Today’s choice
Previous poems
Gwil James Thomas
The Art of Walking Nowhere
Terrestrial locomotion
across concrete,
the inverted pendulum,
moving flesh and boot –
the touchdown
softened by slightly
worn inner soles.
Fascinated by gum stained slabs,
I sidestep snails and ants
and cut through the park,
before I cross a discarded plank
over the puddle to the exit –
some risks pay off,
if we can just keep moving.
With the sun on my body,
I shoegaze without sound –
going nowhere in particular.
When I’m dead –
even this I will miss.
Gwil James Thomas is a poet, novelist and inept musician from Bristol, England. Over the years his poetry has been published by Tangerine Press, Vipers Tongue, Paper and Ink and River Dog Zine, amongst others. IG: @gwiljamesthomas
Martin Fisher
Inside, in the half-light, the iron rot took hold.
Forgotten service–obsolete.
Salt-coin neglect.
The money flowed inland,
Moored on an hourglass choke.
No one told the sea.
Craig Dobson
Out of morning
a misted light,
glowing fire
in the air.
Steven Taylor
A very long time ago
Stephen Fry’s godfather, the
Justice, Sir Oliver Popplewell
Who chaired the inquiry
Into the Bradford City
Amirah Al Wassif
Beneath my armpit lives a Sinbad the size of a thumb.
His imagination feeds through an umbilical cord tied to my womb.
Now and then, people hear him speaking through a giant microphone—
Singing,
Cracking jokes,
Mark Smith
In the portacabin that morning, men smoked
and looked at last week’s paper again.
There was no water to fill the urn.
The first job – to get connected
Toby Cotton
A blustery day –
the wind too strong for kites
or for lifts to the sky.
“To a thoughtful spot,” it cites
and pins me to the earth.
Ansuya Patel
except this burnt red vase.
Hand shaped in the muffled roar,
devouring flame in the furnace’s mouth.
Hannah Ward
Look, Drew, the
plums are in
pieces beneath
us. I dreamt:
Andrea Small
a flower is not a heron
does not stand on one leg
spear-billed over golden carp