Today’s choice
Previous poems
Nathan Curnow
A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud
-the PhD title of Brian May from Queen
I like to think it’s a story about himself and Einstein
floating in zero gravity, Albert sailing through the capsule
toward his drifting pipe, Brian playing We Will Rock You—
two wild-haired sons on a one-way mission
live-streamed back to Earth, voyaging into Sagittarius A
for the black hole’s ancient thoughts.
Albert’s all a-giggle, barrel-rolling like a seal,
while Brian traces Gemini with the neck of his guitar.
Conversations loop back to Freddie and the stage
of Austria, how destiny, chaos, science and dust
landed them here and there, which is far behind already,
the calm wanderers sailing on, delivering lessons
about the multiverse and the mysteries of stadium rock.
A riff generates a reaction, sets fire to sails in the bay.
An equation must be neat, hum with horror until
our Saviour wakes to the lowing of cattle.
The broadcast breaks. Our pioneers lost in data and debris
arrive at new Bethlehems birthing, being
torn from those that failed. Brian and Albert shatter,
their thesis considered, renewed—
a story of stars chewing story, earworms
creating the devouring hole.
Nathan Curnow is based in Ballarat, Australia. His poems have appeared in The Rialto and the New Nottingham Journal and his latest collection is A Hill to Die On.
Note: The phrases ‘two wild-haired sons’ and ‘the calm wanderers’ are taken from the poem Naming the Stars by Australian poet Judith Wright, first published in 1963.
Karen Little
(Untitled) Oscar had faith in me; I sang without breaks, effortlessly reached the highs and lows, was the voice on the love songs he wrote for his wife. When he fell in love with me, he bought me a bamboo flute, highly polished, an object of...
Hannah Hodgson
Death Rattle Back in the day, everyone loved a good hanging – curiosity gathered in the town square, red-nosed, waiting for the theatre of mortality to end. Today I attract the equivalent crowd – have to untangle my vocal cords from intrusive...
Zoe Mitchell
Shtriga The evil eye is when someone you love looks at you but they aren’t there. My mother is now a Disney villain; the sun has become an insult. She should be fitted with a blood-black velvet cape. Pale blue eyes in a hard-set face stare out...
Kevin Higgins
The Art of Collaboration Whatever job he’s given, the collaborator is a perfect fit. A man of no fixed particulars. His views are plastic and always on the verge of being melted down and made otherwise. His life is a full orchestra of raised...
Charlie Hill
At the Birmingham markets When I was young, before the sky was torn, I strutted in-and-out of poisoned jobs and bare-walled rooms, poor yet indestructible, naive and full of quirk and piss, not belonging but belonging, knowing more than anyone...
Andrew Shields
Thief You took my index finger and showed me where to go. My thumb you painted green. What do you want to grow? My elbow helps you move across a crowded room. But why'd you take my mouth? What will you say, to whom? You swept my feet away and left...
Sue Hubbard
You There you are again at the far end of the empty beach, scrambling over rocks beneath the abandoned nunnery painted ice-cream green. Fleet as a greyhound, tiny as a mote floating in the outer corner of my eye, matted hair a billowing ghost of...
Natalie Rees
How to let it go Pick it up. Feel the weight of it in your hands. Pinch, roll, squeeze, flatten, slap it like fresh clay. Own the reactions of your body. Pinpoint the lump in your throat, the knot in the lowest part of your abdomen. Coax the howl...
Robert Ford
Nothing ever happens A familiar slideshow of picture postcards sidle by through the bubble of your train window; trees new in leaf and freshly-printed lambs, fractured stonewalling clinging impossibly to hill, separating off precious little from...