Today’s choice
Previous poems
Kim Waters
Letter to L
You’re a character, a Roman numeral,
an internet meme. Descendant
from a peasant’s crook or cattle prod,
you’re the twelfth letter of the alphabet,
but missing from a baker’s dozen.
You’re in every email I ever wrote,
appearing in April and July,
but lying dormant in other months.
You bookend the linguistic paradox
of logical and lateral thinking.
I hear your lisp in silence, conjuring
something glamorous in lapis lazuli.
You’re the difference between
the flight and fight response,
the one that can’t leave one alone.
You’ve been known to double down
on bullshit, rollbacks and collusion,
but at the core you’re mellow
and although not easily heard,
you always walk the talk.
L, let’s face it, life begins with you.
Kim Waters lives in Melbourne, Australia. She has a Master of Arts in creative writing. She is currently completing an Advanced Diploma of Visual Arts. Her poems have appeared in The Australian, Acumen, The Shanghai Literary Review, Under the Radar, The Wells Street Journal, Marble and La Piccioletta Barca.
George Turner
Some days, the privilege of living isn’t enough.
The weight of the kettle is unbearable. You leave the teabag
forlorn in the mug, unpoured.
Craig Dobson
Slowly, ordinarily, the unimaginable happens,
lowering the past into the dark,
covering it.
Clive Donovan
If I were a ghost
I think I would shrink
and perch on wooden poles
and deco shades – get a good view
of what I am supposed to be haunting
Rose Ramsden
We left the play early. It was the last day before the start of secondary school. Dad told me off for slapping the seats
Seán Street
There was a time when I took my radio
into the night wood and tuned its pyracantha
needle along the dial through noise jungles
to silent darkness at the waveband’s end.
J.S. Dorothy
Find yourself by the lake,
its icy membrane split by the long
arrow of a skein, reflected
flurry of wings, cries
bawling.
Sarah Rowland Jones
The terns lift as one
from the salt-pools behind the beach
– a thick undulating line
Jean O’Brien
Winter soil is hard and hoar crusted,
birds peck with blunted beaks,
pushing up are the blind green pods
of what will soon be yellow daffodils,
given light and air.
Jean Atkin
We scoured the parish tip most weeks, when we were kids.
We clambered it in wellies. Ferals, we scavenged
in the debris of the adults’ lives.