Today’s choice
Previous poems
Finola Scott
Testing the mettle
Ther was no man, for peril, dorste hym touche. A Sheffeld thwitel baar he in his hose.
The Reeves Tale, Canterbury Tales, Chaucer.
Such a knife, a real Et Tu Brute number. Bone handled, incisive. Decades of marriage
had whetted the blade to feather lean. Anniversaries marked in metal. Such durability,
flexibility. No base Plate here, for Dad, nothing but the best. Sheffield-sharp, that knife
carved and cut filigree fine, ever pristine, stainless. Always Mum wielded and whittled
with panache. Never a slice or nick. No sudden gore in our kitchen. Perched on a stool
beside her I observed as maribu-muled she coaxed the potatoes from their skins. Like
a serpent surrendering, the peel twisted and ravelled beneath the certainty of the blade.
I bracelet my arms with the coiling brown/ cream/ brown peelings, never realising that
other mothers had special tools to deal with potatoes. Her’s was The Knife to Rule All.
Deep in drawers it whispered danger without warning. Hidden among innocents, soup
spoons envied its power. Ever poised on its knife edge, it bided its time, crucible cured.
Silent, keen for unwary hands, the knife whiled the days to sharp shadows.
Finola Scott writes to unravel the world. Trembling Earth, her recent pamphlet, considers the Climate Crisis. Her poems are widely published including The Irish Pages Press, NWS, Lighthouse. More at FB Finola Scott Poems and https://www.
Sue Spiers
Thirsty Shadow
the kind of being
that won’t post
an image
Julian Dobson
Street after street, ears bright to bass and tune
of two thudding feet, gradients of breathing. But rain
is brooding. Sparse headlights, ambient drone
of cars kissing tarmac, merging
Oliver Comins
Working the land on good days, after Easter,
people would hear the breaks occur at school,
children calling as they ran into the playground,
familiar skipping rhymes rising from the babble.
George Turner
Some days, the privilege of living isn’t enough.
The weight of the kettle is unbearable. You leave the teabag
forlorn in the mug, unpoured.
Craig Dobson
Slowly, ordinarily, the unimaginable happens,
lowering the past into the dark,
covering it.
Clive Donovan
If I were a ghost
I think I would shrink
and perch on wooden poles
and deco shades – get a good view
of what I am supposed to be haunting
Rose Ramsden
We left the play early. It was the last day before the start of secondary school. Dad told me off for slapping the seats
Seán Street
There was a time when I took my radio
into the night wood and tuned its pyracantha
needle along the dial through noise jungles
to silent darkness at the waveband’s end.
J.S. Dorothy
Find yourself by the lake,
its icy membrane split by the long
arrow of a skein, reflected
flurry of wings, cries
bawling.