Today’s choice
Previous poems
David Van-Cauter
House
…4am and the birdsong begins, a wet January in a new city and I’m alone watching a man in Minnesota, murdered for protecting a woman from a fascist hit squad and the politicians are smirking trying to deny the evidence, saying no it didn’t happen that way, the video is wrong and I’m thinking of you in the crisis house trying to sleep because you said our home was trying to kill you, how it isn’t you, it’s where you are and how the place is a hellhole where the drains are blocked and everything is broken but I don’t see it and you feel sorry for me being blind to all the unresolvable unfixable problems and you keep saying it over and over and you can’t live here you cannot live here it’s all fucked it’s all fucked and I watch the man being killed again by ICE from a different angle after the pepper spray and the beating and he’s saying no, leave her alone and those are his last words as they shoot him ten times and I’m wondering if we’ll ever be the way we were or if this is it now, reality shot down in a hail of bullets as our world accepts that nothing is true any more, that this did not happen and it could not happen here, not here, where we know what is right and who the enemies are, but it’s not you, no, it’s the house, it’s just the house, and if we didn’t live here then everything would no longer be broken, we’d have no home but at least we’d have our lives back and there wouldn’t be all this confusion but you’re not here now and the man lies still again and then he is alive saying no no no and the bullets hit and the man lies and the man lies and the man lies still…
Annie Acre
i am sun-shot / green-beamed / stem-steep /
hands cupfuls of heartlines / conjuring water
Jennifer Cole
take your wedding ring
or it might get “disappeared”
Eithne Longstaff
On the road to Belfast today, I failed
to recognise my father. I saw a flamingo
by the Tamnnamore turn off, but paid
little regard as it took off…
Mark O’Connor
At half a tonne in weight
It was like the anchor –
Michael Mintrom
They lie deep in a forest, wounds
unseen, unhealed. Further back,
an escarpment with dark scars.
Thea Smiley
There’s a hiss as he eases himself in
to the green pool, steam in his smoky hair.
Roger Bonner
It’s forbidden to call it war.
We’re here to liberate you;
ignore the glide bombs as they roar.
Maryam Seyf
You and I sit
facing each other
in dialogue
across the table
Kerry Darbishire
Imagine a spring day drawing out possibilities
the newness of life, sisters in long skirts digging
tangled ground, breaking bones and loam wild