Darting swallows are silhouetted
Against the sky.
The lights in the library are on –
You are working late.
Step outside into the cool air
And remember who you are.
Afterglow
John Bevan
After light, comes the dark
when flowers fade, foxes bark
children cry, mothers scold.
Am I alone in growing old?
After dark, comes the light
a faded kind, yet so bright;
one that shows me where to go
though where that is, I cannot know.
Some Times a Black Cloud
Nigel Hutchinson
some times a black cloud
some times only ghost of dancers
brushstrokes across a sky, inky scribble
sometimes a black cloud
sometimes only ghost of dancers
brushstrokes across a sky, inky scribble
peppered graffiti in lowering light
hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands
wheeling switchback riders
peppered graffiti in lowering light
hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands
wheeling switchback riders
always one the last to roost
imagine the panic in its heart
Dhusarah
Elizabeth Parker
I
Dusk
is a word
complex as crystal. Tilt it,
find its myriads;
a word
re-worked, re-moulded
but always cool, always smooth;
a word that reached us
through dim passages;
a word
seeded in the mouths of Saxons;
a word
we study under our lamps, our hot bulbs
but only a half-light
reaches fuscus, dox, doxian1;
a word
grown far from its seeds:
duske, duska2;
a word bereaved;
a word we have stilled,
forgetting its verbs:
dosk3, dusken, dusked, dusking.
Dusk
is a Saxon fort
cupping dark air.
Dusk
is a sound, an echo.
Husk. Musk. Dhusarah4. Dust.
Motes, shoals –
see it fall, see it settle –
everything dim
under soft pelts.
Dusk
is stories
read by antique light –
the amber and honey
of whale oil lamps, candles –
stories told as the world gutters,
leaping into the mind,
snuffed.
Dusk
wasn’t always blue.
Dusk
was dosan, tusin5.
II
Dusk
is not to be confused
with twilight.
Dusk is scientific,
categorised:
civil, nautical, astronomical.
Dusk
changes its name
as the sun moves below the horizon.
6°
Civil dusk
Enough light to read by,
the day’s page still reaching the eye.
A borderline for measuring crime:
years more prison time
if the line is crossed
into burglary by night.
12°
Nautical dusk
words join the dark,
ink subsumed into ink;
the quiet creak
as we close the day.
Sailors lose the horizon,
down their sextants.
Military initialism: EENT6:
End Evening Nautical Twilight.
Even here, in a word
that is barely more than a breath,
there is war – soldiers standing-to
since India and France learnt to hide
whole armies in the half-light.
18°
Astronomical dusk
Astrologers’ eyes
join up the stars,
draw human shapes on the night.
Our metaphors close the distance:
scattered salt,
the sky mined for diamonds
galaxies, nebulae,
the faintest stars;
the diffuse allowed to shine.
1 Fuscus: Latin: dark. Dox: Old English: dark-haired/dark/swarthy.
Doxian: Old English: to darken in colour.
2 Duska: Swedish: be misty.
3 Dosk: Middle English: obscure/ to become dark.
4 Dhusarah: Sanskrit: dust-coloured.
5 Dosan: Old Saxon: chestnut-brown Tusin: Old High German: pale yellow.
6 EENT is treated with heightened security and this is partly due to the French and Indian war, part of the Seven Years War, when France and India would launch attacks at nautical dusk or dawn.
A Female Blackbird Sings
Ness Owen
Ym Mrig y Nos1
Your song isn’t
as loud as his
born knowing you’ll
have to try harder
still you sing not
just with throat but
wings and tail forcing
out your voice like
you’re drowning in
the chorus till you
find the one note
to stop them still.
At dusk the order
of chorus reverses
last becomes first
power lies in the
un-expected
they don’t recognise
you but at last you
have their ear.
1 Welsh: At Dusk (literally the edge of the night)
Driving to Blackpool to Visit my Sister
Jeremy Dixon
I’m thinking of overtaking a hearse
on the A49, five miles outside
Church Stretton, one Thursday
mid-December. A twist of us
at dusk, all cornering far too
fast, impatient for a straightness.
I resolve not to swear again.
Tall headlights rise from a dip
in the carriageway opposite.
I’m guessing it’s a tractor, towing
something big, going slow. God.
How long do I have to accelerate?
Magic Hour
Nicholas McGaughey
Blacks crowd the wings,
Blow smoke screens for a magic hour.
