Today’s choice
Previous poems
James McDermott
Samsara
if samsara’s concrete please don’t come back
as black jackal for I live in Norwich
nor spineless worm as I don’t have a lawn
ditto poppy fields with my hay fever
nor breeze I don’t open those windows now
so I might not hear you nor beige house moth
nibbling my pink knitwear nor hot new squeeze
father for ease please just come back as you
I shake my head aren’t I then fixed to lose
you all over again and I don’t want
you to be on a loop as I won’t be
fireproof and I don’t want you to be
kicking to sink your son praying Jim won’t
rise as poppies jackal that worm this wind
James McDermott’s collections published by Nine Arches Press include ‘Father Myself’ and ‘Wild Life’. James’s poems have been published in Poetry Wales, Magma, The North, Butcher’s Dog and Interpreter’s House.
Cheryl Snell, Alice Gregorio, Peter Lilly
I grew up on a farm so I should know all about expensive cows and free milk. You’re taking being a debutante much too literally. We only meant to give permission for you to make a good match, not flit among the suitable boys…
Jade Kleiner
There is the green that birthed all pine trees.
Tom Blake
We were the housing and the housed,
meaning nothing except that
we were always occupied,
or to put it simply never out.
Kate Bonfield
Coming home to days of heat
trapped beyond the door, to time skewed
by time away, the house bigger and
smaller than before.
Precious Ejim
I don’t know why I look to my mother
for her shadow never stays.
Jackson
I want to tell my mother,
I made a successful loaf
in the bread machine you didn’t know
you were leaving me
Kath Mckay
How to become two-dimensional
Die. You’re soon reduced to a photograph.
Lugubrious Co-op undertakers will zip you in a bag
and keep you cold . . .
Cindy Botha
atlas bear
black-footed ferret
cape lion
Jasmine Gibbs
This morning – Blackstar,
Bowie, those jazz swan songs
sputtering from the CD player,
wild trumpets that convulse
through negative space