 2

Clear skies after rain light across lawns & bare soil our skin warmed rather than burned

Searching for shadows among elms

Clouds thieve the sun dew beneath drizzle

The River Savena’s whoosh loudens its banks turn to sludge 3

At Croara via Benassi’s disintegrating luminescent surface A descending sun ploughs through haze Distances heavier than mist

EDWARD CARUSO

Scientific priest, Dusan Mareck* Clouded eye facial continents wistful shades of green floating cheek roving brow horizon a neat white collar

Lips palely painted The one clear eye iris fully round Forehead a landmass Head and right temple an ocean where salt and sweet waters hold each other askance

Your sorrow ocean turns to desert Surf your beard Mexico drifts down your cheek

*This painting can be viewed at LINK

THE IN-BETWEEN PLACE

Elsa Korneti © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING Volume One November-December 2026 Celebrating 17th Anniversary

ELSA KORNETI Elsa Korneti was born in Munich, Germany, but grew up in Greece where she still resides. She is a Greek poet, essayist and poetry translator. Her career has been similarly diverse: studies in finance were followed by work as a journalist. She has published sixteen books of poetry, short stories, essays and translations. Two of her poetry collections and one short stories collection have been distinguished as shortlisted for the National Award. Her poetry has been translated into several languages and is also featured in various foreign anthologies and magazines. In 2026 she has been awarded in Italy the Mediterranean Prize of Poetry.

Enclaves of Numbers How I despise life’s administrators— those who polish it, slice it into pieces, organize it, categorize it, tidy it away inside their perfect boxes. It is I who speak— the prisoner, the one who silently served his sentence inside the enclaves of inhospitable numbers.

THE IN-BETWEEN PLACE

The In-Between Place Fear lives neither here nor there. It inhabits a place in between— between what already hurts you and what you fear is waiting to hurt you. Fear is the shudder of being suspended with nowhere to belong.

Confrontation On the battlefield of an age a fierce confrontation was under way. People stood face to face with their demons. And just before the reckoning, they asked them: Would you like to introduce yourselves once again? © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING Volume One November-December 2026 Celebrating 17th Anniversary

ELSA KORNETI

Who Do You Think You Are? I am a product of processed Imaginary Reality. I am what someone once imagined— or fantasized— me to be. And I learned to cultivate that fantasy until it bore fruit, until it made me blooming and free— free to live a life which, perhaps, others would call mistaken, but which, to me, is right.

The Crowd The crowd is me. The crowd is you. The crowd is all of us. Defenseless people, hostages to a sequence that still makes no sense. People simmering inside a universal pressure cooker at human temperature. © Elsa Korneti 2026 November-December POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

THE IN-BETWEEN PLACE

Trust Reason From childhood we are taught that reason separates the true from the false, the real from the imagined, the visible from the invisible, the number from the letter. This is how the obedient fall asleep. Until one day you wake. And then, finally, you understand: Reality is the enemy. And you— you are the mad one. You know.

ELSA KORNETI

Human Lights Once, we gazed in awe at the tiny heads of stars glittering in the pitch-black sky like pins piercing the darkness. Today, beneath an excess of artificial light, darkness itself has vanished. City life has become a kind of struggle against the light of the stars. Now you see them everywhere— walking to their own rhythm, often bent beneath the unbearable weight of an Excessive Reality.

HOMETOWN GLORY

Frances Browner © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING Volume One November-December 2026 Celebrating 17th Anniversary

FRANCES BROWNER Frances Browner - Poems, stories, and memoirs have been published in print, online, and broadcast on RTE. A member of Greystones Writers, Frances hosts local poetic events and has curated a Poets’ Wall and Poetry Trail. Her debut novel, A Bronx Summer (2023), won the Bloomsday Literary Award 2026 from the Irish Network Minnesota.

Hometown Glory It’s not the yachts gracing the harbour Nor the stony grey beach and boardwalk It’s the salt clinging to seaweed air That transports me right back to Montauk. It’s not the vinegar, fish ‘n chips Nor the lonesome stray boat on the strand It’s the taste of your kiss on my lips And the silence of distant mountains. I recall strolling on golden sand The Long Island sun hot on my skin You reminiscing about Dann’s The Beach House and Burnaby Inn. It’s your town now; your text lights up my phone Greystones, the longest home I’ve ever known.

COLD FRONT FROM THE EAST

Ian Watson © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING Volume One November-December 2026 Celebrating 17th Anniversary

IAN WATSON Ian Watson is originally from Belfast but lives in Bremen, Germany. He is the author of two poetry collections in English: Riverbank City (Blaupause Verlag, 2013) and Granny’s Interpreter (Salmon Poetry 2016). A third collection, Somewhere Far Away a Radio is forthcoming in 2027. His poems have been published in magazines and anthologies in Ireland, Britain, Germany and the United States, and his German-language non-fiction includes Spielfelder: eine Fußballmigration, on football and identity, and Bremen erlesen, a literary and cultural guide to his second-home city (both with Edition Falkenberg). He also publishes translations of poetry from and into German and English. He has worked regularly for radio and made the film Cool to be Celtic on Irish popular music for German and French television (arte 1999). After twenty years, he has recently retired as vice-chairman of the Literaturhaus Bremen, is a member of the British Poetry Society and active in their Germany Stanza group. His first novel, East Antrim, is complete and up for offers.

