Today’s choice
Previous poems
Michelle Diaz
Mum was
a raised axe and a party hat.
A Victorian wardrobe
packed with 1960s kaftans.
She was the twist and the shout,
the let it all hang out.
She was convent school and wine cellar.
She was a month of Ryvitas followed by
a year of cake & Babycham.
She was four and twenty firm rules
baked in a council house.
Mum was a full purse/an empty purse.
A frightened holdall.
A sacred heart and a sacrificial lion.
A feast and famine. A heated face in the kitchen.
Mum was an infectious laugh in a telephone box.
An abandoned church.
She was suspected lock-jaw/diphtheria/cancer.
She was as straightforward as trigonometry,
clever as a calculator.
She was the planet we orbited,
the centrifugal force.
She was The Big Bang.
And a fathomless black hole.
Michelle Diaz has been published in numerous journals both online and in print, e.g 14 Magazine, Under the Radar and Poetry Wales. She has been shortlisted for Best of the Net and nominated for Forward Prize Single Poem category. She can be found on Twitter and Blue Sky.
James Bradley
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Caleb Parkin
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