Today’s choice
Previous poems
Adam Kelly
Drumbledrane
Determined, you smash against the window
I have to admire you in your striped suit
All the worries of the world pass you by
Just to keep the Queen and Pooh bear happy.
Masking yourself between odd magic tricks
The perfect worker, never to grumble
Solitary seeker of golden hued wealth
But, always, sharing the spoils with friends.
You belong to spring, foot soldiers marching
On, after the vanguard of primroses
Occupying the high hedges, a new
Start and promise. Always a little bit
Terrifying, as new starts really should
Be. To buzz close and then quickstep away
The threat of a sting always close by
But the window is science fiction to you.
A problem beyond your capable smarts
I wait two minutes till you start to dose
Shimmy you out with an old magazine
Air hits your senses and, God! Watch you go!
Adam Kelly lives in Devon and has written poetry on and off for a few years. He has recently been published in Sideways Issue 11 and has also appeared in The Dawntreader from Indigo Dreams.
Graham Clifford
The Still Face Experiment
You must have seen that Youtube clip
where a mother lets her face go dead.
Her toddler carries on burbling for twenty to thirty seconds until she realises there is nothing coming back to her.
Susan Jane Sims
After you died,
someone asked:
What was it like
in those final sixteen days
waiting for your son to die?
Jane Frank
I imagine returning to the house.
Furniture is piled up in the rain—
the ideas that won’t fit.
Ilias Tsagas
I used to dial your number to hear your voice. I would hold the receiver for a long time as if your voice was trapped inside . . .
Jim Paterson
Shove it, that farewell
and the sky shimmering with frost
and the waves wrecking on the shore
Philip Rush
Tom’s advice, mind you,
was to drink hot chocolate
last thing at night
on a garden bench
beneath the moon.
Rosie Jackson
Today, I talked with a friend about death
and what it means to have arrived in my life
before I have to leave it . . .
Mariam Saidan
they said sing in private,
Zan shouldn’t sing.
Brian Kirk
The train is the way,
the tracks a scar cut
deep in the land
you can’t help but touch.