Today’s choice
Previous poems
Matt Bryden
Lightly a god, if he wishes, can save a man, even from far off
Now a blanket is spread, offerings
of chutney and shin bones,
a taper held to the fire
that heats the tar beneath our boats.
A phial of bathwater discolours on a shelf,
unemptied since the day she was taken.
A pigeon in the role of catastrophist at the feast.
And Tiresias there, blindly
reading auguries of birds
from the mishmash of their sounds.
Peter Daniels
No, no one is who they think they are,
nor what we think they are, either:
the demon inside is thinking it
and you can’t tell him.
Paul Stephenson
Like one of those horses
on the carousel
going round and round in circles
sliding up and down a pole
Rob A. Mackenzie
Everything is moving. I have to remind myself
it’s a flat canvas and behind it a wall that’s solid
as I am.
Melanie Branton
A vixen or a reason. A
rave. No air, no sex, nor
Charlotte Oliver
On a bench outside Next,
a punctured woman
traces circles in the air with
a pale finger
Peter Devonald
He is bitterest regrets,
dark chocolate, olives and kale,
The Telegraph and Magritte’s
pipe, the treachery of images.
Anne Ryland
Restless two-hundred-year-old village elder,
a ragged playground of words, or is it weeds –
fragments of chant to slaps of skipping rope.
Colin Dardis
I have never climbed a tree,
never broken a bone
and will never walk on water.
May Garner
The house keeps score
in places no one checks any longer.