30 Friday Sep 2016
Posted in poetry, Web Journal
Tags
Bethany W Pope, Daniel Roy Connelly, David J. Costello, Enodia Black, fairy tales, folklore, Jane Frank, Jude Roy, Larry D. Thacker, Lesley Burt, Louise Larchbourne, Mary Percy-Burns, mythology, poetry, prose poetry
Welcome to Issue Four of Three Drops from a Cauldron!
Featuring new writing from Larry D. Thacker, Louise Larchbourne, Jude Roy, Jane Frank, Daniel Roy Connelly, Lesley Burt, Mary Percy-Burns, Enodia Black, David J. Costello, and Bethany W Pope. Continue reading
20 Friday Nov 2015
Selkie
He used to stand by the quayside
watching the water peel shadows,
his dull pelt dappling the surface.
He wondered where it went,
why the dawn returned it.
He thought himself cursed.
A liquid Prometheus
flayed and made whole.
Flayed and made whole.
He felt the tide move in him,
the moon play with his watery core,
his skin ease from his meat
to shrivel where he stood
so he could fillet water like a knife.
David J. Costello lives in Wallasey, Merseyside, England. He is a member of Chester Poets. David has been widely published on-line and in print including Prole, The Penny Dreadful, Shooter, Magma and Envoi. David is a previous winner of the Welsh International Poetry Competition and received a special commendation in the year’s competition. His debut pamphlet, Human Engineering, was published by Thynks Publishing in October 2013. A second pamphlet will appear in September 2016 from Red Squirrel Press.
25 Saturday Jul 2015
Hansel & Gretel
The vast emptiness
of the unrecorded forest
slowly fills their eyes.
Lost feet unpick
densely threaded paths
re-weaving the strands
into familiar bewilderment.
Somewhere at its core
is a cottage made of cake
and a wicked woman
made of salt.
She is older than
the trees and the lost ways.
She persists like
forgotten fungus.
We have all seen
this cottage and
tasted its cake.
It grows children
into adults and
feeds their fears.
This place is thick
with the lies of parents.
We all rot from
our childhood out.
And witches do exist.
And they do eat children.
But only after they’ve
grown up.
*This poem first appeared in the author’s own collection Human Engineering (Thynks Publishing Ltd, 2013).
David J. Costello lives in Wallasey, Merseyside, England. He is a member of Chester Poets. David has been widely published on-line and in print including Prole, The Penny Dreadful, Shooter, Magma and Envoi. David is a previous winner of the Welsh International Poetry Competition. His debut pamphlet, “Human Engineering”, was published by Thynks Publishing in October 2013. A second pamphlet will appear in September 2016 from Red Squirrel Press.
10 Friday Apr 2015
Canrig Bwt
It was raining when I started out.
A thousand years of weathered pebbles
glazing into stars beneath my luminescent feet
that friction polished to a backward slip.
If I came down the other way
the path would hurry me along.
But not towards the bridge.
Towards the witch.
It took a while to get the sword just right.
Balance its weight.
Compensate.
A full-grown man could wear it on his belt,
but every step I took it shocked an iron anthem from the rock,
and sent the struck path bolting for the overhang.
I’d waited for the new moon.
Thought I’d chosen well.
Sheathed myself in its dull dissolve.
Half-drawn. Fist-tight.
Nothing living passed that way.
Just her.
No birds above.
No sheep grazing sparse grass.
Only a tremulous stream busy with burial.
A slew of small bones littered the path.
A gatepost cupped the crown of a child’s skull
like a begging bowl,
a long gold lock, limp with damp,
tugging its sinewy hinge.
The unused bridge stood square.
The altar stone beyond,
the cromlech, angular and clear
against the moon-sick mountains.
I braced myself across its span
and spoke her name.
*Canrig Bwt was a Welsh Witch said to have lived in the pass above Llanberis. The bridge and Cromlech referred to are there to this day. There are many versions, this poem references the young farm boy out to avenge his sister’s demise.
David J. Costello lives in Wallasey, Merseyside. He is a member of Chester Poets. David has been widely published on-line and in print including Prole, The Lake, Magma and Envoi. David is a previous winner of the Welsh International Poetry Competition. His debut pamphlet, Human Engineering, was published by Thynks Publishing in October 2013. A second pamphlet will appear in September 2016 from Red Squirrel Press.
