Today’s choice
Previous poems
Paul Short
Midnight Swingball
Sleep.
Elusive as lucid dreams.
Closed eyes teem wotsit-orange,
spiderweb scarlet &
thatch-brown
body jerks like a
swingball.
Conscience and subconscious
flailing paddles
back forward|forward back
body jerks like a
swing
ball.
Mind simmers with breathless envy
at the
creak-scratch
of
snoutswoons.
forward back | back forward
I try to surrender to exhaustion
body jerks like a
s
w
i
n
g
b
a
l
l.
Paul Short is a Pushcart and BOTN nominated poet from Newcastle upon Tyne. Paul’s work has appeared on BBC Upload, A Thousand Shades of Green Podcast and in Full House Literary, Broken Spine, Black Bough, Dust Poetry and more.
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She bakes bread and lights candles
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I’ve got all this money lying around.
Have you got anything you can do with it?
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What fell between an abrupt shower
and a sky’s attitude was your memory.
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Colleagues munching bap and burger
thought Ramadan was that juicy winger,
his scorching pace soon snaffled up by City.
Sue Moules
Sings at the top of the bare-branched tree
an aubade to morning
welcomes the light,
early spring, season of nest-making.
Andrew Tucker Leavis
as the tanker tore
its throat against the
shallow spine, as
the village unravelled
Patricia Minson
Between the trees dust shifts,
light fractures like a prism.
A cathedral silence greens the air.
B. Anne Adriaens
The French term terrain vague enfolds
a plot of land I thought at first was vague,
undefined and malleable.
John Bartlett
mornings
I wake wary
of abundance
wondering why I’m still here
and then I recall
all the green leaves
with their hiding birds