Last Root
Photography by Siobhan Maher
“Take a breath. Overlooking Lambay Island stood the last tree on Portrane beach, Dublin. Now a distant memory as sea erosion has stolen the land.”
Siobhan Maher chooses to use a Canon Powershot or R8 camera to capture nature and bring a different understanding to prose and poetry.
www.siobhanauthor.com
www.siobhanauthor.com
Knotweed
Poetry by Dawn Rhodes-Shaw
CW: Mental Health
sometimes you can’t breathe
when you feel the sadness
rumbling down decades
groaning on roadsides
slithering along rivers and streams
tangling leaves in a funeral bouquet
furnacing beneath a flushing face
unravelling a lemon bootie
squeezing your lungs
seeing playgrounds of parents
gaga over swinging toddlers
running roundabouts
cream-coloured boots splashing in puddles
cafés pram-packed with gurgling babies
knowing you relinquished the race
to your second childhood
the wonder of nibbling tiny pink feet
but choices are full of lifetimes
you chose your own games
travelling any hour night or day
writing at first light
late Sunday brunches
an afternoon nap on a Bay of Naples beach
cocktails and sunsets in Santorini
helicopter trips over volcano hotspots
swimming with manatees in Crystal River
while your unborn kids prickle in your fingertips
their fists drum with your heartbeat
like knotweed in an empty womb
they are rhizomes rooting in your veins
sometimes dormant
sometimes sprouting
until the gurgle grows
and you’re the one wailing on buses and planes
searching for new places to breathe
sometimes you can’t breathe
when you feel the sadness
rumbling down decades
groaning on roadsides
slithering along rivers and streams
tangling leaves in a funeral bouquet
furnacing beneath a flushing face
unravelling a lemon bootie
squeezing your lungs
seeing playgrounds of parents
gaga over swinging toddlers
running roundabouts
cream-coloured boots splashing in puddles
cafés pram-packed with gurgling babies
knowing you relinquished the race
to your second childhood
the wonder of nibbling tiny pink feet
but choices are full of lifetimes
you chose your own games
travelling any hour night or day
writing at first light
late Sunday brunches
an afternoon nap on a Bay of Naples beach
cocktails and sunsets in Santorini
helicopter trips over volcano hotspots
swimming with manatees in Crystal River
while your unborn kids prickle in your fingertips
their fists drum with your heartbeat
like knotweed in an empty womb
they are rhizomes rooting in your veins
sometimes dormant
sometimes sprouting
until the gurgle grows
and you’re the one wailing on buses and planes
searching for new places to breathe
Based in Hastings, England, Dawn Rhodes-Shaw was recently highly commended by Hedgehog Press in their Poetry Pamphlet Competition. In 2024 she won the Sussex Poetry Prize. Poems appear in anthologies with Written Off Publishing, Acid Bath, Rough Diamond and online with Underbelly Press and Neologism Journal.
X: @ScriptEyes
X: @ScriptEyes
