Today’s choice
Previous poems
Tess Jolly
Fish and Chips
When I went round the next day
with a bottle of wine, his wife said
he was bruised down both sides
from squeezing through
our upstairs bathroom window.
He’d been on his way to get more fish
from the freezer at the end of their garden
when he saw us next door:
you, scared of heights, stopped
around four rungs up,
and me, heavily pregnant, holding the base
and weakly cheering you on.
He jumped over the fence
and did what needs must,
no locksmith needed, and Josie,
still asleep in her cot, none the wiser,
though his customers must have wondered
what was taking so long –
Friday night and the queue spilling
along the street as he ascended –
until he appeared with a smile
and a How can I help?,
went back to the everyday work
of stirring flour and milk into gold.
Tess Jolly has published two collections, Intimate Architecture and Breakfast at the Origami Café, both with Blue Diode Press. She lives with her family on the south coast of the UK, where she runs her freelance editing business: www.poemsandproofs.co.uk.
Fran Hayden
a friend messaged me:
“every time I see sunflowers,
I think of you”
Betty Doyle
Both cast out to sea, I wonder –
did your ashes ever meet?
It was under the same sun setting,
although years and miles apart.
Mark Rutter
when the people are gone
and the wooden house
has been burned down
to recover its nails
Gráinne Daly
Not for me the tomb of Irish soil.
Put me on a plane
and let me make one last journey
before my final departure.
Rebecca Cohen
If you don’t believe in God, my friend says,
why don’t you eat pork?
Rhian Thomas
On my phone a newsreel shows a car boot lifting
just above the flood. Tail lights like eyes
caught in a comic gasp, while its body, like the carriageway,
lies under sixty million litres of last night’s rain.
Sue Norton
Today I tipped the packet of coffee
into the cafetiere instead of the tin.
Caught myself in time, didn’t pour water in.
Steph Morris
Who’s idea was it? I think his, as I’d started
wearing everything from Oxfam. Among my finds
collarless shirts.
Kathy Pimlott
Going down to do lights and curtains to fool any burglars Twilight: one after another security lights click on illuminating pathways, steps, empty front lawns, triggered by my benign progress, then, disappointed, click off. The sky is a layer cake...