Dawn reversed, majesties the
Commonplace:
Sheds, clothes-lines
The monolithic BBQ,
The plastic chairs and tables
Of a workingman’s kingdom,
Transformed to a set in the silver-light:
Die Fledermaus? or an opera king
In his court of stars in the orchestra of
Hills with the moon as jester.
Dusk takes its curtain call
With all the golden chorus bowed and left.
House lights blind us back
From the music of the spheres,
From that momentary dream of twilight,
To night-thoughts, and another king
Next-door, singing
On his china throne.
You Were Always on my Mind.
Bass and baritone.
The Sea’s Wedding
Carl Griffin
A wedding, or other forms of happiness,
is what happens when you stop obsess-
ing with the life’s gems you’re not meant
photographers are brought in to remind you
forever of your decision, resolve. Of you.
I’ve never mar
ried. Never been decisive.
This photographer, big, bald, obtrusive,
is overweight and overbearing. Larger than
the wedding. He doesn’t snap a man
or woman or Oxwich bay. He photographs suspects.
It’s strange to dress smartly, without specks
of blood-like sauce. Stranger still to toast
your sister. When tonight, Storm Aileen is forecast.
It’s sunny enough, though, for photos
as we gather by the fountain and the surly
photographer leans out of the hotel window
telling us where to stand. The shot will be
of fifty people looking up at the sun
with their hand over their eyes, wishing
the photographer would be swung
out of the window. I don’t mind admitting
I spend half the wedding avoiding my dad
but a wedding without our heavenly father
seems ironic. I miss being driven mad
by too many hymns, a sermon, an amateur
organist. The couple should brace themselves
for what tonight’s storm shakes off the shelves.
I scan the wedding party for possibles.
A bearded teenager in a pink suit
has dressed to stand out in the storm.
Men in pink put me off. The rascal
of my dreams could grind or worm
in this pink get-up and give a cute
come-on and I’d only see contrivance.
But no wedding bells sound or confetti
fall where I tend to walk. A dalliance
should not last as long as the melting
of an ice cube just out of the freezer.
Commitment’s an endeavour I’ve dealt in
only in daydreams. This pink soliloquy,
I’d have his gall in place of my failures.
If you can see a storm then that’s all
you can see, pausing the drink to stare
through a marquee window. Out there,
somewhere, is a sea. In the dancehall
I sink into a void like the one staring back.
Where there’s only dancing. Flying debris.
Where nothing lands. Later, just us three
singletons are dancing, if you can call it that,
as if the others have sensed for a minute
that in the raging storm something tangible
occurs nearby, a scene which would be visible
on clear nights. But contemplation has its limit
and by the next song everyone’s back up
on their feet. Commitment might be enough.
At closing, a few of us dare to walk
onto the beach, stumbling in the wind
which sometimes whips up the sand
but is mostly easing up. A tree has fallen
near the Nature Reserve and is blocking
the road. The roads around here don’t fork
for miles. We find a trunk on the beach,
a human one, whaled up it looks like,
unmoving, bearing a hangover he won’t wake
up to. It’s the photographer, soaking
in the tide not long out, his belly poking
above the fading waves. To reach
a dead man takes longer than you’d think.
Marriages walk on water. Or marriages sink.
Sundown Breath
Gabrielle Choo
The earth casts her nets wide
H O L D T I G H T
She grips each edge of atmosphere
And surely she begins to breathe in
Sucking back the thin skin of sun
That skims across the cities horizon
She unravels each element of the day
Dissolving chatter down swelling windpipes
Melting Monday moments into stories of since
Laying doings and dones to rest in pockets of lungs
She lets go
Sighs out slow
Golden lined pigeons
Pink skies of promise
Lullabies of dinner times
A glimpse of coming home
Arrival
Bridie Toft
An air of quiet in the calm and layered grey,
dogs are straining for the beach.
From the marsh, St. Michael’s floats on high tide,
no lights twinkle and the castle waits
modestly.
The marsh is an empty stage of fading sky.
Here they come –
the first small dots above the reeds.
And they come. And they come. And they come.
Squadrons cluster the telegraph lines until
full, they spill back into the sky.
A feathered blizzard morphs,
funnels and arcs in avian ectoplasm,
dips deep into the marsh, absorbed
by browns and shadows.
The bait ball spooks and opens,
a sky-wide wall of birds,
a silvered display in
and out of black.
