Today’s choice
Previous poems
Kevin Denwood
Waiting Room
Name called.
Not mine.
Wasn’t I
here first?
A new arrival
spreads out.
One chair
always left empty.
I glance at copies of
National Geographic,
Vogue,
Woman’s Weekly —
all out of date.
It’s possible
they expired
while I was waiting.
Impatient sighs
mix with the soft
turn of a page.
I glance
around the room.
Nothing catches.
Some scroll frantically.
Others pretend to decipher
The Economist.
Most stare
into space
or at their shoes.
I read the poster
about prostate cancer
again.
Kevin Denwood is a Cumbrian poet whose work explores memory, ageing and everyday social observation. His poems have appeared in Free the Verse, Obsessed with Pipework, and Poems, Tales & Other English Words.
Angela France
Perhaps some small creature fallen
from where it should be. I am unsure
whether I saw it move.
Adam Horovitz
We cannot update you yet, other than to say we are caught
in a doldrums between stations and that your father can wait
as he has been waiting these past two years . . .
Sue Spiers
A woodpigeon calls
his five-note matins.
Petals ratchet wide
as the sun rises.
Alison Jones
Distance from the ground has become
a way of reminding myself,
how the earth turns her swaying tilt
John Coburn
Inside May’s warm beauty
I think of God and of the Virgin Mary.
I’ve always loved Mary.
Joe Wright
three sheep and a sharp wind, behind
which I feel involvement start
to tug.
Clara-Læïla Laudette
I’m six days late
and this is known as a
delinquent period.
Jan Swann
You seem very far from home
and who would after all choose a grit pocked
pavement to languish on
Gwen Sayers
Clouds spit on the coffin,
wring oily rags, splash
a woman, her violin
cased in sunken purple.