Cold Front from the East The wind has turned. The weathervane on the baker’s fat corner house accuses me, not with beak and arrow but with his big round breast and his comb, – like he’s cock-a-doodling off to my right. Herr Meyerdierks’s drapes are dancing out the open window as he banishes his cigar and closes out the neighbours with the night.

Then a frosty tap on the top of my head. And all the while a colder whirl as the next gust, that feels like straight from Poland, pokes my back. Somewhere round the corner a toddler howls. In a disapproving tone, two crows, one now atop the rooster, Quaaark! in raucous unison.

COLD FRONT FROM THE EAST

In a Hospital near Home Ward 5B Between the beds, a folded walking frame; hospital is for practising being old.

Outside on bikes and in strolling pairs, people will be moving without cancer, scars or cares.

I know the view I cannot see from my clinic close to home: the rhythm and the whine and pull of trams; the copy shop, the taxi rank, the kiosk on the corner, now all oblivious to my saline drip. I want to break out and stride barefoot on summerwarm cobbles and bare my fangs to the Amazon vans. The dappled shivering sun through the oak tree outside is an anchor, a promise for later. It moves and caresses the bed. The voices from beyond are from a beyond that is both past and future.

IAN WATSON

Discharged Just now, for the time being, I will not run across the road, like I used to, to catch oncoming trams, scatter before me dogs and prams, but hobble slowly to the stop and wait ten minutes for the next. Even without the forearm crutches, I use pedestrian crossings still, waiting with the children till the wee red man walks green.

But when they take the tape off and the scar stops aching like sciatica and my fear of stairs has been dislodged, I’ll sprint diagonally across the busy square to chase the trams away from their stops.

COLD FRONT FROM THE EAST

Exile out on the Tiles Coming home at this ungodly hour over the bridge with the wind from the sea, my only companion is the rattle, hiss and hum on the tracks and trolleys of the red night tram. It is the tram I should have taken into the cobbled streets I have come to love. The lone passenger in a red pompom hat wipes his window oblivious of me. I suddenly miss the childhood hum of the electric Co-Op milkman’s float. Uch, what a rattle that would make in the morning to wake the Bremen dead. But nostalgia is not what it used to be, so I pull up the collar of my coat.

IAN WATSON

Am Weserbogen Full-moon summer, and the whole place swims in Hollywood Night. On the river wall, rats are flirting with each other and the boathouse cat. Moths and mosquitoes dance round the lines of long trestle tables where pilsners stand and warm, unnoticed in the chat. The beer garden hums and gossips; the river breeze tempers the heat. We eat pork Bratwurst in a bun and mustard, with a corn Schnaps and a half-litre golden pils to chase.

The barges are in for the night, snoozing soft-lit on the riverside downstream. Just like at home on the Lagan Embankment, the streetlights swing out on a fairy light chain along the curve of the river, in through the city and port and out to the sea.

I know at least a dozen drinkers in the crowd; this is a corner where the tourists never come. This is where the Weser bends, five-minutes from home. This is my second river, my neighbourhood.

LIGHT A CANDLE FOR THE DEAD

Jane Downing © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING Volume One November-December 2026 Celebrating 17th Anniversary

JANE DOWNING Jane Downing’s poems have appeared at home in Australia and overseas including in Meanjin, Rabbit, Cordite, Canberra Times, Not Very Quiet, Social Alternatives, e.ratio, Last Stanza, Borderless, Best Australian Poems, and previously in Live Encounters. In 2025 she won the NSW Poetry Prize. Her collection, ‘When Figs Fly’ (Close-Up Books) was published in 2019.

Light a Candle for the Dead Air growls across the roof tiles rattles glass in the window frame the storm explodes the powerlines plunging the inside world into dark as lightning goes on jagging the sky as thunder roars its grief

Home in time thankful to miss sluicing floods across the highway at the other end lights still glowing the wake going on for as long as it takes those endless cups of tea those gentle touches on the arm

Matches from the dark cave of the pantry spark gas into a dancing ring of blue fire saucepan set to playact as jug water boiled to smothered lava bubbles surging to the surface breaking heat and steam

Torches in mobile phones are too interrogative candlelight must do a gifted christening candle tall and slender white as a priest’s surplice the flame wavers the tea bag steeps easier to snuff the wick drink in the dark

LIGHT A CANDLE FOR THE DEAD

Oncoming Storm The sky has taken on the tissue thinness of old skin, the earth holds its anger underground The cockatoos see it coming, heckle loud as footy fans on the verges

Until the wind spins the wattles and gums blurred, Impressionist versions of themselves Released they bend obeisance to the fury of lightening renting the clouds

