Today’s choice
Previous poems
Susan Elizabeth Hale
Cup
Sometimes words are the only thing
that get you through,
But not the words you think,
not a word like love or hope
those are imprecise.
It’s more a word like window
or fenêtre
even curtain
words that are more certain,
that have weight on the tongue
that you feel through the teeth
puffs of air
that set off plosives in the mouth
Rilke was right
we are on this Earth to say
fountain
Sometimes it’s the sound of a voice
you’ve heard for seventy-four years
or since 8th grade
a sound that sets something in motion
like a harp string plucked
a name like Susanna
or Ian,
names that have origin in the body
that rise and generate
names that find you through the night
When words like broken
frozen
alone
stretch too far on the horizon
we need a word like cup
to bring us in from the cold
American ex-pat, Susan Elizabeth Hale has found her home in Ledbury and is a member of the Stanza Hereabouts. She has been published here and there and won third place in the Winchester Writer’s poetry competition in 2018. She is completing her first book.
Dharmavadana
She barely glances at you when you chink
your spare coins in her upturned cap, but still
spreads a spell among the pavement footfalls,
Tim Dwyer
Shedding Annamakerrig It begins high up the chestnut tree with leaves on the twigs on the tips of branches where sap has slowed. Turning amber carried by the breeze they touch the earth, rest on the grass where autumn begins Tim...
Gopal Lahiri
From this far-side apartment
you watch jarul leaves darkening with the seasons
Adam Kelly
Determined, you smash against the window
I have to admire you in your striped suit
Sandra Noel
The sea happens to me today
not because I’m the woman in the bakers
brusque turned rude
or the peaches still hard in the bowl
Grace Lynn
Sunlight saunters in long, thin wires through the fallow field
of my bedroom. You approach, a migrating heron
in a runny yolk collar and suntanned shorts, a white-light emissary
of hope. . .
Miriam Swales
I’m waiting for news I don’t want to talk about
and scrolling through old photos to escape.
After some swipes, I see you walking away.
Chris Hardy
The night before we left we smoked opium
for the first time and didn’t sleep.
Angela France
Perhaps some small creature fallen
from where it should be. I am unsure
whether I saw it move.