Today’s choice

Previous poems

Mark McDonnell

 

 

 

First Funeral

Fascinated by the priest’s teeth I don’t realise
I’m kicking the pew in front with a restless foot
until someone taps me sharply on the knee.

I’m near the coffin on its trestles and a plaster Jesus
whose wounds shed drops of hard shiny blood.
I think he looks a bit disappointed in me.

Perhaps he wants me to Be Brave like Him
and not to make things worse for everyone.
I’m not sure if I should cry. I can see

my father is crying and I know that’s
because, He’s lost his soul mate;
that’s what Fr. Stephens told my auntie.

 

 

Mark McDonnell sings, writes and teaches English to refugees.  He used to manage a pharmaceutical company and then a counselling charity.  He has had worked published in a wide variety of journals during the last four years.  See www.instagram.com/mcdonnellpoet5135  and https://www.facebook.com/mark.mcdonnell.9231/

Sarah Boyd

He’s a house of cards, a delicately balanced pyramid
held together by hearing aids and dusty bifocals and
wobbling dentures and ageing pacemaker and
shirt with three buttons missing in action and

Samantha Carr

You became obsessed with nucleated red blood cells when you peeked through an
aperture window at your liquid, viscous nature. You became obsessed with maps

Helen Akers

we’re trying to construct a frame for this
‘highly reactive impulsive emotion’
the nurse is looking into it   

Jenny Robb

By the light of a wolf moon,
my father turns mad.
Anne whispers to a girl in the wind,
and a friend blows into my life.