Today’s choice

Previous poems

Rob A. Mackenzie

 

 

 

Sea Lily
after Alison McWhirter

Everything is moving. I have to remind myself
it’s a flat canvas and behind it a wall that’s solid
as I am.
Although three quarters of my heart,
and one third of my bones, are water. Which
explains a lot.
Appearance can be deceptive
sometimes, but never here. I root among
many layers: clouds of mustard, pink ribbons,
haloes of smoke, lightning streaks, the sea
lily on its stalk, fragile in depth
plant-like
animal, I’ve swum into this shapeshifting
world, no longer quite sure of what I was
or might become.
Everything that matters
in art resists all explanation, but is bound
to emerge anyway, and to keep emerging.

 

 

Rob A. Mackenzie has published two poetry pamphlets and four full collections, the latest being Woof! Woof! Woof! (Salt Publishing, 2023). His work has been translated into French, Italian, Serbian and Czech. He founded and runs Blue Diode Press. bluediode.co.uk

Anne Ryland

Restless two-hundred-year-old village elder,
a ragged playground of words, or is it weeds –
fragments of chant to slaps of skipping rope.

Tim Brookes

In the charity shop I try on a coat
flocked with fake shearling,
shaved-soft almost: fibres
fired onto plastic to fool the wrist.

Kim Waters

You’re a character, a Roman numeral,
an internet meme. Descendant
from a peasant’s crook or cattle prod,
you’re the twelfth letter of the alphabet,