Kathleen Condon – Bindweed Magazine

Bindweed Issue 8 is now available in print

Despite personal setbacks in 2018, Joseph Robert and I have managed to get Bindweed Magazine Issue 8 into print almost a year after the online publication schedule finished in April last year.

It’s finally here. Hurray!

The past year has been a whirlwind of going back to the dayjob after maternity leave, coping with a sick baby, moving house (again!) and a family bereavement on top of all that. The setbacks delayed our publication schedule, but true to the nature of the convolvulus weed itself, Bindweed Magazine has managed to bounce back from the brink…essentially I have kept our little zine going through tough times. So thanks for bearing with me and here we go:

Print copy via Lulu Publishing

There’s a 20% discount with the code TWENTY19 (case sensitive) before February 7th, I believe.

Hope you enjoy it!

Leilanie Stewart 🍃

Kathleen Condon – 1 poem

Instinct

Today I mow green pastures,

scatter manure to dust

and keep my mown rows edge to edge.

I anticipate the turn at the fence, the moment

I’ll accelerate and lean in to that arc,

momentum’s sweet spot.

When I watch bicyclists

in traffic, I know what they feel

by the slant of their shoulders,

the tilt of their heads as they join the flow.

When did I first encounter this sensuous thrill?

Did I lean in to the shape of my mother’s womb

to ride her morning rising, a bauble

in the ocean swirls beneath her ribs?

In the wake of another turn,

I think of swimming laps

and the flip at the wall, that push

that wreathes a curl of water at the neck.

Seals must relish their supple trajectories.

Hummingbirds careen as if joy incarnate.

A flock of gray doves lifts

from the adjacent pasture and swerves midair—

a boomerang rising on silver light.

I circle once and then again, this inclination

more about being, rather than creating, the curve.

Kathleen Condon