Today’s choice

Previous poems

Gareth Culshaw

 

 

 

THE APPRENTICE OF GROUNDHOG DAY

I tried to work from a van. Sitting in the passenger
seat listening to a guy whistle. His frown, a cloud
he lost when his mother died. Each wrinkle
he laid as mortar on a wall. More bricks, more weight.
I’d watch from somewhere my eyes didn’t see.
I knew my life was years ahead from now.
All this was an experience. A jail-term. Clapped
by a system like using an umbrella in the sunlight.
I thought I heard a bird singing, but it was his whistle.
And a radio that took me back to the kitchen at home.
I tilted the shovel. Made more mortar. His whole life
sat in a pint of moonlight. Sand and cement were names
of exes. The spirit level balanced his newspaper.
He’d headline his own thoughts at dinnertime.
Munching on a pasty like a horse with a carrot.
I never knew his future. Just his past as I wheeled
it in a wheelbarrow.

 

 

Gareth Culshaw is an Autistic poet from N.Wales. He has four poetry collections. His latest, Some Things That Have Happened So Far, Backlash Press, 2023.

Julian Dobson

Street after street, ears bright to bass and tune
of two thudding feet, gradients of breathing. But rain

is brooding. Sparse headlights, ambient drone
of cars kissing tarmac, merging

Oliver Comins

Working the land on good days, after Easter,
people would hear the breaks occur at school,
children calling as they ran into the playground,
familiar skipping rhymes rising from the babble.

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.

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