Today’s choice

Previous poems

Nathan Evans

 

 

Great Depression

If they ask where I am, tell them: I am
wintering. I have secreted small acorns
of sadness in crevices of gnarled limbs
and shall be savouring their bitternesses
on the back of my tongue until the days
lengthen.

But mainly, I’ll be sleeping:
while they beaver away under skies
painted Prussian Blue and Payne’s Grey,
I shall snore under layers of fat and fur
I worked for all year, until the days
wax warmer.

Only then shall I venture
from my lair to take the spring air; sore
eyed, they’ll stare, wonder who is that
creature—so slender, so eager? And
I’ll declare it is I, the grizzled bear—
tendered make-over by my nature.

 

 

Nathan’s poetry has been published by Muswell Press, Royal Society of Literature, Manchester Metropolitan University, Fourteen Poems and Broken Sleep. His debut collection, Threads, was long-listed for Polari First Book Prize, his second, CNUT, is published by Inkandescent.
nathanevans.co.uk

Holly Magill

. . .you’re swallowed whole
into this cocoon: pine-scent, antibac and the dry
whoosh of his heater – lean your careworn bones into
synthetic leather snug, . . .

Ruth Aylett

God had been playing computer games
for a chunk of eternity when he became aware
he’d left creation in the oven for a long time

Jeanette Burton

What is this, a family outing?

Yes, dad, that’s exactly what this is, I want to say to him
as I open the car door, climb into the front seat,
remembering those marvellous trips to the tip at Loscoe.

CS Crowe

      Lines He lived next to the funeral home with his three daughters. A cherry picker beeps in the distance. I cannot see it, but I know the light is red. Who brings roses to a funeral? Rain rolls down window glass, but not here, only somewhere in the...