Psalm VII : James Robertson

Wha is Chappin at Ma Door?

Wha is chappin at ma door?
Gang awa. I amna in.
I hae the pest: I’m stiff and sair,
 Baith het and cauld and haufweys blin.

There’s naebdy here. Jist walk on by.
I dinna like yir sleekit face,
Yir fancy claes or weirdo hair.
B’Christ, d’ye hink ye own the place?

Nae siller’s keepit in this hoose,
Nor bric-a-brac for charity.
I ken ye’re efter somethin. Weel,
Ye’ll no be gettin it fae me.

I hae the pest, I’ve tellt ye wance.
It isna safe tae hing aboot.
I amna in but if I wis
Ye widna want me comin oot.

For pity’s sake, there’s naebdy here.
Ye’re ontae plums. Desist and cease.
I’ve cawed the polis onywey,
Sae shift yir erse and gie us peace.

Are ye a Mormon or Jehovah’s? 
Ye’re mibbes deif or aff yir heid?
Aye, aye, the warld is endin soon –
Nixt-day delivery guaranteed –

But see, until the fower white vans
O the apocalypse appear,
Lea me alane, get aff ma street.
Vamoose, ya cunt, there’s naebdy here.

Wha is chappin at ma door?
The din is drivin me insane.
I’m in ma pit and dinna hink
I hae the strength tae rise again.

James Robertson (born 1958) is a Scottish writer who grew up in Bridge of Allan, Stirlingshire. He is the author of several short story and poetry collections, and has published seven novels: The Fanatic, Joseph Knight, The Testament of Gideon Mack, And the Land Lay Still, The Professor of Truth, To Be Continued…. and News of the Dead  which has just won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2022. The Testament of Gideon Mack was long-listed for the 2006 Man Booker Prize.

James also runs an independent publishing company called Kettillonia, and is a co-founder (with Matthew Fitt and Susan Rennie) and general editor of the Scots language imprint Itchy Coo (produced by Black & White Publishing), which produces books in Scots for children and young people.

Psalm VI : SHEENA BLACKHALL

The Hairdresser, The Cooncillor, The Coven

Sheree wis mistress o the blue rinse style
Wad tae a cooncilor, Tod Blaik, a hinger-on
Wi cherm he gript her clients in his haun
Kirk fowk, they wir stinch Presbyterian

She permed an cut an tamed their hudderie heids
The guid an godlie o the hoosin scheme
She wis a hermless woman, kind an douce
Acted confessor, kent her clients’ dreams

An aa the while, her man, the sleekit Tod
Wid fleece the guid an godly o their trust
His skill wis fraud, the council wis his lamb
He sheared the toun o siller, gey near bust

They keepit in wi heid anes roon aboot
Wir socht tae bide ae wikkeyn wi a frien
Fa’d turned a wrackit kirk intae a hoose
An architectural bobby dazzlin scheme

Wi heatin neth the fleer, an sunken lichts
Wi a mod cons, wi bidets, a Jacuzzi
Far mony’s the deal wis dane, wrang side o richt
There, antrin days the host wid takk his floozy

Siller impresses, Sheree wis bumbazed
An Tod wis sookin up as wis his style
The wheels o intrigue turn in mony wyes
An Tod wis oozin cherm, thon cogs tae ile.

This auld, recycled kirk stude in a clachan
Logie o Netherpliskies wis its nemme
Lang hynie back it wis a Pagan neuk
Weel kent fur devilish ongauns o ill fame

Noo fermers, ilemen, retired fowk bedd there
Incomers frae the Sooth drawn bi the lures
O auncient bens an couthie kintra howes
Awa frae traffic, muggins, back street hoors

Sheree an Tod snapped up a gutsy meal
Wi brandy, efter echts, nae expense shriven
Gaed aff tae bed tae say their nichtly prayers
Safe kennin they hid saved a place in heaven

Bit fin the meen wis heich abune the spire
An starnies glimmered in the pitmirk nicht
A hoolet hootit, human skreichs an lauchs
An oorie music grippit them wi fricht

Logie o Netherpliskies is the Deil’s
Their host ower brakkfest, telt them the neist day
An ilkie nicht the local clachan meets
Tae birzze nyakkit, an throwe the wids tae play

The coven, they wir telt, wir incamers
Wud Wayne, a biker, frae the Yorkshire dales
An Creashie Meg frae Wirrel on the Sea
Wi her man Fred, a butcher up frae Wales

Wee aiblich Dean, a maister in IT
An Nancy Fudd, a botanist frae Surrey
Her brither Frankie, herbalist o note
A homeopathist, caad Elsie Murray

Sheree an Tod baith packit up an left
Wir feart o bein tarred bi sic contagion
Tho Tod hid mony pliskies o his ain
His frauds an his skulduggeries wir legion

Inbye twa months, the scales o justice tipped 
Todd wis fand oot, disgraced an clappt in jyle
Betimes, the coven frolicked as afore
Haudin their Pagan rites an ploys fine style

Sheena Blackhall is a writer, illustrator, traditional ballad singer and storyteller in North East Scotland. From 1998-2003 she was Creative Writing Fellow in Scots at the Elphinstone Institute. She has published four Scots novellas, fifteen short story collections and over 180 poetry collections, which are listed here (most recent first). In 2009 she became Makar (poet laureate) for Aberdeen and the North East, and Makar for the Doric Board in 2019.

Psalm V : Seth Crook

“Holey Island”
with an “e”.