In the end, a rainbow on the oil-slicked road in lieu of any promise above

JANE DOWNING

Effigy (Eleanor of Aquitaine) She lies in ethereal light cast through high windows stained with rubies, blues, the colour of the sun and crucifixes She reminds you to pray intercede her way through Purgatory lying there comfortable while she awaits Paradise

This Afterlife spent prone in robes, white and blue barbette swaddling chins crowned with a ring of gold cheeks scarred by time

Her head sits high on a pillow plumped and raised lips firm, fingers long clasping an open book lost in its pages for Eternity

SAINT SEBASTIAN

Kit Willett © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING Volume One November-December 2026 Celebrating 17th Anniversary

KIT WILLETT Kit Willett (he/they) is a bisexual poet, doctoral student, Third Order Franciscan, and executive editor of the Aotearoa poetry journal Tarot. His debut poetry collection, Dying of the Light, was published by Wipf and Stock imprint Resource Publications in 2022.

Saint Sebastian You could bind my hands and suspend them above my head like an eager student, and it wouldn’t be gay. You could pierce me with your arrows— or anything, for that matter— and it wouldn’t be gay. I could twist my body toward you— relax my shoulders and greet you openly, wide as the arms of a long-lost friend, outstretched as the fingers of a merchant— and it wouldn’t be gay.

I could look up before I die— long eyelashes batting with faux-innocence, God’s many names on my lips— and enter heaven when you enter me— and still, it wouldn’t be gay.

We could have fun—me, with my hands bound only at the wrist, and you, with your inexhaustible supply of arrows—

SAINT SEBASTIAN

Duet Imagine if one day out on the wild grass and under the still and scattered clouds the tūī heard your guitar and opened his throat in harmony.

Together, you would sing an ancient song, each with your own part. The whio would splash in a distant stream, and the wind would chime a wooden pipe, and the world will remember when we sang together.

KIT WILLETT

The size of the world Sometimes the world grows small and I am confined to this room with its frames on its walls. The pastel cat sleeps on the shag blanket and the plants drink thirstily. A hand, my own, opens a window and some of the incense musk dissipates. It is on these days, with the sound of distant thunder, that I feel there is a limit to my imagination. And sometimes the world grows large, and the poppies cry out to be smelled, and the cat preens to be pet, and the expanse of the sky exalts in endless, open freedom. It is on these days, when the birds sing like car alarms and chainsaws, that I miss the quiet comfort of the smaller days. Today, I feel like the world is both impossibly large and limiting: out one window, the rain has come; the other, nothing but blue. I am both art and frame— laundry and lemon tree— stasis and motion—and neither. So here I will sit and write or lie and think until I discover how to be the right size for the world.

TRAFFIC ACCIDENT

Lincoln Jaques © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING Volume One November-December 2026 Celebrating 17th Anniversary

LINCOLN JAQUES Lincoln Jaques is an Auckland based writer. His poetry, fiction, travel essays and book reviews have appeared in collections internationally, including Landfall, Live Encounters, The Spinoff Friday Poem, Tough Magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic, Book of Matches, Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook and Mayhem. He was shortlisted for the 2023 inaugural I Te Kokoru At The Bay hybrid manuscript awards, longlisted for the 2024 and 2026 Micro Madness Flash Frontiers (NFFD). He has been selected for the international 2025 Best Small Fictions anthology from Alternating Current Press (USA).

Traffic Accident Years later, you told me that you only remembered the sunset. Dropping behind Little Shoal Bay, flashing off the ketches falling over the wave crests.

Someone had broken down on the outer lane. On your 125cc Honda you never had a chance. The petrol tank ripped off your leg, caught between the rear bumper of the stationary Morris. The helmet visor sliced you in half.

But they pieced you back together. They screwed your bones into place. They found a new nose for you. Those long months of recovery. Checking off breakfast and lunch menus. Us sneaking in extra food for your voracious appetite. Eleven surgeries in all. They worried about the anaesthetic, more than the leg, the face. After a year they let you home for the weekend. My brother had saved up and bought you a silver Casio watch with an LED screen. You stared at it all afternoon. On the way back to the ward you sobbed in the car. You were too far away from home. Too much water separated us. I never did see that Honda again. I imagine it rusting away in a wrecker’s yard, bits of it gradually being pulled from it, like they did with you, until there was nothing left except a few bolts and screws and metal rods.

TRAFFIC ACCIDENT

Lost Psalm i. these pages are filled with silence ii. this is where you hooked me back from the silence

iii. every day I give some small object away, until there’s nothing left, only an empty room that once held my first memory

LINCOLN JAQUES

Qatar When we were in Doha we had an apartment within walking distance of the Museum of Islamic Arts.

And I’d walk there each day through the multitude of empty lots and the souks and the gold-sellers to see the wonder that I M Pei designed at 92 years of age. Standing on its own peninsula like a cultural hyphen.

