Today’s choice
Previous poems
Lucy Heuschen
Matred
After the medieval “Noah plays” of Chester, York and Towneley.
Noah’s wife is traditionally not named in religious texts.
The name Matred comes from a novel by Madeleine L’Engle.
It is known: a woman like that
brings evil on board.
Look at her, pushing forward, all shriek
and clinging skirts, ticking off
the ways Noah is getting it wrong.
Imagine, close quarters, a year at sea.
Shrew would work, for the galley
is full to bursting with such beasts.
Or nag. No, because what kind of man
abandons his mare, even one like her?
Goad, maybe. Short spear. Or say
she reported visions. Saw herself alone,
skin-soaked, and a flock of women
keening for a world gone under.
Leave out that Noah laughed
in her face before the deluge came.
How she knew he’d drag her
by rain-knotted hair
her protest
drowning in her throat.
Lucy Heuschen has appeared in The High Window, The Storms, Ink Sweat & Tears, Obsessed By Pipework, Lighthouse, Skylight 47 and several anthologies. The author of two previous chapbooks, Lucy’s debut collection will be published by Yaffle Press. www.lucyheuschen.co.uk.
Finola Scott
Tell me again in this ragged midnight that intimacy will endure waters aren't rising and tomorrow the fritillary butterfly will graze my garden tell me that passion is not merely nocturnal but a tsunami of connection no stormy tea-cup but the...
Gary Jude
Birds Everyone held a bird, except you. A policeman eyed you suspiciously. You followed the crowd into the square. When the clock struck noon, everyone lifted their bird aloft. Some snapped necks and wings, or let their bird fly. A wife watched...
Fiona Theokritoff
Smickling I am as useless as a coronet, have lost a shoal of bloodied runts. Who shall assist me? Perhaps a ripe and red-faced peasant with more brats than she can raise. I need her shoes, I need a charm to stick what quickens to its cage. Perhaps...
Mark Valentine
The Road to Chalvington at Dusk Cast out from Eden he journeyed along the roads of dog-rose in the cloaky overcoat of good tweed and lit a cigarette cupped against the wind so that his fingers glowed and took that first best draught of it and...
Alan Dunnett
Descent Into Hades In order to discover what took place, I eventually made a descent by slow ratcheting, hard and easy, caught at last by the moment despite warnings and my own considerations. Your face appears before me and your will, unbent at...
Padrika Tarrant on National Flash Fiction day
An Escape In the back room’s desiccated atmosphere, the spiders stole one another’s shoes and sang their clever songs with their elbows folded. The shelf of hats stood to stiff attention, three coal black and a female in splendid blue that came...
Abigail Ardelle Zammit
Her Future Husband Appears to Her in the Shape of a Hawk after Victoria Brookland She never knows by which door he enters, but suddenly he is inside her. Her red underdress of hoops and holes stands stiff as a lightning pole. In her ribs, the...
Tom Kelly
No Easy Answer Raymond Chandler’s having a drink in his LA apartment. Light borrowed from an Edward Hopper painting; near-harsh reading lamp beacons on his desk where a trilby makes a salute to half-eaten shadows. Sitting on a stiff-backed chair...
Mark Connors
Charity shop crawl I start in Scope, find my first Kiss T-shirt from the Lick it Up tour, the old black now charcoal grey, a seven inch tongue lost to too much Persil. In Shelter, I find my leather jacket, purchased from an alternative clothing...