Today’s choice
Previous poems
George Sandifer-Smith
A Farmer’s Son Watches Galaxies Turn, Groes Bach
Spring 1833 – mists folding their sheets in the fields.
Isaac Roberts feels the turned earth, his father’s
farm an island in the hurtling Milky Way –
splashes of cream across the churning ocean
wearing its distant reds, greens, unintelligible
darknesses. Those tools will cool his hands,
gravity magnetising them the closer he lies,
the flatter he is to the grass. Silage by star
light, all the gods are cloaked – good.
Cows low in the aperture, exposure long
as light years. In the measure of those burning
journeys to our eyes, the long clag of time
between Christmas and New Year, 1888 arrives.
He captures the Andromeda Galaxy in his plates,
shapes every nebula. The sky expands until time ends.
George Sandifer-Smith is a Welsh writer. He has published two collections, Empty Trains (Broken Sleep Books) and Nights Travel at the Right Speed (Infinity Books).
Lucy Maxwell Scott
Lobster If my father were home, the larder would be full of brown paper bags bursting with over-ripe mangoes, purple-tipped artichokes, dead pheasant hanging, packets of stinking cheese, figs split and spilling seed, and sometimes I would be...
Chin Li
Afternoon Walk I went out for my afternoon walk, and dreamed of no man’s land: a Bir Tawil, a terra nullius fort; I went out for my afternoon walk: orchids bloomed on pseudobulbs ― pink, yellow and vanilla to sport; I went out for my afternoon...
Chris Rice
Referendum I throw the ballpoint pen away. She hits the carpet with her stick and says she wants it back. I offer her another one but, no, she wants the one she’s always used. I check my watch and roll my eyes and marvel at her stubbornness, her...
Lucien Linwood
Things They Tell You your mom tells you when you’re six years old that if one person says something is wrong with you get a second opinion but if two people say the same thing consider that they might be right she tells you people can see inside of you they’ll figure...
Veronica Aaronson
I am the Groupie I stalk Frink’s warrior – London, Liverpool, Swindon, Chicago. He entices me into art galleries and sculpture parks in the pouring rain. I want to know the dreams that curl up in his bones, the length of his longing, depth of his...
David Subacchi
The Deputy His office Next to the Head’s Was so untidy, Papers on chairs, Rubbish bin overflowing But it was here They all waited, For an interview Or a result. Amongst his jumble And his wall charts And the red faced Secretary Apologising. ...
Hilary Otto
What the data about migration told me We are incoming packets discrete, carrying our own context. Our aim is to pass through without being stored in a session. We choose the optimal path for delivery, clustering at the interface between nodes....
Twelve Days of Christmas Zoom preview . . . Live from the Butchery
Please join us for a zoom launch of our annual Twelve Days of Christmas feature, on 13th December at 4pm GMT. Our 12 readers are: Pascal Vine , David Bleiman, Maggie Mackay, Amlanjyoti Goswami, Carole Bromley, Lesley Ingram, Ramona Herdman, Sue Burge, Susie...
Jane Thomas
Taking HRT at The Neon Sign Museum, Las Vegas Popped tubes and leaking neon. Lucky, Golden Gate, Circus-Circus, half illuminated Happy Days. Scorching pinks turned to blues, stiletto heels snapped to slippers, bright night shine, dull by dusk. The...