Today’s choice
Previous poems
Andy Humphrey
Cine Reels
On screen, Dad was
the radical –
the introverted
pen-and-notepad kind,
donkey jacket, beard,
betrayed.
Another time
he played a photographer
eyeballing Liverpool –
statutes, pigeons, couples
out to lunch. Thieves
snapped in the act.
Our hometown Hollywood
never had
content warnings.
Murder
came in piano discords,
a hymn swelling to chorus;
death was a one-word
manifesto
crumpled, windblown.
Fin.
On screen,
they killed Dad.
We watched him die
over and over.
Andy Humphrey has published two collections of original poetry, A Long Way to Fall (Lapwing Press, ISBN 978-1-909252-40-0, 2013) and Satires (Stairwell Books, ISBN 978-1-939269-16-4, 2015). He lives in York and works as a solicitor. https://www.writeoutloud.net/profiles/andyhumphrey.
Farah Ali
Notes from nature on how to survive this:
1. Learn crypsis and mimesis be a gecko or a mossy frog
2. Method actors sway like dead-leaf mantises on branches
James Benger
We tore it all down
just to watch it burn,
standing in that alley
of forgotten refuse.
Graham Clifford
Check the cavities in you where hurt goes,
exactly the right shape to house an insult
like a power tool snug and clipped in its case.
Gill Horitz
I woke to workers with blades
along the verge, yellow-jacketed
to signify contracted rights
Anita Karla Kelly, CE Collins, Clare Painter on International Women’s Day
In the beginning of the end she bit the thing she wasn’t meant to bite.
Apple stuck in her throat, one bite taken, then swallowed whole.
Elaine Baker
To my Ovaries
My cahoonas. My muscular daisies.
Potent white olives. You make me sick.
Jan FitzGerald
What is not to love
when you draw back curtains
and taste clouds
in their newness and innocence
Helen Finney
At my feet the window sprawls a view of kneaded land,
craggy baked by the hand of the gods, dusted green
with short bit grass.
Eugene O’Hare
It hasn’t been this bright all year –
the moon’s white scalp, spot-lit,
a head turned away from a thing
the rest of us fear: unearthly dark