Today’s choice
Previous poems
Paul Short
Midnight Swingball
Sleep.
Elusive as lucid dreams.
Closed eyes teem wotsit-orange,
spiderweb scarlet &
thatch-brown
body jerks like a
swingball.
Conscience and subconscious
flailing paddles
back forward|forward back
body jerks like a
swing
ball.
Mind simmers with breathless envy
at the
creak-scratch
of
snoutswoons.
forward back | back forward
I try to surrender to exhaustion
body jerks like a
s
w
i
n
g
b
a
l
l.
Paul Short is a Pushcart and BOTN nominated poet from Newcastle upon Tyne. Paul’s work has appeared on BBC Upload, A Thousand Shades of Green Podcast and in Full House Literary, Broken Spine, Black Bough, Dust Poetry and more.
Martin Rieser
The river is an old demon
& my heart is an infirm creature
The river is sure of its way
& my heart is capable of lies.
Sreeja Naskar
glass-tooth morning.
salt mouth.
i left the stove on just to feel wanted.
Gordan Struić
Still —
I kept
writing.
Sometimes
just:
“Hi.”
Margaret Poynor-Clark
Inside my bedroom I take a fresh blade
pull off my jumper, examine the ladder
in front of the mirror cut through my laces
rung by rung
Jenny Hockey
That’s when she went to ground,
after she disobeyed, painted her plastic tea set
red, hidden away in the playhouse they built
down where bindweed draped
Sue Proffitt
You and I have had many talks since you died.
Nick Cooke
If when you go to the barber today
He asks if you’d like him to ‘tidy up your ears’,
Think of all the wildest sprawling vegetation
That will never be tidied, or trimmed, by clippers or shears,
Edward Alport
High up, out of reach,
on a branch, no, more a twig,
a little wizened, shrunken face leers down.
Colin Pink
not the kind you eat with
but useful to turn the soil
root out potatoes or carrots