Today’s choice

Previous poems

Julian Dobson

 

 

 

The small press publisher

You too I guess
have studied the surviving starlings

as they swoop and whistle
by the snack trailer at Moorfoot
glinting for crumbs of flaky pastry

like a glimpsed field of dandelions

and everything turns holy – you
shouldering your bag
of printer-fresh smooth pages

halting the gutterwebbed streets
with round words, delicate
as dust-jackets. See

how those walked syllables
arc into hollow air
in tattily furnished function rooms

or slip through letterboxes,
little pearly grenades.

 

 

Julian Dobson’s work has appeared in numerous print and online journals, including Stand, The Rialto, and Tears in the Fence. Julian lives in Sheffield but hasn’t yet learned to love mushy peas.

John Bartlett

mornings
I wake wary
of abundance
wondering why I’m still here
and then I recall
all the green leaves
with their hiding birds

Maya Little

I’m trying to stop thinking about what I want to not // be. Sometimes I have looked into my heart and found that // everything’s packed up.

Ben Banyard

There were hundreds of them, all in period costume,
each generation explained who they were,
queued like at a wedding reception to greet us.