Today’s choice
Previous poems
Amanda Bell
Spindles
We clipped a window through the currant, sat on folding chairs with keep-cups,
wrapped in blankets as we yelled through the prescribed two-metre gap.
Then took to mending – darning socks and patching favourite denims,
exchanging threads in packets hung on one another’s gates,
and wondered could we find a way to tell our mums we loved them,
without intimating to them quite how frightened we’d become.
We progressed to park-bench coffees, spoke of pressures on our daughters
now cloistered in their bedrooms, online behind slammed doors;
compared damage to the woodwork and the problem of old hardware,
admitting it unlikely that we’d source replacement spindles –
the shift to metric from imperial lost something in translation,
and when the thread wears thin the grub screw fails to bite.
Amanda Bell is an award-winning writer whose books have been published by Doire Press, Fine Press Poetry, Onslaught Press, Alba Publishing and Wildflower Poetry Press. She is an assistant editor of The Haibun Journal. Repped by The Book Bureau. www.
Simon Williams
I Want to Become
a weasel, in a sleeky, twisty body,
all eyes and teeth like a deadly zip.
Zoe Davis
I joined a secret society
advertised in the back pages of a magazine.
I forget which, but I found it nestled
in 8pt font and fancy border
between time share apartments in Lanzarote
and the commemorative plates.
Callan Waldron-Hall
long weekend ← or ← perhaps ↑ summer holiday →
from the back of someone’s car boot ↑ the strange →
sweated plastic all pink and blue and folded →
Amy King
We’re drinking wine in your kitchen, months before
the hot oil of my concern begins to spit.
Jenny Robb
You notice the crepe of your neck and belly first.
This skin you bake in the sun.
Pat Edwards
Watching the ‘Strictly’ Results Show on a Sunday night
Knowing what we know about the pain of the world,
who wins and who loses might feel like a betrayal.
Rebecca Gethin
Oh walk with me up the slippery lane
when the frost has turned to ice.
Jean Atkin
Wear a coat, you’ll pass through light rain at the wood-edge
under Helmeth. Sing loudly, so the snakes can hear you.
Caleb Parkin
Nature Is Healing
It constructs membranes
between its most powerful organs,
filters pathogens hidden in boats.