Today’s choice
Previous poems
David Sapp
Aimless
Aimless between
Dropping out
Of art school
And absolutely no
Friggin’ money
For Kenyon
I moved in with
Television and doting
Grandma in flowered
Wallpapered rooms
Sat on her porch
Back and forth
On the glider
That Grandpa and I
Hauled home
From the auction
And for hours
Watched a robin’s trip
From yard to nest
Feeding her chicks
Delicious worms
And that was enough
Until ambition
Set in again
David Sapp, writer and artist, lives along the southern shore of Lake Erie in North America. A Pushcart nominee, he was awarded Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Grants for poetry and art. His poetry and prose appear widely in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Asia. His publications include articles in the Journal of Creative Behavior; chapbooks Solitary Nature, Cardboard Pleasure and Two Buddha; a novel, Flying Over Erie; a book of poems and drawings, Drawing Nirvana; and two books of poetry and prose, Acquaintances and a memoir titled The Origin of Affection, winner of the Violet Reed Haas Poetry Award.
Jason Ryberg
Sometimes I’d swear that
the ancient box fan I’ve hauled
around with me for
years is a receiver for
the conversations of ghosts
Peter Wallis
Dead in a chest,
are folded matinee jackets, bonnets, bootees and mitts.
Tissue sighs like the sea at Lowestoft,
always Third week in August
Amanda Bell
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
Anna Maughan
Illness had left me
brittle as frost, icicle-thin
swaddled in borrowed warmth
Angeliki Ampelogianni
on marble tiles bird like
I am a pin measuring drops in the toilet bowl
A W Earl
Doors
My parents’ house became a place of closed white doors,
where sound hung spare and echoes found no junk
or clutter to rest themselves upon.
Finola Scott
Winter dusk soughs in, dark
clouds threaten, tangle her wool.
Huw Gwynn-Jones
Black is the colour inside black light on
blackened brick and slats
Clare Morris
Necessity, that scold’s bridle, held her humble and mean,
So that she no longer spoke, just looked –
Her world reduced to a search for special offers . . .