Today’s choice
Previous poems
Gail Webb
Something Missing
He cuts. I lie still, teach myself
to dream of St David’s Bay,
seaweed strewn on incoming tides,
surfers slice big waves in half.
He butchers with hammer, saw.
No nightmares, though he says
it’s possible-you could wake
in the middle of the operation,
stirred by loud banging. I advise
him to knock me out good
and proper. We both know the truth,
he will take something from me,
cut flesh away, file bone, move
kneecap, sever nerves, tendons.
He promises to replace pain
with a super joint, a hero.
I come round, crying, smell
of blood and piss. The body knows
muscle and bone are gone.
For months, messages arrive
in my brain, something’s missing.
He does not acknowledge,
it’s part of my DNA now, this loss.
David Callin
Twilight in the Forestry Board Garden How easily a willow, loitering by the river, impersonates a figure turning, in the act of asking for directions, or simply wondering whether to step into the water. In twilight things grow fluid, lose their...
John Saunders
The Earl of Charleville’s Forest The grounds of my local ascendancy castle, a favoured haunt for joggers. As I trot along the ancient path lined by centenarian oaks and beeches I imagine himself on his postprandial walk accompanied by his loyal...
Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
Is That Really How To Do It? A seat and shelter commemorating the Tolpuddle Martyrs was erected in 1934 by the wealthy London draper Sir Ernest Debenham. Transporting half a dozen Dorset men on trumped-up evidence: the gentry’s way of thwarting...
Doryn Herbst
Bee Dress After Girl with a Bee Dress image by Maggie Taylor For your sixteenth birthday, you got a dress made from a swarm of live bees, pulled in at the waist with a drawstring, which you were made to wear on special occasions. If you refused to...
Mandy Schiffrin
Soundtrack To A Pause There's a cornered big cat in my attic, snarling, lip-curled; its guttural growl swallowed at the back of its throat. Nearby, the deadened thunk of a skull, knocking persistently against the skylight: tick, tick, ticking, out...
Caroline Gilfillan
The Story of ‘I’ My ‘I’ landed with a thump. One day a mother was chasing the tails of two small sons, the next I was there, orange as an apricot. Distracted, she bundled me into blankets and tired cardigans, carried me home on her lap in the...
Abigail Ottley
Abigail Ottley writes poetry and short fiction from her home in Penzance. As an older woman writer with a passion for history, she usually has at least one foot in the past. facebook.com/abigailelizabethottley...
Mark Connors
Mark Connors is a poet from Leeds. Life is a Long Song was published by OWF Press in 2015, Nothing is Meant to be Broken by Stairwell Books in 2017. Optics was published by YAFFLE in 2019 and After in 2021. www.markconnors.co.uk.
Matthew Paul
The Semi-Fast Service to 1969 I catch snatches of serviced apartment blocks being unbuilt, rows of terraced houses resurrecting from a rubble heap back into their heyday. As per usual, when the train pulls in to 1999, I ease on a pair of swimming...