Today’s choice
Previous poems
Eileen Carney Hulme
Munitionettes
Yes I was a canary girl
who survived the accidents
the explosions, even the chemicals
didn’t poison me. For two pounds
per week, no health and safety
no goggles as we watched the slow
discoloration of hair and skin.
Long days, so very long
hard work, so very hard
and the noise, oh the constant noise
and the smells, they stayed with me, even now.
On nightshifts we would sing, laugh
in the face of death. Without us the army could not
have functioned. Later, no longer needed
we women were tossed aside.
Energised, determined, unafraid of the past, we welcomed
home husbands, fathers, sons and lovers. We no longer made
bombs, we made promises. From quiet skies we plucked
brightness, brush stroked with possibilities.
Kevin Denwood
The dead flies collected
on the windowsill
like punctuation.
SJ Lunn-Rockliffe
Crammed onto his high
stone square, he cranes
to see the whole number
of eternity as it unwinds
Julia Webb
The magic people are coming, you said.
You took us outside and pointed at the sky.
Ella B. Winters
Across the road stands a woman
wearing a child on her heart,
Jaymz Lea
My mum always says, I get where water wouldn’t.
When he drank me, I left myself somewhere sunken
John Grey
Mountains behind us,
the land spreads out, flat and brittle,
like a discarded snakeskin.
Ian C. Webb
Two table’s worth of no-longer strangers
at dusk on a lane of nautical miles
basket of bread, bottles of wine, talk of home
and places called home
Ned Vessey
My father and I
skim the surface of conversations
something like those swallows do
down at the lake
J.S.Watts
On Neptune Street
you may dream of the tide,
its drag and lure
but your feet walk
on solid pavement.