The wall coils,
a vast centrifuge of beak and wing,
the base peels away, drops down
and the centrifuge unravels.
A circus of sky dives into a sea of reeds.
And it’s over.
I am Dusk
Alannah Egan
Temporary incompletion,
I find myself caught.
I am the in-between, suspended in time.
Neither here, nor there; I just am.
A blending of colours,
I attempt to merge.
I am lost in transition,
striving
to become a whole, a definite.
I clasp tightly to the hands of day.
The light peels itself away from me, finger by finger.
I lose all grasp.
Sinking,
Falling,
Tenderly caught by night.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
With so many authors involved, including biographical notes here would tip the book into another section of sixteen pages. You can find details of all our authors and poets on our website:
www.arachnepress.com.
ABOUT ARACHNE PRESS
Arachne Press is a micro publisher of (award-winning!) short story and poetry anthologies and collections, novels including a Carnegie Medal nominated young adult novel, and a photographic portrait collection. We are very grateful to Arts Council England for financial support for this book, and to Feast, Cornwall Council, Nottingham City Council, Greenwich Council and all the venues and organisers who supported us with financial and in kind assistance with this year’s Solstice Shorts Festival Dusk events.
We are expanding our range all the time, but the short form is our first love. We keep fiction and poetry live, through readings, festivals, our regular event The Story Sessions, workshops, exhibitions and all things to do with writing.
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BOOKS
All our books (except Poetry) are also available as e-books.
Short Stories
London Lies
ISBN: 978-1-909208-00-1
Our first Liars’ League showcase, featuring unlikely tales set in London.
Stations: Short Stories Inspired by the Overground line
ISBN: 978-1-909208-01-8
A story for every station from New Cross, Crystal Palace, and West Croydon at the Southern extremes of the East London branch of the Overground line, all the way to Highbury & Islington.
Lovers’ Lies
ISBN: 978-1-909208-02-5
Our second collaboration with Liars’ League, bringing the freshness
, wit, imagination and passion of their authors to stories of love.
Weird Lies
ISBN: 978-1-909208-10-0
WINNER of the Saboteur2014 Best Anthology Award: our third Liars’ League collaboration – more than twenty stories varying in style from tales not out of place in One Thousand and One Nights to the completely bemusing.
Solstice Shorts: Sixteen Stories about Time
ISBN: 978-1-909208-23-0
Winning stories from the first Solstice Shorts Festival competition together with a story from each of the competition judges.
Mosaic of Air by Cherry Potts
ISBN: 978-1-909208-03-2
Sixteen short stories from a lesbian perspective.
Liberty Tales, Stories & Poems inspired by Magna Carta
ISBN: 978-1-909208-31-5
Because freedom is never out of fashion.
Happy Ending NOT Guaranteed by Liam Hogan
ISBN: 978-1-909208-36-0
Deliciously twisted fantasy stories.
Shortest Day, Longest Night
ISBN: 978-1-909208-28-5
Stories and poems from the Solstice Shorts Festival 2015 and 2016.
Poetry
The Other Side of Sleep: Narrative Poems
ISBN: 978-1-909208-18-6
Long, narrative poems by contemporary voices, including Inua Elams, Brian Johnstone, and Kate Foley, whose title poem for the anthology was the winner of the 2014 Second Light Long Poem competition.
The Don’t Touch Garden by Kate Foley
ISBN: 978-1-909208-19-3
A complex autobiographical collection of poems of adoption and identity, from award-winning poet Kate Foley.
With Paper for Feet by Jennifer A. McGowan
ISBN: 978-1-909208-35-3
Narrative poems based in myth and folk stories from around the world.
Foraging by Joy Howard
ISBN: 978-1-909208-39-1
Poems of nature, human nature and loss.
Novels
Devilskein & Dearlove by Alex Smith
ISBN: 978-1-909208-15-5
NOMINATED FOR THE 2015 CILIP CARNEGIE MEDAL.
A young adult novel set in South Africa. Young Erin Dearlove has lost everything, and is living in a run-down apartment block in Cape Town. Then she has tea with Mr Devilskein, the demon who lives on the top floor, and opens a door into another world.
The Dowry Blade by Cherry Potts
ISBN: 979-1-909208-20-9
When nomad Brede finds a wounded mercenary and the Dowry Blade, she is set on a journey of revenge, love, and loss.