Later in the evening, We’d stroll the curve of the Corniche, eat ice cream. We’d look across to the lights of the big hotels, wonder at the people eating there under the soft glow. We’d listen to the dhows creaking in discomfort in the harbour. Behind me the thrashing city. Before me the steady seas. Around me all the unspoken.

Everyone afraid of the sun. Everyone afraid of connections.

I learnt not to stand in one place too long otherwise you’ll never adjust to the motion.

THE POND

Ma Yongbo © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING Volume One November-December 2026 Celebrating 17th Anniversary

MA YONGBO Ma Yongbo was born in 1964, Ph.D, representative of Chinese avant-garde poetry, and a leading scholar in Anglo-American poetry. He is the founder of Difficult writing and objectified poetics. He is also the first translator to introduce British and American postmodern poetry into Chinese.He has published over eighty original works and translations since 1986 including 9 poetry collections. His complete Chinese translation of Moby Dick has sold over 600,000 copies.In August 2026, he received the American poetry award: New Generation Beat Poet Laureate (2026-lifetime) China, from The National Beat Poetry Foundation (NBPF) in the United States.

Fishing at Night Distant north, misty bay, father, with my elder brother and I settle between the willows by the river. Water flows over the roots, torch light shone on the middle of the river. I was wearing rain boots, on the slippery bank I felt the cold of the river and the power of the torrent even from inside the leather boots. Father kept me nearby and also away from the river. A heavy wide raincoat protected me from buzzing mosquitoes. The Figure of my elder brother was flickering, as he waited patiently for a small fish. I forget what my father caught knowing only that he got something, he didn’t recognise it either in the cold wind of a summer night in my hometown. Loud, bubbling, father’s shadow tall and big remains still, long behind the willows, cast upon the river’s surface by some mysterious shimmer like a broken bridge, many great stars swim in the river, I watched the trees behind him, attracted by the darkness, there was always someone coming, parting the branches. I have never caught any fish in my life Whenever I pull the fishing rod, in the dark bottom my father is wrestling with me, pulling downward, a thin thread, shaking, connecting us.

THE POND

The Pond At night the pond seems covered by an iron lid, glowing with a dark, heavy sheen. All night long I am restless and stirred, as if I see you climbing toward the bright Venus star in the sky beneath the water.

In summer, some children suddenly turn mysterious.

Grown‑ups hold me back beyond the crowd， your mother sits on the ground, hair loose, rocking back and forth, her sobs seem swallowed by the pond’s stillness. I am five this year, we play in the water together, I can only trudge home burning with indignation, staring at that swarm of people like black flies upon the dike. As if death is a kind of glory, lifting you above us, making you grave. Sometime after, we move to another county, I forget your name, I never learn how to swim. Yet whenever I come back from cutting grass in the wild and chance upon a pond, I drop my bundle, strip naked, and crawl through its water. The bottom is slippery, rich black mud, and bodies fill the water all at once.

MA YONGBO

Covered in muck, I scramble up the prickly grassy bank, the pond settles back into quiet, turning dark, deep, impenetrable. All ponds look alike, as if they connect to one another underground.

No one else around, only the ripening fields, between rows of slender wheat, small dark shadows dart quickly past. White poplars along the wheat‑field edge sough in the wind, turning up the pale undersides of their leaves.

THE POND

In the Darkness of Old Age Years In the darkness of old age years, yellowing eyes remain restless. In the slow-burning anger, a thousand shifting visions stir. Amidst those thousand visions, monotony and axis remain unchanged. Who is the innocent horse, breaking into cold sweat, treading over and over upon the smooth silk, those creases, mirrors, lace, and hanging drapery— yes, that is the word—drapery, long, curved vines, a vortex amphitheater, layer upon layer, empty of people, empty of things.

You will repeat those mistakes, persist in them, clenching your teeth in the dullness of old age years, for only those mistakes truly belong to you. Empty of people, empty of things. For what smolders in the darkness it is not just the head of the innocent, but your innocence too.

Ah, to reckon with one’s transgressions in the darkness of old age years is but a naive dullness, merely another drapery, another vortex of wigs, spinning ever faster, those yellowing eyes struggling to match the rhythm. Empty of people, empty of things. Only the spinning and spinning, listen, within the walls without thickness, that pecking sound, in the darkness of old age years.

MA YONGBO

If Not for You If not for you, I would wake upon a reef, Not knowing how I had come to sea. I would look around at the vast expanse, At the first elements of the universe, Not knowing what they were, nor what I was.

If not for you, I would sit atop a solitary suitcase, A supple wicker chest exuding ancestral fragrance. Inside it, my unseen manuscripts— Siberian snow scrawled on the backs of diagnoses, Arguing in ciphers against the Latin certainties of the front. I would wait in a wind-swept square too large to hold me, For a black train to take me to the far side of the moon— A train with no conductor. If not for you, I would not be this shape, A net cast wide, now reduced to a single knot. I would keep changing—face, age, flag, even gender. Tears of the innocent would sharpen scythes. Mothers who fed their young on rust Would give birth to more reefs, Round-skulled, and stepping upon them, They would smile as they walked toward me.

