Today’s choice
Previous poems
Martin Fisher
Old Empress
Inside, in the half-light, the iron rot took hold.
Forgotten service–obsolete.
Salt-coin neglect.
The money flowed inland,
Moored on an hourglass choke.
No one told the sea.
Orange hull still bright,
Empress her name- cracked white letters,
leans on driftwood where the rails once were.
Salt wind gnaws old paint
one winter at a time — loyal watch keeper.
Fifty years it cut through any storm.
Now the roof sags —
a shroud to a queen.
Gulls cry, a ghost crew in the fret.
A quatrain left —
for this worn craft
tide,
sand, rust
and lament.
Martin Fisher is a debut poet, aged 65, with a working background spanning Africa and Europe. He is a professional gardener living in Sussex, where he enjoys cultivating his garden and restoring antiques, all while writing with his wife and two dogs, Eli and Juno. He can be found on X @mjfkipper and on Facebook @martin.fisher.148
Dan Hughes
Spaghetti in the road I saw a piece of spaghetti in the road, not a fork. That stringy pasta piece didn’t have two choices: a ‘this way or that’, nor an ‘L and R’. It went all ways to show me that time is tangled, tangled as a pocket headphone...
Connor Sansby
Mer de Ballade I’ve been keeping a jar of seawater on my desk. There’s a tragedy in keeping a wild thing captive. In the morning, I see the salt-rim footsteps Of a retreating tide, frozen like a mausoleum. Our bodies are two thirds water. The...
Kate Noakes
That’s best to try In the magic mirror of competition, you’ll never win, best not to try. You have that loose neck, goosey-goosey, and those crow’s feet around your eyes. With their ebony-haired youth and rosy-lipped beauty, step-daughters are the...
Marcelle Olivier
halfmens namaqualand the halfmens feeds off rare fog that travels inland from the coast, and struggles to seed. she is my sentry to the afterlife: the hills here look dead but they burn with grievances and blooms; they paint their poisons daily....
Jon Alex Miller
Aum Desire shudders like a yawn to my surface, a deep song rising for air – a sound at the centre of myself. Sometimes I can feel it in my fingertips. Other times a colony of nights confounds me and my heart stammers. Without sound my body is just...
Dami Ajayi & Emma Neale
THE PARABLE OF THE IMMIGRANT The mirror lies. You cannot touch the reflection you see. You smash the mirror, yet the reflection votes remain on your mind. In the parable of the immigrant, the hummingbird wanders into a car park & finds the...
Martin Rieser
How to Walk to the Sea Follow the footpath past the farm house dodging mud and deeper ruts Pass through the bent and rusted gate the ford choked by balsam and reeds At the first stile look up to the horizon vast grey sea, the buzzard. Ignore the...
Chen-ou Liu
tongues of fire ... the things I take the things it takes * drawn-out yawn . . . morning sunlight tangled in my old dog's tail * beach sunset paints her face wine-red before love after love * around a bend in the wooded trail giant cliff Buddha * ocean breeze a...
Julie Stevens
Control Imagine a box, body-sized and you’re inside. You can stand. Cramped. Just. That’s where I lived and had to lug the thing around with me everywhere I went. Imagine having a voice torn out as the words exit. Ideas choke, when there’s too...