Today’s choice
Previous poems
Nairn Kennedy
Portrait
You notice the nose: webbed veins spritzed
with little flicks of red, purple blotches
daubed with a palette-knife, broken ends
where blood-vessels gave up the ghost.
You see the waistcoat bristling
Harris Tweed, the label peeking out just so
we know, and, picked out in gold, a tiny
little compasses-and-square combo
glints in his lapel. You don’t see
the earthy animal smell of the jacket,
the whiff of stale whisky on the breath
where he’s tried to overtake
the Dylan Thomas record. You can’t see
his wife’s face, worn like an overused
tyre, or his children’s eyes blanking
out when his voice is raised.
You only catch a little of the scenes
where he rolls up in the early hours,
hammers on the door with a balled-up
fist, demands a final drink as a nightcap.
He always drives himself home, festering
in a bath of booze; the picture doesn’t show
his kneeling wife, praying for a swerve, a skid,
the sudden emancipation of a brick wall.
Nairn Kennedy’s work has appeared in The London Magazine, Stand, The North, Poetry News and Under the Radar, plus several anthologies. He’s been longlisted in the National, variously commended, and runner-up in the Stanza competition. Website: nairnkennedypoet.co.uk
Jason Ryberg
Still Life of Fish and Bird
Mark McDonnell
Fascinated by the priest’s teeth I don’t realise
I’m kicking the pew in front with a restless foot
until someone taps me sharply on the knee.
James Mason
In Italian I have no inner life.
With no past or future tense
My needs are immediate.
Claire Miller
rose is thirsty
rose senses water
rose root rummages in the earth
rose root punctures lung and frontal lobe
rose stem is a green straw sucking
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.
Daniel Naawenkangua Abukuri
What matters now is the feast of this survival.
The glory of our own light, black light.
Look at us: the deeper the root, the sweeter the juice.
Glory of the blacker berry, split wide open to the sun.
Robert Billinski
the sky met the water where the birds met the fish
the sky met the water where the fish met the birds
the sky met the birds where the water met the fish
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