Today’s choice

Previous poems

Sally Festing

 

 

 

A Basket of Nettles and Larks

Life lines still arc round the base of each thumb
though the bulk of hand’s muscle mass
lies in the thenar bellies, now flat as linoleum

and tendons smart branches when I brace fingers,
interrupting hillocks of skin.

The heart line runs under my wedding ring,
fused to the engagement ring (one college afternoon).

If I massage the mudflats in this wicked pack of cards,
flies swarm its spiderwebs. But valiantly my head line tramps
through my palm’s basket of nettles and larks.

 

 

Sally Festing’s new poetry collection, Meeting Places (Mica Press), will be launched 22 May 2025 (6-8.00pm) at Norwich’s Maddermarket Bar. The poems wrap up love, blood ties, art, and aging in a spikey bundle. She’s a seasoned North Norfolk author (https://www.sallyfesting.info).

Charlie Hill 

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Isabella Mead

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Adam Day

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Sharon Phillips

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Andy Murray

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David Gilbert

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Simon Williams

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Sarah O’Connor

      Newgale You stand at shoreline watching. Unaware the tide advances, despite decades of life by the sea, you dip your toes in icy Atlantic swell. But decay has arrived as a rip tide – pulls you under, drags you out into the bay. The men throw a...

Laurence Morris

      Plantation blues Morning light is warm quicksilver on the desert plateau of the high Monadhliath, bare stone and scoured earth the seed of man and winter. The upward flow of pines is genesis not rewilding, redcoat drumbeats on the drove road still...