Today’s choice
Previous poems
Ivan McGuinness
Bourn Identity
Begins
in a bubble
strained by chalk.
Where the brim-full hill cries,
weeping tracks merge
into an idea of brook:
Letcombe,
until merging with Ock.
Earth accommodates to accumulate,
hollows between course, force and resistance.
Pool falls over rock
riffles
into deeper ways,
cress-beds, crayfish, sticklebacks and bullheads.
Wet footed playground,
skirts tucked up
socks rolled on the bank,
ripple and eddy round skinny white legs,
soft silt cushions tender toes,
nets, jam-jars,
magnified beauties of the deep.
In town, domesticated by brick and stone, after grills and races,
a turning wheel catches life out of the stream, grinds free flow
into value.oMill-tailoooowateroooorelaxesooooafteroooowork.
Ivan McGuinness lives in Oxford, his poetry has appeared in several magazines including Seaside Gothic, The Alchemy Spoon and Dream Catcher.
Edward Alport
High up, out of reach,
on a branch, no, more a twig,
a little wizened, shrunken face leers down.
Colin Pink
not the kind you eat with
but useful to turn the soil
root out potatoes or carrots
Linda Ford
My Father Bought a Signal Box
dismantled it piece by piece
then sold the wood, as a job lot.
Ryan O’Neill
we hug and i act cool
as the american fridge ice
shattering on kitchen tiles
David Thompson
Scrolling through my inbox I hold down
the shift key, select all and mass delete
briefly feel the repose of the therapist’s couch.
Marcelle Newbold
Hope lies like the edge of a teaspoon, upward facing, a thickness
perhaps enough solidness to knife
through a banana or other soft fruit
Britta Giersche
a wooden door slams shut in my brain
a man perishes in a space the size of his grave from malnutrition eighty years ago
Abby Crawford
When I was born
the house was full
of stones, an old blacksmiths shed.
Rachael Clyne
And if a land loses its people and they
are exiled will a land feel their absence