By Estill Pollock

          on the mantelpiece

a freckled mirror, the faces there captured in raking

perspective in memories

of moods, postures   a junk of here and there

like confetti DNA, or glass-shard gales through winter hedges

          at the window the drubbing rain

divides opinion, between a diary note of crackling fires

warming ale pots

and the shotgun wedding of climate change   the refrain

of weather data harvested by bots

or hellfire clergy stoking pyres

          still others, speaking odes   by now

most of Horace by heart, a habit

mistaken for intellect, originality or aplomb   the hours

drifting into hours

beneath a ragged heraldry of rooks

          time, inexorable and just, features

here because it must, the impasse

of the looking-glass where ghost exemplars crowd the frame

and blame devolves from Eden’s creatures

and a bet they made, of appleseeds predicting

orchard shade

          in her stocking feet, Mrs. Pilkington

measured three-foot-two, by Dr. Swift’s own rule   blacking

her face with burnt cork, he declared her

his favourite dwarf   at his death her window blew wide

and a servant girl fell across a footstool

laughing

Joey Kerlin, In This House We Don't Believe in Basic Human Biology, 2024, multimedia, 20" x 20".

Sonnet

          the bowstring defines

the arrow’s anchor, sets tension to the bow

          a hoard 

of coins, silver later beaten into masks, sacred to the memory

of old betrayals

          the hours reinventing 

themselves, fated, like songbirds in a sudden frost

          reading sonnets, someone said

like spying at keyholes   compassion   comprehension   

absolution   such are the visions

          in the affidavit, the woods described 

as scratch marks on smoked glass

          the lighthouse on the rocky point

whether at the end of the adventure, or its beginning 

Joey Kerlin, I Choose You, 2025, multimedia collage, 4" x 6".

Estill Pollock's publications include Constructing the Human (Poetry Salzburg) and the book cycle Relic Environments Trilogy (Cinnamon Press, Wales). His poetry collections in the series Cartographic Projections of a Sphere are published by Broadstone Books. The e-chapbooks And Then and Working Title are published by Mudlark. He lives in Norfolk, England.

Joey Kerlin has been actively making and exhibiting work in the Denver Metro area since the early 2000’s in media ranging from functional ceramics to printmaking. His contemporary work is a synthesis of multiple media and techniques. He has been working as an art educator in both the private and public sector since 2010 and currently teaches at Aurora Central High School in the Charles Burrell Arts pathway.