SHIPPING FORECAST

Michael Durack © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING Volume One November-December 2026 Celebrating 17th Anniversary

MICHAEL DURACK Michael Durack lives in Ballina, Co. Tipperary, Ireland. He is the author of a memoir in prose and poems, Saved to Memory: Lost to View (2016) and four poetry collections, Where It Began (2017), Flip Sides (2020), This Deluge of Words (2023) and Look In! (2026) published by Revival Press.

Shipping Forecast Not caring one whit about the general synopsis, the area forecasts or the weather reports from coastal stations. Unconcerned at the prospect of gales in Viking or Faeroes, South Utsire or Tyne. Indifferent to winds backing or veering in Bridlington, to visibility (moderate or poor) in Scilly, to pressure rising or falling at Valentia. And still the Shipping Forecast keeps me enthralled with its morning alarm, its late night lullaby, the soothing strains of Binge’s Sailing By, the names transcending meaning, those lilting trochees that laureates found irresistible (Duffy and Heaney), their Rockall, Malin, Dogger, Finisterre (or Irish Sea). I dip into that litany, lull myself to sleep with a whispered Lundy, Shannon, Fisher, German Bight, Bailey, Humber, Portland, Hebrides.

SHIPPING FORECAST

Finisterre What’s in a name when the place remains the same? Bombay has not moved though now called Mumbai. Ditto for Beijing nee Peking, Iran formerly Persia. A rose by any other name - remember Shakespeare? So what does it matter, Burma or Myanmar, Ceylon or Sri Lanka? It’s a question of reappropriation you say, so bye-bye Queenstown, say hello to Cobh; good riddance Ayers Rock, welcome Uluru; No skin off my nose if they exchange Siam for Thailand, Gold Coast for Ghana, Bechuanaland for Botswana, Madras for Chennai. But I draw the line at Finisterre, not the Galician Cabo, the Spanish land’s end nor Sylvia Plath’s Breton promontory. I mean the shipping area west of Biscay, south of Sole, the one now called FitzRoy.

Due respects to FitzRoy, Captain of The Beagle, founder of the Met Office, father of The Shipping Forecast. By all means name a sea area for him, but not Finisterre whose cadenced trisyllabic foot alone completes the Rockall, Malin, Dogger trochees of Duffy’s radio prayer.

MICHAEL DURACK

Falling Slowly (i.m. Glen Hansard)

Shipping forecast, vessels trawling pressure falling, outlook changing, trochees ranging from Viking to Forties, from Dogger to Fisher, from Humber to Dover, from Portland to Plymouth, from Biscay to Lundy, from Fastnet to Shannon, from Rockall to Malin, from Bailey to Faeroes, (Fair Isle also.) Shipping forecast spoken sadly, mourning Hansard, falling slowly.

SPARROWHAWK

Michael Farry © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING Volume One November-December 2026 Celebrating 17th Anniversary

MICHAEL FARRY Michael Farry’s latest poetry collection, his fourth, An Apology for our Survival, was published by Revival Press, Limerick in 2024. A new chapbook, Music to Paint Ceilings By, has just been published by Survision Books, Dublin. A historian as well as a poet, he has published widely on the history of the Irish war of independence and civil war in Sligo. He lives in Co Meath, Ireland.

Sparrowhawk A sparrowhawk snatched a pigeon in full daylight in an English village high street, her Monday morning wonder. We wondered how to make a poem of it. A Wordsworth spot of time, maybe, Tennyson’s tooth and claw? But seriously are predators more heedless now more brazen in their daylit deadly descents?

Maybe, but she stressed the normal, the survival instinct, the need for food the brutal natural rhythms of those world-wide self-sustaining systems. The village name, I said, we need an Edward Thomas touch, Stow on the Wold Much Wenlock, Nether Wallop, Clun, where greengrocers still count apples butchers cut steak, the shop windows promote the village scarecrow festival and visitors pause to survey what remains of the Franciscan abbey.

But as the natives greet and pass do they, uneasy, find themselves glancing skywards, mistake rooks for raptors expect death to drop at any moment?

SPARROWHAWK

Hallowe’en Hell, I need no more tricks I’ve spent a lifetime perfecting one And I need no more treats My partying dancing days have been done Give me the real or nothing at all. I don’t need skeletons My parents, two sisters, all dead and gone Nor do I need demons Locked in the attic, mine bang on and on Give me the real or nothing at all. No Superman outfit My powers are kaput, the joker has won Or a Dracula mask The doctor diagnosed hypertension Give me the real or nothing at all.

And I need no magic I’m mesmerized by my ten grandchildren I need no more witches When one cannot speak, one must keep dumb Give me the real or nothing at all.

MICHAEL FARRY

What May Memories Lush whitethorn blossoms and Queen Anne Lace blur lane and field boundaries, threaten shortcuts I remember, to beach and chapel, rendezvous and graveyard. Which remembered shortcuts?

The one between shameless whins and woodbine to the grocery shop with strawberry beds in front and large currant biscuits in tin boxes on the Formica counter. When did you walk that footpath?

