Today’s choice
Previous poems
Martin Fisher
Old Empress
Inside, in the half-light, the iron rot took hold.
Forgotten service–obsolete.
Salt-coin neglect.
The money flowed inland,
Moored on an hourglass choke.
No one told the sea.
Orange hull still bright,
Empress her name- cracked white letters,
leans on driftwood where the rails once were.
Salt wind gnaws old paint
one winter at a time — loyal watch keeper.
Fifty years it cut through any storm.
Now the roof sags —
a shroud to a queen.
Gulls cry, a ghost crew in the fret.
A quatrain left —
for this worn craft
tide,
sand, rust
and lament.
Martin Fisher is a debut poet, aged 65, with a working background spanning Africa and Europe. He is a professional gardener living in Sussex, where he enjoys cultivating his garden and restoring antiques, all while writing with his wife and two dogs, Eli and Juno. He can be found on X @mjfkipper and on Facebook @martin.fisher.148
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.
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