Today’s choice
Previous poems
Rob A. Mackenzie
Sea Lily
after Alison McWhirter
Everything is moving. I have to remind myself
it’s a flat canvas and behind it a wall that’s solid
as I am.
Although three quarters of my heart,
and one third of my bones, are water. Which
explains a lot.
Appearance can be deceptive
sometimes, but never here. I root among
many layers: clouds of mustard, pink ribbons,
haloes of smoke, lightning streaks, the sea
lily on its stalk, fragile in depth
plant-like
animal, I’ve swum into this shapeshifting
world, no longer quite sure of what I was
or might become.
Everything that matters
in art resists all explanation, but is bound
to emerge anyway, and to keep emerging.
Rob A. Mackenzie has published two poetry pamphlets and four full collections, the latest being Woof! Woof! Woof! (Salt Publishing, 2023). His work has been translated into French, Italian, Serbian and Czech. He founded and runs Blue Diode Press. bluediode.co.uk
John Grey
there are some lives
lived poolside
and others that
mostly consist of
a bent back in a field –
Adam Flint
All summer automatic exits remain
open, and no one leaves or boards.
David Van-Cauter
You are pleased to see me
in my gothic T-shirt –
those bats, you say, have been your friends.
Mark Wyatt
yes of course/ it was idyllic, reclining (pint of/ cider in hand) poolside in the harvesting/ sunlight
Catherine Shonack
when confronted with vast, endlessness of the ocean
who wouldn’t go mad?
Ansuya Patel
Women scrape coins from their purse,
count pennies, one lifts up a watermelon
in mid-air like raising a newborn to light.
Pippa Little
a woman’s rage cannot raise the dead
but it may split stone like lightning
Abiodun Salako
a boy grows tired
of dying again and again.
i am building him a morgue
for Thanksgiving.
Patrick Wright
It’s as if the dream
is telling me we are still joined
somehow, despite waking
and me trudging on, even though
your voicemail is off, your locks
changed.