Today’s choice
Previous poems
Gary Akroyde
Cracks in the Concrete
We searched for it
through the tarmac in every rain-bruised sky
in dark Pennine shadows where great mills
spewed out ringlets of ghost-grey fog
we learnt to see Yorkshire mist in charcoal technicolour
Along the canal with its ribbon of rust we frisked
the dirty water for dazzling orange carp
heaved shopping trolleys from sludge traps
sailed two wheels high in the air thick with damp wool
In the wasteland breath-hot kissed fog grass
danced with nettles lounged beach-like
on barren patches of our summer home
shared with mongrels fleas and ants
down cobbled snickets
seeped in spilled ale and yesterday’s blood
we lobbed dog-chewed tennis balls
bin-sticky off chipped kerbs
As kids we knew the spaces between the stones
found beauty in those cracks
where weeds burst through
Gary Akroyde is from from Sowerby Bridge and currently working as an English teacher. He have been published in Dreamcatcher, Black Nore Review, Intenational Times and will be published in three Yaffle Press anthologies this year.
Nathan Curnow
I like to think it’s a story about himself and Einstein
floating in zero gravity, Albert sailing through the capsule
toward his drifting pipe, Brian playing We Will Rock You—
Paul Short
Sleep.
Elusive as lucid dreams.
Closed eyes teem wotsit-orange,
spiderweb scarlet &
thatch-brown
Ash Bowden
Out again with the pitchfork churning
compost into the old green bin, stinking
and silent as an ancient earthen vat.
Mallika Bhaumik
This is not a frilly, mushy love letter
to a city whose allure lies in defying all labels and holding the mystery key to a man’s heart, though none has ever been able to lay an absolute claim on it,
Jena Woodhouse
Around midnight, the hour when pain
reasserts its dominance, a voice
behind the curtain screening
my bed from the next patient’s:
an intonation penetrating abstract thoughts
Kate Bailey
They’ve mended the park fence again,
patched it over with the usual ugly metalwork,
like a riot barricade.
Ibrar Sami
Across the barren land
where blood once played its savage Holi,
the fearless migratory birds
have returned again.
Anyonita Green
It wobbles slightly, red wine jelly.
I peer at it, nose close enough
to smell the iron, the scent of coagulant,
inhaling through slightly parted lips
Soledad Santana
Seen as she’d hung her cranial lantern
from the roof of her step-father’s garden shed,
the parabolic formula was skipped; like two calves, we followed the fence
to the end of the foot-ball pitch.