HCE received a lot of high-quality submissions for The Green Issue – sadly, too many to fit inside the magazine! So we offered some writers and artists who’d sent in work the chance to be published here on the website. Keep an eye on our social media for more great work like this, now that The Green Issue print magazine has been released! (For more information or to purchase your copy, visit our shop.)
Siobhan Dunlop
Park Keeper
The planet’s dying.
He walks around the park,
Same as always,
Picking litter,
Single-use plastic that had its time.
A magpie stumbles,
Chasing a rolling beer can.
He scatters a few cake crumbs,
Pocket to ground:
A half-hearted apology for what he missed.
Once the park is tamed,
He will tease a few new growths
Out from tangle and ruin,
Combatting the earth’s destruction
With a gentle, earthy hand.
The planet’s still dying,
And so, slowly, is he.
The voluntary saviour walks on
Without recognition or reward,
So the park lives for one more day.
Siobhan Dunlop is a UK-based poet and book blogger with poems published in 404 Ink, Pixel Heart, Re-Analogue, meanwhile magazine, Crêpe & Penn, 3 Moon, and The Speculative Book 2019, and a short story about an all-female Henry IV production in an LGBT Shakespeare anthology. They love reworking classic texts in new ways and reading about tech, currently work teaching people digital things, and can be found on Twitter under @fiendfull and online here.