Today’s choice
Previous poems
Magnus McDowall
Seven Sisters Road
We rolled out on Seven Sisters Road,
two crates of Tyskie empty in my stairwell.
We were talking from the chest, walking backwards
crackling air above our heads like streetlights
beatboxing, spitting Maccies adverts at us
sounds of microwaves and ice cream makers,
night producing jitters in security guards
and a backing track to later chatting up
the leng ones round a table, telling them
we’re long-term ones, wealthy ones, footballer ones
before another pack walk in with their 501s,
Air Force Ones, giving worse grief to the cashier –
nights like these have a habit of splitting into shards.
Cleaved apart by a comment or a look that leaves
you picking up the shrapnel of a headbutt from the pavement
explaining to the officer that it wasn’t your lot who started it.
In the morning you’ll glue the muddle into a mosaic, imagining
steel in the space where your spine might have been.
Magnus McDowall is a poet from London. His poems have appeared in magazines, films, festivals and this campaign for Queens Park Rangers Football Club. His reviews can be found at Writers Mosaic, a division of the Royal Literary Fund.
B. Anne Adriaens
Beware the silent child (4) The arcade is a belly of echoes, jingles glancing off games and slot machines, repeat repeat repeat, punters’ voices a murmur that dies on the carpet. You enter to spend a penny, then retrace your steps to the exit,...
Olivia Heggarty
Beside Everything, in Paris The morning was warmer than the one before, with a blue demitasse lighting your hand up in front of Notre Dame, its steam disappearing like its insides. And the gold flush of my shoulder against your cheek. We held our mouths for...
Elizabeth Gibson
Fish at the quarry I usually hide Fish in my stomach, let it flip away angrily in the acid, or else I stuff it in my pocket, where it gets all woolly and dry, and goes still. Today, I take Fish to the quarry, let it stew in me as I gaze out over...
Hilary Hares
The Pea-Sheller of Crab Street She’d be out there all hours, half past three, two minutes to midnight, shelling peas on the front doorstep, always impeccably scrubbed. The pop of the shuck and the plip of the peas as they dropped into the chipped...
Owen Lewis
Picking Them Up at the Hospital My daughter, son-in-law struggle to strap their newborn into the car seat pulling the seat belt across, under and back, tying a knot, trying again. My daughter chastises her attentive husband who can't...
Simon Maddrell
Any Excuse You won’t find him in there, says Alan Shea as the policeman flips the freezer flap in the fridge looking, they say, for INLA escapee Mad Dog Magee in such an unlikely haven — the home of a Manx gay rights campaigner with a telephone...
Tim Dwyer
AWAKENED BY THE APPROACHING GARBAGE TRUCK WHILE DREAMING OF DU FU First moments of dawn immersed in song of many-voiced birds. From behind the house I wheel the bin to the still dark street. On sky’s rim colors appear that have never been named. I...
Pat Jourdan
Today is Tomorrow I remember this from before, a sudden plane hoovering up the sky more energy than a wasp its direction is its excuse – a new war somewhere. I stand on the fresh autumn grass as the thrumming plane disappears thrusting into space,...
S.C. Flynn
EYEWITNESS OF THE INVISIBLE A homeless moon lingers over the town. I linger with it, both of us bracing for single combat with oblivion at the crossroads where silence is spoken. I was interrogated once again during the night but betrayed only...