Today’s choice
Previous poems
Laura Sheahen
Outsider
What is the ancient curse they know that you don’t
Moving along their mouth-lines and their eyebrows
Lowering their lids, tensing their nods or shrugs
No spell has locked their lips but they are silent
Watching you try, watching you fall again
(Jeweled box with hind-heart bloody in its depths
Mirror that will not show a child its face
Quiet are mice and insects in the castle)
The shoulders shrug the eyes refuse beseeching
And every throat grows closed Hushed with the secret
Watching you stagger
Watching you try again
Laura Sheahen is an American poet who spends part of her time in Tunisia. Her poems have been published in PN Review, The Manhattan Review, The Lincoln Review, and other journals. She writes criticism for The New Criterion, ArtsFuse, The Irish Times, and other publications. lsheahen.substack.com
Daniel Dean
A beastly man swallowing leeks. His throat
Is dirt, and yet his ghost could sit with Raphael
Lesley Burt
a conch found in hot white sand
on the shoreline at Sanur Beach
a Fibonacci whorl
among morning offerings
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.