Today’s choice
Previous poems
Sally Michaelson
Summer Job
Heads under bonnets
mechanics catch a wiff
of a girl passing
half-hearted whistles
follow my skeleton
into Accounts
my Friday wages
will buy Mum and Dad
a market stall tea set
with piped dragons
all venom, hissing
icicles of flame
Sally Michaelson is a recently retired Conference Interpreter living in Brussels. Her poems have been published in Ink Sweat & Tears, Lighthouse, Algebra of Owls, The Bangor Literary Journal, Squawk Back, Amethyst, and The Lake. Website: www.sallymichaelson.com
Sharon Larkin
Post-operative It would be a while before he touched alcohol or felt in any way frisky, he said. The stitches were too new. She understood. He asked her to look under the dressing. There was a little oozing from his new zip. It was bloodless....
Rizwan Akhtar
Aposiopesis I see you waving from behind the fence I am trying it hurts clouds wait and move over fields swallows distracted by the burr of an aero plane resting elbows the wrinkled hands of the mower blather into action the company though assorted shows care...
Melanie Branton
White Goods As I came down the stairs, the kitchen came upon me, buzzed through my teeth and elbows. The twin tub having a seizure, a St Vitus’ thrumming twist and shout. The shepherd’s crook of the hose clipped to the side of the sink snake-thrashed in...
Tom Kelly
Singing With Elvis The Rediffusion is playing Elvis. I am sitting in our dining-room, not sure if we ever called it that. There is a yearning in the young Elvis hitting me like a wet clout. We bond, he is a long-lost brother, singing, ‘Are You...
On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, we bring you Helen Boden, Sarah L Dixon and Penny Ayers
Empties First of Jan, affluent suburb. Stockbridge, but it could be anywhere across the island, in Ely, Richmond, Beauly. In place of regretting they put their empties out, arranged by colour, size, acoustic property. Scores of bottles, neatened...
On the Eleventh Day of Christmas, we bring you Gareth Writer-Davies, Josie Moon, Sue Finch and Sam Garvan
Twelfth Night the weather through the draped window dreich the fire spits and greetings cards make a merry flame as I the audient listen to the sermon of the grate that a living room is empty unless you let in a little light Gareth...
On the Tenth Day of Christmas, we bring you Antony Owen, Mandy Macdonald and Ramona Herdman
Christmas in the wasteland For Prof R Klein Bird foot snow arrows east Sun is oblong yolk spilt over elms I see Hiroshima setting and all is silent now. I see you in snow drift apparitions Bride not to be scattered to five winds I feel the chilblain frost and think of...
On the Ninth Day of Christmas, we bring you Josephine Corcoran, Nicholas McGaughey and Jack Houston
Parenting Book I wrote it down when they woke me at 3am to tell me they didn’t like ham anymore, only jam and cheese. How on the toilet is the best place to sing. I kept a notebook for years: the sore throat bad as three arrows sticking...
On the Eighth Day of Christmas, we bring you Andrea Holland, Sue Burge and Angela Topping
Domain The fork garden is planted by hallmark, by taxonomic value from the tines down. Frost plates the handle, silver lip at the edge of soil, dug out in winter, dug out of winter, bringing up root and louse. If dirt bound and iced in the fork...