Today’s choice
Previous poems
Kathy Pimlott
Going down to do lights and curtains to fool any burglars
Twilight: one after another security lights click on
illuminating pathways, steps, empty front lawns,
triggered by my benign progress, then, disappointed,
click off. The sky is a layer cake of contrails, pink
shepherds’ delight and darkness holding a waxing moon
two days short of being Wolf.
All done, street lamps
cast my long shadow so it circles me as 1 walk back.
It grows and shrinks, scales walls. Sensing something
behind me, I stop, turn. There she stands, fox-smart
from nose tip to tail. I wait. She does too. I don’t run.
I say, ‘Off you go. This is my life not a Lawrence novella’.
Frost sets the road crackling as robins shout the night in.
Kathy Pimlott has a collection, the small manoeuvres, with Verve Poetry Press (2022) and three pamphlets with The Emma Press –Elastic Glue and Goose Fair Night and most recently After the Rites and Sandwiches (2024). www.kathypimlott.co.uk
Sharon Black
My thoughts are skittish,
peck at whatever they find.
I flick each whitewash flake
into the bin. Shadows on the walls
Vanessa Napolitano
Floors are unvacuumed. Spices remain un-alphabetised.
I bless the spaces between the furniture to keep everyone safe. Seven.
Ben Verinder
Nostalgia as Yogi Bear
Ruminates through you for something tasty,
prizes of the Jellystone mind.
Jane Spray
I’m just an ordinary dryad
not like fancy Eurydice with her sun god father
keep things simple I say I don’t have her dilemmas
Paul Stephenson
The poem of the mask disguises meaning.
The poem of the diet lost seven words.
The poem of the snowman melted.
The poem of the invisible man.
Alex Josephy
Let us now praise hi-vis men
who gather together
round a pothole, filling the gap
with their sticky black remedy.
Claire Lynn
I lie back, arch my throat,
pretend to relax. Contemplate
ceiling tiles . . .
Peter Daniels
This is not you, but someone soaked in fake Brut
coming at me in a gesture of fake generosity.
Emma Farmer
Your face was on a bus pass,
your hair falling around your face like a curly straw,
pressed in a puddle between the Queen’s old face
and an Aldi receipt for slippers and chicken.