Today’s choice

Previous poems

Clive Donovan

 

 

 

Three Winds

I go to the top of the risen hill,
above the trees, beyond the grass,
where only hard ground lives
—and three winds mingle, whispering,

all merging in a jostle.
They use my body frame to make sound
and, listening, I hear, as they tell
where they’ve been and where they go:

You, man, with a gravestone in your heart,
let us shake your woes away
and they do, they really do,
they rattle my teeth with generosity.

I retreat,

my cold hands in empty pockets,
full of the wisdom of the great silence.

 

 

Clive Donovan has three poetry collections, The Taste of Glass [Cinnamon Press 2021], Wound Up With Love [Lapwing 2022] and Movement of People [Dempsey&Windle 2024] and is published in a wide variety of magazines including Acumen, Crannog, Ink Sweat & Tears, Prole and Stand.  
 

Emily A. Taylor

I move my hand long
so yours will follow, and though
this moment tastes of tequila soda
paracetamol pillowed on a fizzing tongue
amnesia… pull me in anyway.

Steph Morris

No way would they let him keep that tag. They saw
a boy they must rename, must mark
from them, a boy whose limbs folded far too gently,

Eryn McDonald

It is here that the day breaks apart
Like ice on frustrated frozen pond
Here in the grounds of Ashton Court
I wish to bury myself amongst the green

Stephen Keeler

The days were huge and kind
and sometimes after school

we’d buy a bag of broken biscuits
for the long walk home

across the heavy heat of afternoon
on lucky days she wouldn’t take

the pennies offered up in supplication