Dear Reader,

Welcome to Issue 35.

I was recently browsing through back issues of StepAway Magazine, and found myself reading “Let there be Peace” by the poet and broadcaster Lemn Sissay OBE FRSL, whom we had the pleasure of publishing in our third issue, way back in 2011. The poem is as relevant now as it was then, if not even more so. My eye rested specifically on the lines: “Let there be peace…So war correspondents become travel show presenters” and “Let there be peace…So the broken can rise and dance in the hospitals.” As the festive season approaches let these words become our mantra, as we hope for positive change in the new year.

I would also like to draw your attention to The Christmas Dinner, an annual project founded by Mr. Sissay for communities to provide an amazing Christmas Day for care leavers aged between 18 and 25 – one they’ll never forget. Each Dinner is organised by a steering group of people who come together to make the Christmas Day magic happen. There are so many worthwhile causes to support at Christmas, but here at StepAway, this one is particularly close to our heart.

For those who enjoy urban wandering, our thirty-fifth issue is a treat – as always. Our writers explore the beauties and burdens experienced by the ever-observant urban walker. Thank you so much to all of those who contributed: Geoffrey Aitken, Enda Boyle, Lee Campbell, David Capps, Lorraine Carey, Pamelyn Casto, Gram Joel Davies, Gregory Luce, Isabel Miles, Heather Sager, John Savoie and John Short.

Now, all that remains for me to do is wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year from everyone at StepAway Magazine.

With the warmest of festive wishes,

Darren Richard Carlaw

editor@stepawaymagazine.com

Sensations that taught me
if ever they caught me
I got very clever
very clever at seeing without being seen

Summer 1994. Me a boy no more
I needed to see men like me
Shaved my hair to fit in where gay disco beats
fill London streets
Pet Shop Boys, Boy George, George Michael
Mix-tape boy
So much joy amongst
Gays like me who gaze and see
SEE ME
SEE LEE

Nervous yet emancipated, a space so animated
My first time in a place with men like me everywhere
How excited I was the first time a guy gave me a stare
The kind us gays know means ‘I fancy you, bear’

(Erving) Goffman says our lives
are ‘performances’ for others
On Old Compton Street, I wasn’t ‘acting’
with my fellow gay brothers
Before coming out, the world saw a version of me
From back-stage to now on-stage, I finally felt free
This was the first time I was surrounded by
men who like men like me
men who look like me
men with bodies like mine
men who kiss male lips like I do
Amongst shaved heads and beards, I was at home
The Duke of Welly, for guys with a similar size belly
Another place for me to call home

July 2020. I walk through London’s Gay Soho
Headphones on
Listening again to those 90′s mix tapes
Pet Shop Boys, Boy George, George Michael
Retracing steps, retracing memories, retracing kisses
The first time walking around Gay Soho for many months
These streets that shaped my life appear like a dystopia
I cannot describe this elegy, this desolation
Bars and pubs now closed
Their bricks and mortar remain but their insides are empty
Devoid of bodies
Devoid of laughter
No music can be heard
No bodies can be seen
No kisses can be felt, just remembered

I remember first kissing a guy with hairy bodily fur
Now that seems even further far gone, even more of a blur

Bodies of hair
Bearded faces
replaced by dead air
inside boarded-up spaces

And yet this is a strange kind of missing
The first time I felt an almost distant violent absence
I am still troubled by what that I see in my community

I remember the first time I got dirty looks
from certain bears with disapproving stares

Someone said I should emancipate from this hate
But these wounds are hard to heal
Tongue lashings cut deep

Queer space is not straightforward
Queer space is troublesome
A historied palimpsest of community unrest
troubled up from those outside and from those within

Where can I now perform my visibility
in physical space?
Will I and my fellow queers who inhabited these spaces become invisible,
as our safe spaces disappear?
Will we too disappear or will something new emerge?
A new means to perform my being me, to see and be seen

An ending marks a beginning

Lee Campbell

The poetry film version of SEE ME (which recently won Best Experimental Film at Ealing Festival Festival 2022) can be found here.

David Capps

The river rushes from Loch Corrib
through to Galway Bay,
dodging the city’s grasp.
Above it, lovely, lonely, the cathedral crouches,
hard as Burren rock.
Inside glass blossoms into coloured light
as fresh and soft as gentians.

At noon the homeless woman’s drunk.
The tourists veer aside, avoid, ignore
her hopeless shrieks of rage.
Later, replete with craic and music,
a little drunk themselves,
they’ll open purses for a dosser
who will smile, and thank, and bless.
Then off they’ll daunder to another bar
where yet another player’s tuning up.
Most people talk too much to listen.

So many fiddlers die in Galway City that
the air is full of longing, sweet and sad.
Fresh fiddlers come to take their places,
squeeze box players,
pipers, weavers of dreams
singers of lost songs.

All day the sky is pierced by seabirds’ cries.
At sunset, as the pubs fill up,
the riverside grows quiet.
The dossers settle where they can.
The sky is streaked with wonder and release.

Isabel Miles

walking home in the small hours, pissed on
Snakebites and beer. The bridge’s tension,
torsion and shear, aped our own internal forces.
The sunlight stung my sister’s eyes
and I noticed her feet were mottled blue.

I could never fathom her dislike of socks.
We turned back to face the biting breeze.
Later I sat on the Guildhall steps, watched her
weave and glide with an ocelot’s grace
through stained glass doors. We strolled later

to the café by the Ferryquay Arch,
golden leaves garlanding pavements,
my throat parched from exhaust fumes and smog.
The waitress never buttered the bread
for my sandwich as chunks of egg

and beetroot fell onto the plate,
disintegration, all around.
Distracted by a singer in the corner,
her vocals drowned out our small talk,
filled the clunky silence. My sister barely touched

her lunch, struggled with each mouthful.
I knew then she’d never recover.
We never crossed the Peace Bridge again.
I stay on the city side each time I go back,
stray from the torsion and shear,

can’t bear to retrace our steps with just my own.

Lorraine Carey

in my village

to quickly attract
suburban sprawl
and its concrete exactness

for dinner table meals
without
nutritional qualification

so when rain falls
it fails to confuse
street struggle residents

with its shopper trolley clatter

Geoffrey Aitken

The wind picks up
a little and tosses
cold droplets into
my face. I zip my jacket,
turn the collar up, lower
my head, and turn
for home.

Gregory Luce

Enda Boyle

Heather Sager

He had woken, head full of Tweets, late forum debates, that awful wish
to pin one true-said thing to slipping scree. As she slept on, he crashed
about, agreement gone to vanish-point on some horizon. Later, the boss
was all bluster, his rancour the gale to tip bins over. The barrow wheeler
said nothing, stayed tidy. On the tow-paths, passers appeared to mutter,
filth-picker, to broaden a candid arc. But now, he shakes a load

from his features, reaches for his metal grabber. He goes to the water,
its loggerhead of bottle-crush, stirs with fervour. The barrow wheeler,
letting litter loose. A raft of refuse tumbles in the current.

Gram Joel Davies