Today’s choice
Previous poems
Steven Taylor
SPORTS NEWS
A very long time ago
Stephen Fry’s godfather, the
Justice, Sir Oliver Popplewell
Who chaired the inquiry
Into the Bradford City
Stadium fire that killed
56 football watchers, contrasted
The quiet dignity of those relatives
With the behaviour of the relatives
Of the Hillsborough victims, who
Were forever blaming other people
Instead of accepting
It is the lot of the working class
To suffer in all divisions
They should be grateful
For whatever leisure
They are granted
By their masters, betters
Sir Oliver was a cricketer
Wicket keeper batsman
16 stumpings 60-something catches
After Charterhouse
He went to Cambridge, studied
Steven Taylor was born and raised in Hyde, near Manchester. He now lives in Kilburn, London. Steven’s poems have been widely published in journals including Acumen, Magma, Poetry Business Coal anthology, Stand, The North and The Wallace Stevens Journal. He can be found on Facebook @steventaylorpoetry
Nigel King
Turn the mud. Bo Peep’s head tumbles out,
wide-eyed, mouth a little open.
Mohsen Hosseinkhani translated by Tahereh Forsat Safai
Men are the color of soil
Women are sitting on the ashes
Stephen Komarnyckyj
you are the shadow slipping through the mirror
Jo Farrant
We’re stuck on a scene, frozen, like the ice cubes I begged Mum to get with the little flowers in them. Like taking a test in the school gym but your knees are so big they’re banging into the desk.
Douglas K Currier
Afternoon hangs in the air, and the birds leave.
Frogs begin to talk to each other, and the heat congeals.
Stephen Chappell
If you could call that friend,
the special one,
the one you always love and know loves you
Marius Grose
Until the dead, sucked from leaf mould graves
are rising in forest sap, to make connections
inside strange green brains
Andrew Keyman
a day later you’re in l.a. picking out cars with the magic
only money can buy
Chrissy Banks
So many times I walked
head down half asleep
along that ordinary road to school