Today’s choice

Previous poems

Paul Stephenson

 

 

 

Old Master

Goya was an octopus that smelt of funerals on Mondays.
Sundays, the scent of getting ready.

Goya liked to swim with sensory stimulus.
He would splash about his palette.

Goya made two circles on a first encounter.
His grip was firm, a low-pressure suction.

Goya had other minds that didn’t mind much.
Who cares that no one cared?

Goya painted inside a fish tank in A Coruña.
His muse was delirium in the aquarium.

Goya painted the inside of a fish tank in A Coruña.
They say it looked like him.

Goya was the insides of a fish tank in A Coruña.
The world is full of deniers.

 

 

Paul Stephenson’s debut collection Hard Drive was published by Carcanet in 2023. It was shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award and the Polari Book Prize. He has three pamphlets including Selfie with Waterlilies (Paper Swans Press, 2017).

Anne Bailey

      One side of a conversation over breakfast The flowers, no they were petals, were suspended over my head. I think they were singing a quiet song to themselves. They were white, each one in its own space. They were stationary but fluttering. I was...

Carla Scarano D’Antonio

      Imaginarium ‘I am a smiling woman’ Sylvia Plath, Lady Lazarus And it came to me that stones, trees and water live in a circle trace their souls stain the landscape, it’s a luxury you can lead your life without choosing and yet determined to leave...

Bryan Marshall

      Some Crows So little happens that I tell you everything twice. The crow, I swear, followed my eye behind the door, knew to leave me something delicate and silver. Another crow, a different one, I swear, took up with its beak some chant or other,...

Gareth Writer-Davies

      Purblind & Font in the odds ‘n’ ends drawer one might find what one is looking for amongst the biros and string purblind spectacles you might find anything half-remembered by the mind’s claw lemon rind what the hell was that for? there must...

Jonathan Edis

Jonathan Edis

Jonathan Edis is a full-time dad, international lecturer & osteopath from Essex, living in south London. He’s in several poetry groups & is a rep for Forest Hill Stanza. This is his first published poem for ages.

Chris Kinsey

      Walking the Ring Road A sprig of hawthorn brushes away gritty city miles – back to gran banishing me and may blossom from the house – Smell of death. Smell of death. I’m running back to the trees clouding the field edge, burrowing up from the...

Peter Kenny

      One hundred geraniums   No steampunk engine, no onyx dashboard, no timepiece whirring as the world unwinds… I ride a dry leaf to travel in time. Citrusy astringency in my palm hot-wires one hundred dead geraniums in my hippocampi, to blaze again...

Sue Finch

      Clambake I had not heard of it the night its title was spelt out in tiles on the oujia board. The question lingered on the air like smoke from a blown-out candle, Is there anyone there?   My thighs clenched, dreading a reply. A pause then before...

Robin Lindsay Wilson

      Postcard he squealed around bends drinking until he sideswiped the Castle Douglas sign his golf umbrella was a shield between gift shops and departure but it hooked at strange faces and hurt his arthritic hand he almost bought a travel-rug and...