Today’s choice
Previous poems
Steph Morris
Summers in black
Who’s idea was it? I think his, as I’d started
wearing everything from Oxfam. Among my finds
collarless shirts. There was I
and my clique, ourselves fearfully
fresh, seeking out lived-in things, clothing
with more history than us.
This although a year or two back
we’d so hated hand-me-downs.
So he started offering me his old clothes first,
trying to help his son – to understand.
And as my favourite colour became the colour
he wore for work, he gave me his old shirts,
all black of course, washed-out and worn-in,
collarless, just a circular band around the neck,
with a slit either side at the front
where the stiff white strip slipped in.
Obviously I wouldn’t be wearing that bit,
ever. But the shirts I lived in
all summer, loose, but still black,
a couple of buttons open, neck free,
something most Jesus and Mary Chain fans
didn’t have – something he could do.
Steph Morris’ poems appear in his chapbook Please don’t trample us; we are trying to grow!, in the anthologies Joy//Us, Poetry Prescription: Becoming, Up//Roar, and in various magazines and gardens.
Adam Strickson
He couldn’t play rugby – the oval slithered away
whenever he touched it and he fell in the mud
or more often was pushed with some viciousness.
Leigh-Anne Hallowby
When we first came here two seasons ago
You were barely as high as my hip
Now you can look me right in the eye
It’s almost impossible to believe
Tadhg Carey
When our plaything ricochets
falling
who knows where
everything hinging
on the line
Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal
I hear the roar of
the ocean. I hear
a series of shrieks
and long screams.
Natasha Gauthier
Nobody knows what Cicero’s gardener whistled
to his figs and olives, what the consul’s young wife
hummed to herself while slaves combed beeswax
and perfumed oils from Carthage into her hair.
Jean Atkin
She creeps under the opening, then stands.
Her guide passes her the stub of a candle,
holds up his own to show the ceiling rock.
Iris Anne Lewis
The track leads through thickets, threaded with eyes.
Elusive scraps of dreams, they gleam, flicker out.
Antonia Kearton
On my son’s desk lies
the periodic table of the elements.
I look. Amongst the arcane names
I recognise, easy as breathing,
carbon, oxygen, gold, beloved of kings.
Elizabeth Loudon
The first three days of war
have a surprising holiday feel.
No deadlines, just the giddy gasp of shock.
Ordinary life continues.