Today’s choice
Previous poems
Francis de Lima
Portrait
Oh London. U useless city. Map to
nowhere land. Tight stretch
open eye. The underground metal.
The night tube. The railway. Smog
Over coaltrip. The presence
Of machine upon machine. U
behemoth. Sea urchin. Fricative city.
And yet. Nightlamp burning into
the chippy down and out. Art in
the stuck gum on the Millenium.
And Wren
turned St Pauls upside down to count
a broken weightline
distance into the future. Momentum scream.
A liars’ cant. Tragedy at play. But so vast
Life in the kingdom. Test tube. Raucous.
Speakers in the round. Wringing poems.
Irish epiphany. Cream of glass.
Capable of cracking. Capable.
Brittle plant. Chewing.
Something growing. On Primrose
Hill.
The heath. Episodes and vignettes.
Untouchable happiness. Insulated time.
Francis de Lima is a Finnish-Brazilian poet living in London, where they recently completed their MA in Poetic Practice at Royal Holloway. Many of their poems can be found in literature magazines and some have even been nominated for an award or two.
Paula R. Hilton
When the genie appears, I’m in a frivolous
mood. First request? My mom’s apple pie.
Alice Huntley
slack in a bag from the freezer aisle
shaken out like shrunken grey memes
I long for the podding of beans
Rhonda Melanson
The magic of growing things, its tangible beauty, I did not understand.
Clive Donovan
I go to the top of the risen hill,
above the trees, beyond the grass,
where only hard ground lives
Gary Akroyde
We searched for it
through the tarmac in every rain-bruised sky
in dark Pennine shadows where great mills
spewed out ringlets of ghost-grey fog
Nathan Curnow
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—
Paul Short
Sleep.
Elusive as lucid dreams.
Closed eyes teem wotsit-orange,
spiderweb scarlet &
thatch-brown
Ash Bowden
Out again with the pitchfork churning
compost into the old green bin, stinking
and silent as an ancient earthen vat.
Mallika Bhaumik
This is not a frilly, mushy love letter
to a city whose allure lies in defying all labels and holding the mystery key to a man’s heart, though none has ever been able to lay an absolute claim on it,