Today’s choice

Previous poems

James Mason

 

 

 

Beginner’s Italian

In Italian I have no inner life.
With no past or future tense
My needs are immediate.

I have hunger. I eat.
I have thirst. I drink.
I have the name for wine not peas.
 
The heat is good. I want.
Yes, I sleep well, thank you.
But I pass a dreamless night.
 
I am appetite. A thing of flesh.
More, it says. Again.
I do not know how to say enough.

 

James Mason lives in Worcestershire, UK. He has an MA in Creative Writing from the Open University.

Sylvia Banham

Pigeons have invaded the garden, two then four, then a flock.
They roost in the apple tree to nest, reconnoitre or mate
 
ignore my sorties to deter them and shit without stint
on patio and herb bed, foul lovely hyssop and thyme.

Gordon Vells

Impotent in family life and ineffectual at work,
sometimes he would spend a full quarter-hour
just circulating the mini-roundabout on his moped,
dizzy from the power of blocking everyone else.

Patrick Wright

i protest     say how when i’m gone i’d like to rest before the choice to return & go through 
all this again     you sigh as though that’s absurd & endings are just endings     we’re mulch 
& nothing but endless fucking 

Francis de Lima

Oh London. U useless city. Map to

                                                                        nowhere land. Tight stretch 

                                                                        open eye. The underground metal. 

The night tube. The railway. Smog

Over coaltrip. The presence

                                                                          Of machine upon machine. U

Miriam Swales

When I was 12, I knew the weight of a human head.
8 Heads in a Duffel Bag (a bit of dark comedy).
It grew from there. The curiosity. The calculations.