STUART A. BARNES was born and raised in Hobart, Tasmania, educated at Monash University, Victoria, and lives in Rockhampton, Queensland. His first poetry collection, Glasshouses (UQP 2016), won the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Prize, was commended for the FAW Anne Elder Award, and was shortlisted for the ASAL Mary Gilmore Award. Stuart’s the outgoing poetry editor for Tincture Journal. stuartabarnes.wordpress.com / @StuartABarnes. 

RYAN VANCE is a writer and editor based in Glasgow, with work published in New Writing Scotland, Gutter Magazine, and The Dark Mountain. Between 2010 and 2016 he created and edited The Queen’s Head, a speculative fiction magazine, has also edited fiction for www.theislandreview.com, and currently edits reviews for www.guttermag.co.uk. In 2017 he created Queer Words Project Scotland, a mentoring scheme for Scottish writers where queerness isn’t a hurdle to clear, but the qualifying factor. www.ryanvance.co.uk / @rjjvance

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‘Glasshouses’ Redux

I thought I’d exhausted the metaphor —
Pop’s, his firstborn male’s, mine — I sweat it
opposite my father, his second wife,
their golden boy (a miniature schnauzer)

in a room of lucidities — roof, walls, one fly-screened,
sliding window that never admits Tas-
mania’s blasts — tacked onto this hot house’s heart;
cold linoleum — Explorer-socked feet reel.

My father bores a cryptic cross-
word, his second wife Danielle Steel, their
svelte toy farts — I, face nightshade-green,
taste childhood’s blood and bone.

Only impatiens thrive in such glassy
space; not even the morning star can melt this ceiling.

 

 

namesakes

while my mother pleaded ‘hear
twood’

across Kuala Lumpur,
you

at the depression’s mar
gin,

white lashes spir
alled

in their thousands over Air
lie

Beach, uprooting sulphur
crest

ed cockatoos’ powder
y

dos          on the inter
net

oodles of don’ts       the night before, a throng of thunder
bolts:

ghost notes the mor
ning

Debbie made land
fall

                                                                 Stuart A. Barnes

 

Status, Translated¹

failed to receive
a visa for fugitive
tried to go to music education

the refugee boat sank

peace
along with seven other people
was found
wrapped in the violin

 

Found – Thirst

 

Found – Second

                                                                                                                                                                                        Ryan Vance

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[1] https://twitter.com/ferhatttunc/status/857142645432492032
translated from Turkish to English by Bing
26 April 2017

All works published by the Glasgow Review of Books are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License and the journal reserves the right to be named as place of first publication in any citation. Copyright remains with the poet. http://www.glasgowreviewofbooks.com

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