Before I wandered between wild animals and angels. Before I stopped presenting legal tender in shops. Before I recognized the brief flowering of this month’s filigree. Why do these footpaths matter?

Because their hard, footfall-packed clay resists the threat of top-dressed crops and wanton weeds, land greed, and the growing ranks of fine-tuned cultivators. Who treads those footpaths now?

The ravenous who need to reach that shop in time. The restless who know help is where it always was. The reclusive who hope for peace by the whitethorn nook Where all is still, overgrown.

IN THE NEXT BEYOND

PIET NIEUWLAND Piet Nieuwland lives in Whangarei, Aotearoa New Zealand. His poems and flash fiction appear in print and online journals in Australia, USA, India, Aotearoa, Antarctica and elsewhere. His latest books, As light into water, We enter the, and Anticipation are published by Cyberwit. He is publisher/managing editor of Fast Fibres Poetry, an annual anthology from Te Tai Tokerau Northland. He participates in visual art exhibitions, live poetry performances, writes book reviews and is occasionally asked to judge poetry competitions. He once worked as a conservation strategist for Te Papa Atawhai. www.pietnieuwland.com

In the next beyond Welcome to the forest of echoes and bracelets of stars commotions of birds on blossoming wings the impeccable geometry of kauri conifer cones singing mythologies of waterways and ecstasies of Otuihau cascades the silent shimmer of dawn across the inlet the warm feminine breath of night that seeks to shape storms to calm sharing with clarity, humanity and simplicity of expression the tidal change about indigenous brilliance and life support systems blooming in the noise of the whirlwind with Gaia and Taara floating to an emerald shore on slow cloud

IN THE NEXT BEYOND

Over the estuary You are dressed in the colour of the heart I am the dampness of your winter and tend your young sunlight in rooms above the street you are night in the star of the city the cascade of a Chopin concerto spilling down the valley wings of a gull splintering the air a transparent flower ripe with grain window to the mirror of water

PIET NIEUWLAND

In essence With the accent of her bare arms time falls from the trees I walk balancing landscapes on the path of a motionless storm corroded by a desolation of blue that reveals music held in the celestial memory inclined by a sudden glow of knives and equatorial events a pale lily held in the emptiness of mirrors on the flat grey cadence of the harbour poised beneath the ecstasy of air / mist over the sea a narrow banner / the migration of souls a flex of wings

THE MERCY CORNER

Richard W. Halperin. Photo credit: Joseph Woods. © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING Volume One November-December 2026 Celebrating 17th Anniversary

RICHARD W HALPERIN Richard W. Halperin’s poetry is published by Salmon/Cliffs of Moher (five collections) and by Lapwing/Ballyhalbert (twenty smaller collections). The two most recent Lapwings, June 2026, are Silk Threads and Some Walk with Stilts. The most recent Salmon, November 2025, is All the Tattered Stars: Selected & New Poems which was reviewed this summer on the 96th episode of the Irish podcast series Books for Breakfast. His poem ‘Waiting for the Piano’ will be part of the forthcoming Montreal International Poetry Competition Anthology 2026.

The Mercy Corner A good friend in Harare. another good friend in Tokyo. Several are closer. They have their lives I have mine. Between and in there is space for mercy. They have found it as have I. Best not to know why it was needed.

I write this under an olive tree. An olive tree en plein Paris. A table and chair under it.

I think of my mother at twenty. Slim, audacious. In Chicago. In her friend Frank’s sailor trousers, her curly hair pushed way up with big combs, Belfast childhood out the window.

Ready to ride a horse in the park, to crack a joke, to make her own way, to streak the canvas with any colour at all, then painting as she pleased. continued overleaf... © Richard W Halperin 2026 November-December POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

THE MERCY CORNER

She didn’t know what would happen to her good and bad. That was also mercy. She went on that way for sixty more years, then she was stopped. So, I’ll stop.

RICHARD W HALPERIN

And Yet Araby again. I have nothing in common with the Dublin boy who takes a tram late one evening out to a tented bazaar called Araby to buy something beautiful for someone beautiful, he too young to realise that he himself, throughout, is beautiful. Older, he may, I think, realise it. I run my fingers over the pages, as I sometimes do when I am stirred. I have no idea why over the decades I return to Araby, yet I do. When I began writing poetry I said I would never call a poem ‘And yet.’ And yet . . . .

THE MERCY CORNER

New York State Birds, who own it.

Hudson River light, quite real. Train tracks indistinguishable from it. Wonderful artists and writers. Weekend markets.

A New York State woman Marsha Eger who chanted in Glenstal Abbey’s library when she thought she was alone. Washington Irving’s house.

Mountain light, which is not the same as Hudson River light. The fine particularity of things.

RICHARD W HALPERIN

Tutta Roma A Canadian couple whom I know arrived in Rome in February 2020 to find themselves in a deserted city. The new plague.

Only Roman air, the virus in it, and a few scurriers. The couple did not scurry. They stayed.

