Today’s choice

Previous poems

Mark G. Pennington

 

 

 

The sea organ city

Vigo in Autumn is still a furnace
the nightjars
roost on ram-tarmacked roads
and hot guapas carrying fish baskets
in narrow alleys
or chestnut groves
leading to the sands
listen to me
hola
gracias
and other various offences
and when I rest in the mainland
there is a man in a pornographic suit
beside an old olive tree
shading from the sun
and with him is a briefcase
open
showing the box of sandwiches
along comes a water dog
sniffing for explosives
the line trying to catch hake for zarzuela
he closes the case
then waves the animal away
palatially swatting in steaming air
its owner
comes over with the leash
hanging limp
and nooses the dog
ahead of an oyster stall
in the street
and all is beautiful again in the sea organ city

 

Mark G. Pennington has published three collections of poetry, one chapbook which finished runner-up in the Cerasus chapbook competition, and one novel. He has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize.

Magnus McDowall

We rolled out on Seven Sisters Road,
two crates of Tyskie empty in my stairwell.

We were talking from the chest, walking backwards
crackling air above our heads like streetlights

Sarah Boyd

He’s a house of cards, a delicately balanced pyramid
held together by hearing aids and dusty bifocals and
wobbling dentures and ageing pacemaker and
shirt with three buttons missing in action and

Samantha Carr

You became obsessed with nucleated red blood cells when you peeked through an
aperture window at your liquid, viscous nature. You became obsessed with maps

Helen Akers

we’re trying to construct a frame for this
‘highly reactive impulsive emotion’
the nurse is looking into it   

Jenny Robb

By the light of a wolf moon,
my father turns mad.
Anne whispers to a girl in the wind,
and a friend blows into my life.