Today’s choice
Previous poems
Finola Scott
Testing the mettle
Ther was no man, for peril, dorste hym touche. A Sheffeld thwitel baar he in his hose.
The Reeves Tale, Canterbury Tales, Chaucer.
Such a knife, a real Et Tu Brute number. Bone handled, incisive. Decades of marriage
had whetted the blade to feather lean. Anniversaries marked in metal. Such durability,
flexibility. No base Plate here, for Dad, nothing but the best. Sheffield-sharp, that knife
carved and cut filigree fine, ever pristine, stainless. Always Mum wielded and whittled
with panache. Never a slice or nick. No sudden gore in our kitchen. Perched on a stool
beside her I observed as maribu-muled she coaxed the potatoes from their skins. Like
a serpent surrendering, the peel twisted and ravelled beneath the certainty of the blade.
I bracelet my arms with the coiling brown/ cream/ brown peelings, never realising that
other mothers had special tools to deal with potatoes. Her’s was The Knife to Rule All.
Deep in drawers it whispered danger without warning. Hidden among innocents, soup
spoons envied its power. Ever poised on its knife edge, it bided its time, crucible cured.
Silent, keen for unwary hands, the knife whiled the days to sharp shadows.
Finola Scott writes to unravel the world. Trembling Earth, her recent pamphlet, considers the Climate Crisis. Her poems are widely published including The Irish Pages Press, NWS, Lighthouse. More at FB Finola Scott Poems and https://www.
Elly Katz
When naked with myself, I feel where a right elbow isn’t, then is. I let my left palm guide me through the exhibition of my body.
Laurence Morris
The night of his arrest I climbed a hill
to find a deep cave in which to hide
Sarp Sozdinler
As a kid, Nehisi used to sleep in a treehouse. He could curl right into it from his bedroom window. He would have a hard time falling asleep every time his parents got loud or physical.
Three poems on Counting for National Poetry Day: Max Wallis, Julie Anne Jenson, Brian Kelly
I don’t wear them
or have any
but you gave me a pair
of seven-inch goth platform heels.
Fizza Abbas
They say change is a constant,
but this constant became a coefficient
always racing to catch me
Scott Elder
What will you do in winter dear when drifts
cover your fingers and shoes
Laura Webb, Edward Alport, and Jaime del Adarve: Day 3 (re)place feature
Tour of the Excavation Collaged from text in the ‘Ice Age to Iron Age’ gallery at the Great North Museum, Newcastle, UK The enigma is why this civilisation became extinct at the same time as a peak in carbon 14, which is a natural element, but in...
Richard Meier, Will Pendray and Fiona Dignan: Day 2 (re)place feature
Agony Because of all the sleep, the rooms that show up reddest on heatmaps for recording the use of space in houses tend to be the bedrooms. Orange or orange-yellow, the next most-used – the kitchens. And so on, getting colder – living rooms, green or turquoise – till...
Erik Kennedy, Sally St Clair and Catherine Edmunds: Day 1 (re)place feature
Animals on Leads We entered the town and the first thing we saw was a woman taking her ferret for a walk. ‘Nice day for it,’ I said significantly. The ferret was going everywhere at once, an absolute possibility engine producing the energy of a...