Walked everywhere. Tutta Roma.

I have taken that walk before. In ‘Byzantium.’

At night down Fifth Avenue from Washington Square to the Frick Collection, traffic lights blinking at nothing. No city, only maquettes. Cinecittà.

KNEELING

ROISÍN BROWNE Roisín Browne lives in Rush, Co Dublin and has been published in A New Ulster, The Galway Review, The Stony Thursday Book, Live Encounters Poetry & Writing, Poem Alone, New Word Order, Flare, Black Nore Review, Ragaire Literary Magazine and Mnemotope. She was commended in the Gregory O’Donoghue Awards in 2018, shortlisted in The 7th Annual Bangor Poetry Competition in 2019 and was highly commended in the Seán Dunne Inaugural Poetry Award 2024. You can find Roisín here @ismiseroisinbrowne.

Kneeling on a mahogany pew, if not cushioned, the bony wood, presses sore against the bony knee. Lean forward, you can take the pressure off.

Evening shops shuttered, a young man kneels, denimed knees hard on tarmac. Others stand, watch him on the street. He cannot take the pressure off. A concave line of motorcycle lights glow like a halo before him. He learns in this before moment, they indicate, not succour but sacrifice.

THE EDGE

SALLY BREEN Associate Professor in Creative Writing at Griffith University and Executive Director of Asia Pacific Writers and Translators (APWT) Sally Breen is the author of grunge memoir The Casuals and the neo-noir novel Atomic City. Her short form work has been published widely www.sallybreen.com.au

The Edge ‘I need to get some hobbies I’ve just been so tired.’ (woman walking in New York with her friends)

I still can’t really see my old friend as a woman, and this is my fault. She’s gone body digital and I’m still analogue. Video tape curling too tight against the unravelling she’s already done. She says you never really realise how weird you’ve become until you contemplate living somewhere other than New York. And I get that. But in the post pandemic world New York doesn’t seem all that progressive or weird, New York just smells of money. Too old school, too steel blue stacked in the winter light, narrow strip of Manhattan, overburdened by promise. Pale brown gouge of Hudson rolling on, not making any sounds. The High Line dotted with signs to explain why nothing is growing and why they don’t cut back the dead bits in winter or clean the leaf litter to make things pretty because creatures make homes in the dead bits, they say, things are regenerating, in the flat dry, in the spindly grey, but I can’t see much of anything living so I keep on walking, on the miles, locals talking too loud, tourists going too slow, feeling underwhelmed, gawking into apartments not covered by reflective or tinted glass, looking for something, an animal, a human scratching around. Far away between the slits in the brown bricks I see a rainbow portrait of Andy Warhol and Frida Kahlo and it makes up for the flowers that aren’t growing, and I try not to think too much about the people in the apartments who tint their windows so they can look at us but we can’t look at them, and the ones who don’t tint seem even stranger. I guess everything is worth a lot. I go all the way to the end.

THE EDGE

I go a hundred floors up, to the Edge, the tallest building in New York, the bigness cancelling everything out and I lay down like everyone else on the squares of glass and take a selfie, the city underneath me and I’m scared the glass is gonna give way and I’ll fall into the pointy eyed buildings. I don’t look good in the picture. I look terrified. But the glass holds, and nothing happens, and I feel empty because they’ve turned the falling man into an Instagram story, strangers grinning, trying hard not to make the connection but making it anyway, thinking about how long the fall would have taken. I don’t buy anything. Monogrammed socks, cups, t-shirts. In the elevator they simulate us flying through the city, as if we’re Transformers or Spider Men in a way that’s cool and better than The Edge but also kitsch so the Japanese couple and the family from New Jersey and I laugh. And all anyone wants to do is get out. In New York I keep dreaming of the sea. Big island home in the Pacific, not far from smaller islands where the water is rising too fast where a mother might dress a boy as a girl. Not as a transgression but as a choice. Concrete not the only thing that provides us with permission. Stuck in the hotel, in the steel currency without a current I go to a cement island, a fairy tale of man-made tulips, huge and forlorn. I go up and around the neat paths, the manicured gardens, the bad sculptures, past Mexican men being paid to mulch, to make the dead bits grow, in the flat dry, in the spindly grey. And I can hear birds calling on the docks, but I can’t see them.

I watch Tides on the plane, burning a fossil fuel trail and in the film the earth is watery and not the iridescent ocean I know, the ocean is flat and tepid and soaking grey and when the tides rise twice a day there’s nothing left to do but float.

SALLY BREEN

When I land, the dark mass of cloud doesn’t read like a warning, even when the English tourists start groaning or when I’m in the carpark and fail to register the wall of sound coming at me is lots of water. I don’t realise how much water there is until I try to drive in the blackness down the late-night highway, my car lifting and aquaplaning, and every other streetlight is down and floating away and I know I’m back on the plane, I am in Tides where very few of us survive, and this is no longer about the good times.

