Today’s choice
Previous poems
J.P. Lancaster
Ivy’s deference and not
Ivy thrives
despite dependency.
It hangs on, has its other day.
Ivy does not press its case.
Its patient face is no surprise.
It does not draw attention to itself.
Its business is in secretive delight.
It’s second violin to any other instrument.
It clings with tendril anchor feet establishing a base.
As if from nothing, when the time is right
its berries burst like fronds of aubergine-dark rain,
September elder, glossy, orderly and plump,
its umbel firework pulses bursting to be seen.
It later desiccates, but not
from tiredness, resolved maturity
frayed hemp strands on the vine.
Ivy’s complexity is fabulous.
Self-effacement underlining paradox,
write-in evergreen of posts,
single oaks with one bare fractured branch
in need of first response,
shipwrecked in a roadside hedge,
whitewashed walls
which failed to wash behind their ears,
and then turned flaky sour
anything upstanding marginal.
Ivy’s deference,
harm-free cohabiting,
which burgeons bright, as self-defence.
J.P. Lancaster was born in Cardiff and brought up in Barry, Vale of Glamorgan. He was educated at St John’s College, Oxford, which came as a shock. He has taught in various countries.
Rachael Clyne
Torn
On one side– my heritage
on the other side– their heritage
on both sides– carnage
everywhere– endless grief.
Nick Browne
Woman in the water
I’m no Ophelia, that’s for sure crazy stuff is not my style,
no garland weeds around my head it’s spindrift foam not daisies.
Sally Michaelson
The Ledger
In the left hand column
she writes
He’s married
Rizwan Akhtar
In the evening trees become sad
I climbed on them like a metaphor
Alexandra Corrin
Six weeks after diagnosis
I stayed away out of respect for your daughters.
You followed the hearse with your father and the girls.
He couldn’t stay within the boundaries of himself.
John Barron
Thought Experiment
The clock has lost all its numbers.
I wake inside an Einstein thought experiment,
where my bones defy gravity and get sucked
what some call “up.” I’ve only time to grab
from beside the bed where we’re sleeping
our copy of Rovelli’s ‘Reality Is Not What It Seems’
Mick Corrigan
My List Poem of the All-Important
Trish,
Kindness,
A small family of wildflowers announcing themselves in an abandoned pot,
Morning sun warming barley fields at Castletown House Estate,
A grounded fledgling glaring defiance as I gently inquire of her health,
Mike Jenkins
Not a found poem
But a purchased one –
To find Ewrop on a single cup
Despite the English on top –
Re use
duce
cycle
Birziklatu
Genbruge
Endurvinna
Heidi Beck
Self-Portrait as Road Runner You with your elaborate schemes of entrapment, your hunting parties, moonshine and shot-gun weddings, your Sunday-school socials for girls to glue bird seed and pasta on prayer plaques, sew aprons with Singers– this...