Today’s choice
Previous poems
Bel Wallace
Interior
My dear, I washed you out of my sheets.
And now I sleep softly in them.
My dreams are sweet and free.
I opened the windows to air out
your smoke. I liked it for a while, how
it held the past in its wispy fingers.
I emptied your cigarette butts
from my ashtray. The Cuban one, heavy.
Remember? It waited a half-life for you.
I scoured your dense coffee
from my cups. You broke one. Elegant,
with painted roses. It doesn’t matter.
I threw away your shoes. Every time,
you left a pair behind, like two footprints
in ancient rocks.
I put back the furniture you’d rearranged,
restored my writing corner. Low sun
streams in, now we’re past the Equinox.
And still, my love, our dead skin cells
persist. We mingle in the house-dust,
dancing in the slow winter sunlight.
Bel Wallace‘s poetry has been short-listed for the Bridport Prize, nominated for the Pushcart and published in a range of journals, most recently Anthropocene, Magma and Under the Radar. She’s trying to finish her first novel, but keeps getting distracted by poetry.
Brandon Arnold
Alone, I drive along the midnight, winter road. My left hand at the 12 o’clock position of the steering wheel. And I coast. I let out the day’s long breath, which started out today as a sigh.
Steph Ellen Feeney
My mother is here, and might not have been,
so I hold things tighter:
the small-getting-smaller of her
running with my daughter down the beach . . .
Anna Fernandes
My stubby maroon glove spent a chill night
on the velvet ridge of Clent Hills
tangled in summer-dried grasses
Jo Eades
It’s Wednesday and / again / I’m laying pages of newspaper on the kitchen table / tipping up the food waste bin /
Sue Butler
We cultivate the knack
of getting down on the floor and
back up three or four times each day.
JLM Morton
In a dull sky
the guttering flame
of a white heron
Tonnie Richmond
We could tell there was something
we weren’t allowed to know. Something
kept hidden from us children
Morag Smith
When the waters broke we were
out there, borderless, with just
a view of bloodshot sky from
the labour suite
Gordon Scapens
Stripping wallpaper
leaves naked the scrawls
of yesteryear’s children,
small forecasts of flights
that are inevitable.