ABANDONMENT

SIOBHAN HARVEY Siobhan Harvey is the author of nine books, including the memoir, What We Remember, What We Forget (2026) and Ghosts (OUP, 2021). She was awarded 2025 Memoir Prize for Books (US) – Category winner, 2023 Landfall Essay Prize (NZ) 2019 Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems and 2019 Robert Burns Poetry Prize, as well as being highly commended in 2024 Bridport Memoir Award (UK). Currently she is shortlisted for the international 2026 Heroine Women’s Writing Prize (Poetry).

Abandonment A door closes on your return. Child no more; but stranger. Not what your parents wanted, but what they had to do, for the neighbours are watching as well as their suggestible kids. An audience to witness this rejection is needed so your lonely parents can hold their heads high, look their neighbours in the eye; no shame. Yes, an audience to witness this rejection is needed to remind the children what will happen to them if they come out to their parents. It’s community: family values; morality; tradition. The same path as led you here, awaits your exodus. Case closed at your feet; what does it hold, but an emptiness. It’s set, like you, before a house no longer home. You can carry it with you, unpack it elsewhere, but where does it leave you? The things it holds are as ephemeral as the darkness enfolding you, the cold winter night closing its curtains to you who’s dressed lightly now a revelation is made. So abandon it at the door, like a festive wreath hanging there; yes, abandon all. Tear the ghost streets of the town from your body as you rip towards the last train, last thing out of there, until nothing else remains but this: a shadow cast by your skin; closer than anyone, anything, the memory of this abandonment, your new kin.

IMPACT

SUSANA H CASE Susana H Case is the author of nine books of poetry, most recently, If This Isn’t Love (Broadstone Books, 2023). She is co-editor with Margo Taft Stever of I Wanna Be Loved by You: Poems on Marilyn Monroe (Milk & Cake Press, 2022), Honorable Mention for the Eric Hoffer Book Award, and with Margo Taft Stever and Sandra Yannone of Unsinkable: Poetry Inspired by the Titanic (Salmon Poetry, 2026). The Scottish Café (Slapering Hol Press, 2002) was re-released in English/Polish as Kawiarnia Szkocka (Opole University Press, 2010) and in English/Ukrainian as Шотландська Кав’ярня (Slapering Hol Press, 2024). Her tenth book of poetry, Matinée Girls, is forthcoming in 2026. https://susanahcase.com

Impact I was walking on 57th Street, on my way to a book party, distracted by an upcoming vacation, when a woman I hadn’t seen acting strangely swung at me with what looked like a metal-beaded cat o’ nine tails. She scratched my glasses, but only bruised my face, then faded away without a word into the crowd. No one on the street stopped to see if I was okay. I wiped the tears from my eyes and continued to the venue. I was subdued—it wasn’t my party. People seemed to be enjoying themselves. Maybe I ate a few more pretty pastries than I otherwise would have. I didn’t notify the cops. I’ve never found them helpful. Friends told me later I should have, and I hope that doesn’t make me responsible for whatever that angry lady did next. Even now, she might be wandering around midtown with bizarre weapons. I’m still curious how she got that way. But one of us lives in the universe of cause and effect, and one of us doesn’t.

IMPACT

“If I Am not Grotesque, I Am Nothing” —Aubrey Beardsley

Mary Ann Bevan (1874—1933) was a London woman afflicted with acromegaly, too much growth hormone in the pituitary glands. Mary Ann enters and wins a Homeliest Woman contest, joins a traveling fair in England, ends up at Coney Island’s Dreamland with Zip the Pinhead, his tapered cranium, and Lionel the Lion-Faced Man, covered almost completely in eight-inch hair. At fairgrounds, sells picture postcards of herself to pay for her four children’s education. Ringling Bros., Barnum and Bailey hire her— want an ugly woman to display, but nothing repulsive, maimed, or disfigured. She smiles at visitors who gawk at her size twenty-five hands, size forty-four shoes. Within two New York years, she reaps more than one and a half million in today’s dollars, finds romance with a giraffe keeper performing at Madison Square Garden named Andrew.

SUSANA H CASE

Vanitas After Into the World There Came a Soul Called Ida by Ivan Albright, 1930

When you model at nineteen—wife, mother— he revises you into bulbous, sagging flesh. Seated cross-legged in the painting, dressed in funereal frill, your powdered décolletage—to no avail. Trucco isn’t good enough for trickery, the treachery of age has nullified makeup. How you appear is what will happen, this soon-to-be mulch. The tomorrow of death is what appeals to me, the artist wrote. Oh silk, oh slip, oh money on the furniture—did he imply you were a slut?—oh high heels, cut flowers in a vase, your days, too, are done. Rug and table tilt precariously. Ida Rogers—this is how the painter renders you, when you laugh at his words, his ode to your perfection. Your flesh is the color of a corpse. Are you pointing toward heaven, Ida?

2010 - 2026 - 17th A n n i v e r s a r y

P O E T R Y & W R I T I N G Free Online Magazine From Village Earth Volume One November-December 2026

Cover photograph by Joanna Longster McDonagh © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING Volume One November-December 2026 Celebrating 17th Anniversary