Today’s choice

Previous poems

Jeff Skinner

 

 

 

Erato

It takes ages. Tell me what it is you’re after
she says, when finally I get through.
Rain, I answer, rain that falls softly

in a garden, and on the Aegean,
the noise they make together,
trees in the rain, and the way rain brightens

the green leaves and the blue tiles
shine like new. Is that everything? she asks
and I say, yes it is, for the moment, yes.

 

 

Jeff Skinner’s poems have been published in anthologies and journals, most recently in Poetry News, Allegro, Drawn to the Light. He was commended in the recent Sonnet or Not competition. He volunteers at his local food bank, reads, writes.

Ben

When she said ‘could’, it was clearly in italics
and when she said ‘one day’, the creak of glaciers
shuddered around its edges.

Dragana Lazici

the days are long but the years are short.
seconds are tiny kitchen knives in my back.
i stopped reading Dickinson, her voice is a sad parrot.

Abigail Ottley

Faces, unless they come swimming up close. are a blur of piggy-pink and ice-
cream. In the street, she doesn’t know, cannot be certain when to smile, when to
look away

Emma Simon

No-one has seen a ghost while breast-feeding
despite the unearthly hours, the half-light

mad sing-song routines of rocking a child
back to sleep.