Today’s choice
Previous poems
Stephen Chappell
At the Barbers
She has a way of tilting your head
as if lining up a thought.
Neither rough nor tender—decisive,
like someone used to responsibility.
She remembers names,
gently enquires after sick wives,
errant sons, daughters who never phone,
knees that won’t work on the stairs.
Old blokes come in for the cut,
eyebrow decluttering,
nose tweezering,
ears tweaked of fluff.
She works quickly, cheaply.
Cash only. Her father’s rule.
Upstairs he “keeps the books,”
which means smoking by the window.
She wanted to stay at school
she tells me
but left at fifteen
learned the grammar of heads—
quiffs, cowlicks, scars,
the way grief settles.
When I sit she listens
as if the day depends on it.
At the end she brushes my collar clean,
steps back, checks a job well done.
I leave,
feeling better.
Stephen Chappell came to poetry late (he is 72 and counting), finding the writing and reading of it a pleasure and an addiction. He lives on the side of the Malvern Hills with dog, cat and significant other and is mostly happy, especially when writing.
Morag Smith
When the waters broke we were
out there, borderless, with just
a view of bloodshot sky from
the labour suite
Gordon Scapens
Stripping wallpaper
leaves naked the scrawls
of yesteryear’s children,
small forecasts of flights
that are inevitable.
Chrissy Banks and Antony Owen (from the IS&T archives) for Holocaust Memorial Day
Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep Goodnight moon, goodnight stars, goodnight cherry, pear, apple tree. Goodnight pond, stop wriggling, newts, stop zipping the water, water-boatmen. Goodnight, glossy horses on the hill, rabbits in the field, white...
Clare Bryden
how do I begin?
Yvonne Baker
an etherial whiteness
that covers and disguises
as a strip of white frosted glass
Hilary Thompson
Ambling up North Street
on a Saturday afternoon
at the end of a long Winter,
I am stopped by two women
Irene Cunningham
Lavender seeps. I expect my limbs to leaden, lead the body down through sheet, mattress-cover, into the machinery of sleep where other lives exist.
Graham Clifford
The Still Face Experiment
You must have seen that Youtube clip
where a mother lets her face go dead.
Her toddler carries on burbling for twenty to thirty seconds until she realises there is nothing coming back to her.
Susan Jane Sims
After you died,
someone asked:
What was it like
in those final sixteen days
waiting for your son to die?