Today’s choice
Previous poems
Pat Edwards
Photo of a man lighting up in the snow
In the wrong shoes, no gloves,
his dark coat and hat are greyed with snow.
He is in white-out, stopped in his tracks,
dying for the comfort of a fag.
He makes a chalice around the flame,
hands becoming shield so he can light up.
The photo shortens him, shot from above,
looks down on his foolish habit.
We don’t learn anything more than this,
only catch him in the act, before grey ash falls
at his unprepared feet; before he draws
a little more on his white stick, coughs
contaminated out breaths into the cold air.
Maybe he casts the butt the way smokers do,
a party trick flick that sends what’s left to fall
like a rogue snowflake, dirtying the drifts.
Maybe he rubs his hands, blows stale swirls
between numb fingers, prepares his own cremation.
Pat Edwards is a writer, reviewer, and workshop leader from mid Wales. She hosts Verbatim open mic nights and curates Welshpool Poetry Festival. Pat has work published in magazines and anthologies, and in her three pamphlets.
Pamilerin Jacob
Annette the gap-toothed,
You kissed a man & I was born. You gave him
your laughter & he built an empire,
Fatihah Quadri Eniola
There is an album of all the men
your mother have loved. It sits every
night in the deep silence of the
basement.
Nathan Evans
If they ask where I am, tell them: I am
wintering. I have secreted small acorns
of sadness in crevices of gnarled limbs
and shall be savouring their bitternesses
on the back of my tongue until the days
lengthen.
Jim Ferguson
we can travel anywhere
she winks, but let’s rest here
in amongst these words
a moment can take a while
Gabrielle Meadows
I am tearing the peel from an orange gently and somewhere
Far away a tree falls in a forest and we
don’t hear it but the ground does and the birds do
Hongwei Bao
Every five minutes it does its job,
hoovers every inch of her memory,
declutters all pains and sorrows.
Gary Day
And once the father frowned
As the boy struggled to fasten
The drawbridge on his fort.
‘He’ll never be any good
With his hands’ he declared,
As if the boy wasn’t there.
Royal Rhodes
Perhaps the friends of Lazarus, who died
and slipped his shroud, on seeing him might swoon
or rush to hear the tales of that beyond
they hoped and feared to face.
Dmitry Blizniuk for World Poetry Day
God in his worn, greasy jeans like a car mechanic
is lighting a new life from an old one.