Today’s choice

Previous poems

Jean Atkin

 

 

 

Finders

We scoured the parish tip most weeks, when we were kids.
We clambered it in wellies.  Ferals, we scavenged
in the debris of the adults’ lives.

Like a mad deck shuffled, our tip turned up
a fat brown teapot without a lid/ a yellow rubber duck/
a huge string vest/ a Playboy stash/
a galvanized bucket, base burned out by ash.

We shrieked and burrowed through the sodden sacks,
won a red ballcock, no chain. And why so many
rusty bicycles with missing spokes?
We delved a split tea crate
for crimson curtains, slung them
round our shoulders to make mildewed cloaks.
Then I carried home a violet on a broken plate.

 

 

Jean Atkin’s third full collection High Nowhere is was published last year by IDP. Previous publications include How Time is in Fields (IDP); The Bicycles of Ice and Salt (IDP) and Fan-peckled (Fair Acre Press). She is a poet in education and community.  www.jeanatkin.com

Kate Noakes

If you follow faerie lights
that wisp where boardwalk
becomes trackway, make sure
you’re stocked with milk,
or bread and salt.

Mai Ishikawa

    Taxi I took shelter under a tree, where you also sheltered. You looked at me awkwardly, as if to say Excuse me before shaking your feathers – a tiny droplet landed on my cheek. Suspended, we held each other responsible for the silence. We listened to the...

Lue Mac

Sad how things expire before you work out
what they mean. Like earlier I was noticing
the rose petals on the path, all damp and slick,

Alice O’Malley-Woods

For the Peregrines of Offham Chalk Pit The quarry holds your eyrie like a grateful palm. You - indelicate gobber all gape and gum-pink circled in the beach white like a mouth stuck in wonder. O spit-shrieker coming back for yourself, tearing fur so diligently, never...

Lori D’Angelo

The cat puts his paw on my hair, and I think about
where we could go if we weren’t here. Maybe the
nail salon, which seems like a good destination for
kill time Saturdays.

Lucy Wilson

Dear Fish, you swam from life and gave your flesh; forgive me.
In your ice-tomb, your scales a rainbow of tiny glaciers, frozen in flight;
like you, I let myself get caught, sank my heart in a false sea.