Today’s choice

Previous poems

Maryam Seyf

 

 

 

Off Limits

you and I sit
facing each other
in dialogue
across the table

light between us
or so we think

how curious
our words rebound
before reaching the intended addressee

kisses perhaps, next time we meet.
bring me something
from you know where

maybe that has always been enough

 

 

Maryam Seyf is a poet who left London for Spain. She was a film maker before she discovered poetry. Her inspirations come from walking on the sands close to the waves. She has been long listed for Magma.

Imogen McHugh

      Driven I named him Driven after what he had done. Thinking of all the places we would go together under the canopies of the trees, the watery suns the skin of his knuckles popped out against the steering wheel one hand at two o’clock, the other...

Marie Little

      In the Garden Club Hut with Dad Underarmed up onto the bench beside you pondering your bad back, too much flesh above my knees I absorb the morning like a dry seed. You chat, easy with customers most already friends hand them smiles in paper bags...

Cindy Botha

      Footnotes to a river Pine trees are confirmation that darkness clings erratically. The river-gums, on the other hand, are pale as thighs. A streambed knuckled with pebbles. In conversation with the river, you will not match its fluency. Bellbird,...

Ivan de Monbrison

      мы сделаны из кусочков тишины вместе взятых. гроб из плоти - это тело оно содержит нас от рождения до смерти но в небе только одно облако осталось висеть на углу наклонного здания и кто в любой момент мог упасть     we are made of pieces...

Heather Walker

    Chilled Yeah, I’m okay; been beatin’ up the soil with a spade and fork deadheading the has-beens who no longer talk I have to say in this bone crushing winter I nearly gave up but I’m alright now. Gonna sort the pond next and yup, many a thing has...

Olive M. Ritch

      After Dinner We take up our positions either side of the mantelpiece – he’s in his rocking-chair behind The Times, mouth moving, no sound; I’m counting stitches, the pattern, the history; outside, applause: hailstones on flagstones, then silence...

Martin Potter

      bats under the bridge a broad vault but too low to skirt its flowing floor by weed-cramped margins awareness of great weight above the suspended stones unhomely cut short shelter damp through-draught echoes a paradise of reverse for night-bats...

Julian Dobson

      Out of office auto-response desks morph into surplus femurs stalking unlit rooms    chairs are pelvises minus a sense of swing walls creep further apart each day carpet oceans lap workstations nobody needs to raise a voice now on the executive...