There’s a hole up in the middle, in the peak rock,
so we chose a fun name. It’s nothing religious.
Though if there were no holy islands without “e”s,
we wouldn’t say “Holey Island”. There’d be no joke–

to repeat all summer when snorkelling its coastline,
flippered circumnavigators dipping to peer,
circling among the sea-hared seagrass, top-shelled kelp,
dunked in tidal living, under our hole above.

June rising and thriving: sea forms to goggle-eye.
The scuttling crabs, pale-green and black carapaces,
fleeing into the safety of fronds of red rag;
clusters of purple-tip snakelocks anemones

whose tentacles reach, the beginning of minds;
the compass, moon and hypnotic blue jellyfish,
argonauts in the journey towards consciousness;
bumpy elongations of brown sea-spaghetti

seeking surface light, dangling small crab steeplejacks;
maybe-sea-spiders, reefs with orange-peel sponges,
the sunken-galleon shape of a lumpsucker.
Though best of all is nothing in particular:

the fusion of sun-soaked clear water and colour,
the multiplicity of under-surface shadings
in the explicable but stubborn miracle of light.
I love to say “Iridescence, Phosphorescence,

Bioluminescence”–happily throwing in
“Transcendence”, impelled by something more than the sound.
We pass above like checking angels, distant from
but absorbed by the scene, at the edge of the frame.

All June we’re drawn to the presence of these creatures,
their transformations, and try to speak what we feel,
to convey allure, growing seavangelical
as everything else grows in articulation.

But fail with dead-fish cliches: beauty and wonder.
We need a greater language, a coast pentecost
gifting us the words for drier, surface beings:
not with a high wind, but a smooth, surfer’s wave,

not with tongues of fire like lighters above our heads,
but some grand fluorescence, illuminating minds,
the indifferent and petty and destructive,
like sunlight penetrating the surface water.

“That of which we cannot speak we must pass over
in silence”. Or we might just try swimming over,
garbling into our snorkel mouthpiece, though pointing.

Seth Crook lives on Mull, is transitioning into a seal, loves sea slugs, has taught philosophy at various universities. His poems have appeared in such places as The Rialto, Magma, Gutter, Poetry Scotland, Northwords Now, Pennine Platform, The Butcher’s Dog, Poetry Salzburg Review, and Channel. His visual poems often appear in Streetcake. His work has appeared in recent anthologies such as The SHOp: An Anthology (Liffey), The Centenary Collection (Speculative Books), Places of Poetry (One World). He has a pamphlet of visual poems Chalked On The Path (Dreich).

Psalm IV: Lindsay Macgregor

The Clergie’s Sellin

The clergie’s sellin aff the kirks
An hashin natur’s verdant wirks.
Yauld bunnet firs an bonnie birks
Income o fog
Aw tak tent o the kistin mirk
The skreich o scrogs

As doon all cum, doon aye, doon aye
Doon, doon, deeper an doon

Ablow the beuchs an souchin gress
The harns o planties’ pawkie mess
Ruits wimplin throu the hallowit press
O lusome yirth
Wir springheid o viriditas
Noo gaun awirth

For doon all cum, doon aye, doon aye
Doon, doon, deeper an doon

An inklin o the quicken’s lair
Skairin the micht o sin glint’s stare
Tae mend the seik an sain the sair
Wi licht an leed,
The tidins o its seasoned quair –
Ane gudlie creed

But doon all cum, doon aye, doon aye
Doon, doon, deeper an doon

So preechers hark tae mither wit
Tae sense o sap, tae mense o wid
An heed the cant o verdur yit –
The loss in gain
When awthings delved fae ae Yaird’s dirt
An aw is ane.

Doon all cum, doon aye, doon aye
Doon, doon, deeper an doon
Doon all cum, doon aye, doon aye
Doon, doon, deeper an doon

FINIS

Lindsay Macgregor lives in Biggar. Her collection, Desperate Fishwives, was published in 2022 by Molecular Press.

Psalm III: A. B. Jackson

Sunday Spiritual

April Sunday, Attic Bar,

          the owl-enticing rafters.

Outside, a cobbled Ashton Lane;

          within, mad-hatters.

Miracle of nature’s call,

          wine becoming water.

Nico singing ‘Femme Fatale’,

          Jehovah’s daughter.

Cherries, bells, a winning streak,

          the fruit machine of sex.

Lovers find a mother’s milk

          in cigarettes.

Flyers for a student farce

           and glossy takeaways;

Jesus with his sweet ’n’ sour,

          his wife crazed.

Above, the stars’ heraldic charm,

          the masterpiece, the frame.

A marathon of light expires

          on Ashton Lane.

April Sunday, Attic Bar,

          the belly-dancing candles.

Life’s a minestrone or

          a fucking shambles.

Angostura, vodka, ice,

          the bitter end of crushes.

My friends are either super-late

          or under buses.

And since my baby left me

          the bed’s a concrete bench.

I’m jaunty as a megalith

          at Stonehenge. 

The bar below is choc-a-bloc

          with icons rightly famous:

Jackie Bird, and whatshisface …

          Lord, raise us. 

Men in shorts are now the norm.

          I’ve never seen Bob Dylan

flash his qweets or hairy knees.

          Flesh, be hidden.

April Sunday, Attic Bar,

          the year’s a piddling pup.

If beer is spilled the poets here

          will suck it up.

Jesus with his sweet ’n’ sour

          trips and falls face down.

The cobblestones of Ashton Lane,

          a spinning crown.

A.B. Jackson’s publications include Fire Stations (Anvil, 2003), The Wilderness Party (Bloodaxe Books, 2015), and The Voyage of St Brendan (Bloodaxe Books, 2021). Web site at www.abjackson.co.uk