Today’s choice

Previous poems

Ken Evans

by | Dec 3, 2024 | ,

 

 

 

Ballad of the Cobbler’s Shoes
Rural Action Derbyshire charity reports
children are doing P.E. in wellingtons.

You try doing star-jumps, steps,
or squats, in knee-high wellies.
One at first, then in twos
and threes as term ran on,
turn-up for P.E. in wellingtons.
It’s not we’re feckless or lacking
internet, it’s the cost of trainers
v. the price of keeping warm.

When the cobbler doesn’t work,
we are shamed and go unheeled.

Other kids, decked-out in stripes,
swooshes, and Gore-Tex uppers,
laugh, then fall silent in their new
shoes. A welly flies off a foot
to catch a P.E. teacher in the cods.
Skipping’s best, though in boots,
the socks slip, and rubber wears
a vivid welt on bare shins.

When the cobbler doesn’t work,
we are shamed and go unheeled.

For stamping out puddles,
or damming a drain, wellies
are a water-resistant friend, but
flapping at a knee
like grass in a gale, a young life
learns only helplessness. A horse
bolts a blacksmith’s forge un-shoed,
to cavort, kicking, over an open field.

When the cobbler doesn’t work,
we all are shamed and go unheeled.

 

 

To An Occupier Burning Holes, Ken Evans’ most recent  collection, was published by Salt . His poems appear in Poetry Scotland, Magma, Under the Radar, 14, The High Window, IS&T, The Interpreter’s House. He won the Kent & Sussex Poetry Competition (2018); and Battered Moons (2016). YouTube clips: www.youtube.com www.youtube.com

Valentine Jones

by | Dec 15, 2023 | ,

CANNIBALISE THE CORRUPTION, I GUESS Ok? Everyone's dying. You're not special. You've a Tree in your stomach, Splitting the roof of your mouth, Leaves curled around teeth, and your skull Cracking like an ancient castle? Nothing I haven't seen before. Had three people...

Amanda Coleman White

by | Dec 14, 2023 | ,

I sit in quiet daylight
wondering if I should pray,
hearing mother cardinals echoing
my laments, an aural mirage
mutates into children crying
as a teacher hushes them into a corner,
quiet mice now…

Kelli Lage

by | Dec 13, 2023 | ,

Dead of Winter

If my inner child is kidnapped,
I’ll freeze my nightmares to that ole pole.
I don’t know how to use a lighter
is what I’d say if asked.

Shamik Banerjee

by | Dec 12, 2023 | ,

A Rumination

With ginger chai, lounged in the balcony,
Revisiting the years she and her spouse
Endeavoured for a better, self-owned house,
She takes a breath of content, finally.

Benedicta Norell

by | Dec 11, 2023 | ,

Questions

We were always in the car that year the price of having a nice house in a nice area get in get
in it’s time to go where are we going our friends the supermarket the cinema the mall just for
a drive between banks of jaded shovelled snow

Kathy Pimlott

by | Dec 10, 2023 | ,

It’s impossible to foretell what will provoke tears, the sort
that well up and tip over while you hold onto the kitchen sink
waiting for them to subside…

Ali Murphy

by | Dec 9, 2023 | ,

    Mean sister We are stuck in our own words, not hearing each other. Sixty-somethings, we may as well be six, throwing sticks down the beck or poking dolls eyes out of their sockets, scribbling on their perfect faces. We are well rehearsed, know our cues,...