Today’s choice
Previous poems
Helen Finney
The Perseids at Bannau Brycheiniog
At my feet the window sprawls a view of kneaded land,
craggy baked by the hand of the gods, dusted green
with short bit grass. A sheep walks by
along the grey faded road, pitted with age,
worn tired with wear.
Last night I’d lain upon the ground late after dark, the warmth
of the day held beneath me, to await the heaven’s shower.
While all slept but the owl that called, the tears of St Lawrence
wept in the sky, lines of silver silked the black blue,
tacking space to the earth, sewing us into the universe.
With an MA in Fine Art, Helen Finney spent most of her life working as a fine artist in Swansea; however, recently her practice has taken her more towards writing. She has been published in Ink, Sweat & Tears, Poetry Wales, Dreich Mag, Gyroscope Review and elsewhere. She has released four collections of poetry.
Gurpreet Bharya
Imagining myself as a bitter, old woman Here I am as old as you said I would grow altogether alone drinking tea curled up with a gossip of stars and the milky thaw of the moon – the thrum of the air still thrums in me as the flowers fold in...
Louise Mather
Afflictions I swallow the seams of the moon – they have always riddled me, if I lay on a stage of feathers I would still feel the underneath of dark atoms, afflictions you pull from the bridge only when god has given you to the water....
Jon Miller
Shadows night blinds the forest tracks pins itself to pine needles antennae frisk its long coat and small foxes learn their trade each leaf sleeps ponds close their one eye woods are busy in their dark diaries as all the shadows unbuckle slip...
Simon Maddrell
There is a paradox of the irresistible that wonders what happens when it meets the immovable. * A man tried to sell a shield & a spear his marketing spiel had such a fatal flaw it triggered a Chinese word for contradiction. * There was a fox...
Zoë Green
The Way North After Paul Flora’s Der Weg nach Norden II The way north is a savage smile that zig-zags the whole length of the page of ice. You pause on the lip of its jaw above dumb unspeakable black. Across the void you dream the flickering...
Helen Ivory on April Fool’s Day
The Fool I am the man you see on a ladder square centre of a field on your morning commute. The rake in my hands clears a patch in the clouds for a clutch of sunflower seeds. Next time you look up from your paper a pother of songbirds have tatted...
Rizwan Akhtar
Demands now a surreal residue lives on your hair you play with in a corridor checking out light fading smiles a verisimilitude of close hands evenings spent on waiting chairs creaked but that decibel silence torn by a stubborn bird outside...
Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
Break-out Session “I’ll stay here with the strawberries,” he said. He still supposed such droll remarks displayed his youthful eccentricity. The fruit in question, surplus to the buffet lunch, was resting, moist and fragrant, in a bowl, alongside...
Chrissy Banks
Birthday after Dorothea Tanning I can hardly believe you are real, come in the night with a present; here, at my door, in a snow-dappled coat, your hair illumined, your eyes small violets. I have doors beyond doors, canvasses propped against every...