Today’s choice
Previous poems
L.B. Jørgensen
Flintinge
When my dad was a boy,
his parents brought him into the fields.
As the whole town picked sugar beets,
their breath hugged
furrows in pre-dawn darkness.
I think of the tug he was taught,
the sound of roots wrested
from the earth
cold in a child’s palms, smeared with dirt.
I’ve felt the swing he learned
to place one gently in the bed
of the tractor.
I imagine the scent of loam,
the sap of sugar sweet on his skin.
L.B. Jørgensen lives in Denmark but writes creatively in English. She has poems published in various magazines such as Magma, The North and Under the Radar. Her pamphlet A Woman Travelling is published by Paekakariki Press.
Mark Czanik
I loved the tales Luke told me of starving writers,
and the sacrifices they made following their hearts.
Philip K Dick eating dog food. Bukowski’s candy bars.
Nigel King
My compass – its needle set with a sliver of blue stone – spins and spins. Breath mists my snow
goggles. I wipe them endlessly. Even in these thick seal-skin mitts my hands are frozen. I have been
no place as still as this.
Clare Bryden
seek justice
and you hold
a seashell to your ear
hear
Gail Webb
He cuts. I lie still, teach myself
to dream of St David’s Bay,
seaweed strewn on incoming tides,
surfers slice big waves in half.
Kim Cullen
I pull a dress over my head
calm foggy blue linen
sleeved in lavender,
press frizzed hair
Mark G. Pennington
Vigo in Autumn is still a furnace
the nightjars
roost on ram-tarmacked roads
and hot guapas carrying fish baskets
Ivan McGuinness
Begins
in a bubble
strained by chalk.
Where the brim-full hill cries,
weeping tracks merge
Elizabeth Wilson Davies
There are places in Wales I don’t go: reservoirs that are the subconscious of a people – R S Thomas
Cofiwch Dryweryn, that two-word protest,
white on blood-red background, landscaped in green,
Kay Feneley
Some days I must immerse myself in the waters
These days are more than others
Monday 09.06 – a sewage overflow has activated