The Boar Magazine: Creative Submissions

A selection of poetry, prose, photographs and artwork submitted as part of The Boar Magazine.

 

Ma, Archi Adhikari

I am writing a poem that you’ll never read
That you never can read
Your eyes will skip over these words
The uncomfortable contours of a second language
Like stumbling legs on a rocky terrain

Ma, I love you even though I’m not sure I like you all the time I love you even though I’m not sure if I’m like you People say they see it in our eyes, the resemblance In our mouths – you see it one moment, and then it’s gone When my lips utter some filthy swear word
One you could never fathom

Ma, I put on this skirt the other day, ending six inches
Above my knees
What would you say if you saw me in this?
Would you be ashamed? Would I be an oshobhho meye
A shameless girl? The kind you averted your eyes from
On the street, when we walked together?

Ma, when we walked together, you held my hand in yours
Clasping it tight when we crossed the street without a signal
I followed you blindly then
Now, on our diverted paths, going opposite ways
I cross the street when I’m not supposed to
And I think of you.

 

Simple Collage, Jack Thompson

 

Playing Cards, Katie Bevan

Sitting in the kitchen
Playing cards, Kings and Queens with their
Coronas
Caught in a rapid fire round.
“Are you still with your boyfriend?”
“Did you finish your essay?”
“Hey, it’s your turn!”
“For graduation, I’m thinking…”

You’ve been holding all the aces
On the dawn of a new round
Cards are dealt, the path set
And you think back to the faces
Of jokers, smiling
In that sticky kitchen
Where you were just playing cards.

 

The View from The Uffizi, Florence, Angus Harker

 

Pomegranate, Emma Kurr

By the marble I stood:
The pomegranate, pink
And mottled. Rinsed, then
Dropped, wet heifer in my hands

I unpicked its plush corset
With the fruit knife
And it fell open in relief

With a midwife’s care
I tugged free the clusters of red
With the firm brush of a thumb
In clusters I released its spawn
My fingers reached to trace the
Plectrum of its heart

Life dribbled down my
Arms as I held the gems in
Cupped hands, their breaths of red

I am my mother
By the sink
Dexterous and never wrong
Same as her mother before her
Her banana leaf hands
Mine were too small, then.

But now the culled pomegranate
Sits in contentment, free from its
Baby burdens. My hands are
Steady and do not shake, propped
Up by this inherited power.

 

An Isolated Boat, Zainab Mavani

 

Ophelia, Estella Yip

Bury me in the earth, let the
Ground fall over me.
Swallow me and my wallowing,
Sink beneath the surface
Of my aching.

Rosemary, for remembrance –
I’ll haunt you
As I slip under,
Mouth open and palms facing God
He doesn’t hear me now.

In life; you silenced me,
In death; you reject me –
Whilst my tears are forgotten
Under the river’s relentless tide

You muffled my woes
You moved me as a pawn
In your pitiful games – and so,

I drown at the hands of those
Who I loved.

 

 

Watercolour Study of Winterhalter’s ‘Portrait of Countess Elizabeth Esperovna Trubetskaya’, Lily Wilson

 

Finding the Horizon, Naoise McDevitt

Somewhere in the big smoke, there’s humming in a warehouse. The Skies are grey. The streets are moving. It is 2005. Sleek carriages sneak into a woodshed. In this transport, are givers and takers. Lifting open the shutter, there stands a priest and a minister in the corner. They’re on watch duty. Sliver and sparks. Pistols, semi automatic, machine guns, all these are being sealed into concrete. Making a strange sort of time capsule. The men doing this operation wonder if they can break this stone. Break into another chance. The old firm. T old score. All put dormant like body in a bog. Some are happy to see them go but don’t like having to do the burial. There grunting beneath their breath, yet sigh and shrug, and continue with the job. This is an order from up high, from the chairman of the board, and no one wants break ranks now. Berettas are being sharpened into spears. Armalites are being bended into swords. Smoking guns swallowed into marble. Relics not for a museum. They have to be brushed away. Dust that can be thrown into the wind and vanish into the air. Yet the priest notices the man with the Kalashnikov. The minister looks puzzled and they murmur for a second. But they know who he is. They know why he’s there. See he’s got the last one. And before you know it, it’s only that Russian rifle left. The man steps forward.  eloquent, simple movement is performed. The barrel falls. Empty hands that tremble with a congested conscience.

So there he hovers around it. A concrete pour. Inside stirring and outside squinting. Looking for an horizon, that he cannot find. After the dawn, comes an empty journey into nigh.

 

A Picture on a Walk, Joshua Thomas-North