Today’s choice
Previous poems
Nathan Curnow
A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud
-the PhD title of Brian May from Queen
I like to think it’s a story about himself and Einstein
floating in zero gravity, Albert sailing through the capsule
toward his drifting pipe, Brian playing We Will Rock You—
two wild-haired sons on a one-way mission
live-streamed back to Earth, voyaging into Sagittarius A
for the black hole’s ancient thoughts.
Albert’s all a-giggle, barrel-rolling like a seal,
while Brian traces Gemini with the neck of his guitar.
Conversations loop back to Freddie and the stage
of Austria, how destiny, chaos, science and dust
landed them here and there, which is far behind already,
the calm wanderers sailing on, delivering lessons
about the multiverse and the mysteries of stadium rock.
A riff generates a reaction, sets fire to sails in the bay.
An equation must be neat, hum with horror until
our Saviour wakes to the lowing of cattle.
The broadcast breaks. Our pioneers lost in data and debris
arrive at new Bethlehems birthing, being
torn from those that failed. Brian and Albert shatter,
their thesis considered, renewed—
a story of stars chewing story, earworms
creating the devouring hole.
Nathan Curnow is based in Ballarat, Australia. His poems have appeared in The Rialto and the New Nottingham Journal and his latest collection is A Hill to Die On.
Note: The phrases ‘two wild-haired sons’ and ‘the calm wanderers’ are taken from the poem Naming the Stars by Australian poet Judith Wright, first published in 1963.
Ansuya Patel
Women scrape coins from their purse,
count pennies, one lifts up a watermelon
in mid-air like raising a newborn to light.
Pippa Little
a woman’s rage cannot raise the dead
but it may split stone like lightning
Abiodun Salako
a boy grows tired
of dying again and again.
i am building him a morgue
for Thanksgiving.
Patrick Wright
It’s as if the dream
is telling me we are still joined
somehow, despite waking
and me trudging on, even though
your voicemail is off, your locks
changed.
William Collins
We carry the shame of Paragraph 352D
folded into suitcases at foreign borders,
where love is questioned like a crime,
and disbelief stamped heavier than visas.
They tell us to run for our lives —
but only if we can do it quietly.
Oz Hardwick
The ghost of my mother knows the names of everything, but
she can’t tell me, because ghosts, whatever you have heard
to the contrary, can’t speak.
McLord Selasi
I walk the flat barefoot,
step over old dreams
still curled like cats
in the corners.
Warren Mortimer
& you’ll understand if i leave open this theatre of air
not as the invite for another loss
but to honour their world unwilling to collapse
Jena Woodhouse
Language reinvents itself,
coruscates in signs on walls;
falls silent, mute as clay and stone
on tablets that enshrine its form.