Those Ghosts: A Life in Poems

By John Short

A mesmerising summer welcomes the reader into this collection and holds them for a journey that spans several decades. There is music – languid and harmonious, a fresh youthfulness, and time is a metronome that strikes through lustrous landscapes and characters of varying personalities. A steady, companionable read on a journey of one’s own or at home.

– Victoria Ekpo

• Language: English
• Publisher: Beaten Track Publishing
• Release date: Jan 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781786454812

John Short

John Short grew up near Ormskirk and went to Leeds University, where he obtained a degree in comparative religion then spent years in Europe doing a variety of jobs before settling for eight years in Greece. His poems and stories have appeared in many magazines in France, Spain, Ireland, the UK, Austria, Nigeria and the USA. His poem ‘The Dogs of Athens’ was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2018 by StepAway magazine. He also has a collection of self-published stories: The Private Unmentionable Gargoyle under the pen name Hubert Tsarko. He’s a member of Liver Bards, Inklings and the Wirral-based Pop-Up Writers, and used to read on Vintage Radio in Birkenhead. His pamphlet Unknown Territory, Poems about Greece was published by Black Light Engine Room Press in 2020.

Book preview

Those Ghosts

Those Ghosts

A Life in Poems

John Short

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Beaten Track

www.beatentrackpublishing.com

Those Ghosts

First Published 2021 by Beaten Track Publishing

Copyright © 2021–2023 John Short

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Paperback ISBN: 978 1 78645 480 5

eBook ISBN: 978 1 78645 481 2

Cover by Debbie McGowan

Beaten Track Publishing,

Burscough, Lancashire.

www.beatentrackpublishing.com

A mesmerising summer welcomes the reader into this collection and holds them for a journey that spans several decades. There is music – languid and harmonious, a fresh youthfulness, and time is a metronome that strikes through lustrous landscapes and characters of varying personalities. A steady, companionable read on a journey of one’s own or at home.

– Victoria Ekpo

Contents

Poems

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Beaten Track Publishing

Full Table of Contents

Late Summer

A garden scattered with toys

as sunlight fades to dusk.

I’m mesmerised through glass.

After the safe lengths of lawn,

a purple chaos of thistles

marks wild uncharted territory.

Poplar trees beyond the garden,

a man digging for main crop:

last potatoes from fertile earth.

He walks off into late summer,

past the old council estate

and its kids who throw stones.

Don’t ever approach them,

my mother lectures me.

Play this side of the poplars.

Grandma’s House

Defunct flies lay clenched

tight as fists, webs hung low

near holy statues positioned

to ensure she’d go to heaven.

I nosed my uncles’ rooms

while they were out at work,

broke open dog-ends, tasted

gold strands, sweet at first