Today’s choice

Previous poems

Huw Gwynn-Jones

 

 

 

Black on Black

Black is the colour inside      black light   on
blackened brick and slats       coaldust  and
creosote     those sightless eyes     black as
his  coalman’s  vest  and   grimy    coalbent
back

deep in a shed where he stacks cold stone
by the sack          by imperial coalblack ton.

Ashcold in  the  shapeless dawn    a father
gathers kindling and coal enough to light

a childhood                  the blaze  and dullred
glow          dark soot of a distant black hole.

 

 

Retired and living in Orkney, Huw Gwynn-Jones’ work has appeared in Shearsman, Acumen, Tears in the Fence, Ink Sweat & Tears, Stand and Lighthouse. His debut pamphlet The Art of Counting Stars was published in 2021.

Eve Chancellor

    Payday Mid-afternoon and the streets smell of petrichor; people spilling out of pubs, crowding to smoke cigs in the early spring sunshine. I am alone, again. All my friends live thousands of miles away. I am closer to the people who are not near me...

Fiona Heatlie

  Planet Nine You talk to me intently of black holes. I slip my hand into yours, unnoticed. You are absorbed in thoughts astronomical. I am stealing time. Swallowed by a constellation of brighter stars and suddenly you are on the cusp of the cusp of a place where...

Hongwei Bao

    Night Market   When the night curtain falls, the crowd start to assemble as if drawn by magnets, as if answering a scared call. Neon lights go up along the narrow pavements, illuminating the concentrating faces of food-sellers. Under boiling noodle...

Darren Deeks

You have been burgled.
While you were out with the dog,
a burglar made best use of that
yawning kitchen keyhole to spook
through tracelessly