Issue 30

£4.00

Dream Catcher 30’s striking cover, a reproduction of Home Wrecked by Geordie, is one of a number of images featured in this issue by artists who have experienced homelessness. These pictures were created in response to an Arts Council England funded Out of the Box project which offered the artists a range of art skills from traditional to digitally innovative. Dream Catcher is pleased to further support the artists and the project by including samples of their distinctive and challenging work.

In selecting this issue’s poetry and prose the editorial team was again spoilt for choice.  The short stories range from the surreal world of Eve Kalyvas The Tail to the all too real drama of Joseph Desmond’s Ragdoll and the descent into horror of Graham High’s Swarm Sunday.

And then there are the poems… Superb pieces by established poets, exciting contributions from newcomers, a modern translation of an 18th/19th century German piece in parallel text, love, death, rage.  Our contributors come from all over the UK, from Europe and the Americas, all of them united in a love of language and of what words, in skilled hands, can reveal.

Category:
The Cold Place

Go
Put the water
In the cold place
At the bottom of the pantry
For half hour
Crush whole ice cubes
In a copper pan
The stainless steel fork
Your tool
Pile the chips
Cold deck on cold deck
In a clean glass
And fill it to the brim
Try not to think
About all the bad things

Ashleigh R. Davies

The Portrait

I wanted him to be ancient, a silhouette in winter,
a cornfield under snow, a scarecrow.

I wanted to unsew his crooked smile,
to rub away the jagged edges. My fingers

stuck in the pigment. Barbwire and thistle
caught in my clothes. His element

was the wind. His eyes were wind-worn
from looking, looking.

The pupils had faded away.
How to bring him together,

me in his shadow listening to the wind,
to him, to his cuffs and sleeves…dancing.

Scott Elder

My Beauty

I began to see my own beauty
Because of you
Because you didn’t
I began to see me
My glowing skin
My wide brown eyes
My luscious lips
And my strong extravagant smile
For the first time
I truly saw myself
My magnificence
My gift to the world
I saw me and I marvelled
My strong thighs and bountiful bottom
My wonderful rounded bosoms
I admired my hair and was amazed at my stomach
Sometimes flat, sometimes more rounded
But always me
Loving me
Working for me
My beauty, my style,
All me, all unique
And I would never have seen it, if it was not for you
I eat better because of you
Not for you
Not to be thin for you
But I learned to love myself
I watched you looking after yourself
Eating right, cleaning right
Smelling right
This is what I thought
I need to look after myself too
Not over eating
Not eating junk
Not abusing my body
Not going without
Not starving to please someone,
But, eating and drinking right as a way to nourish my body
To nourish oneself through food is one of an act of worship
No longer punishing myself
But seeing my beauty
Sometimes I have thought; that I saved you
But the truth is you saved me

Sky Martin