Today’s choice
Previous poems
James Mason
Beginner’s Italian
In Italian I have no inner life.
With no past or future tense
My needs are immediate.
I have hunger. I eat.
I have thirst. I drink.
I have the name for wine not peas.
The heat is good. I want.
Yes, I sleep well, thank you.
But I pass a dreamless night.
I am appetite. A thing of flesh.
More, it says. Again.
I do not know how to say enough.
James Mason lives in Worcestershire, UK. He has an MA in Creative Writing from the Open University.
Rachael Hill
Those times my tongue becomes a lemon
filling my mouth with bitter pith
John Doyle
I hide a knife amongst a bush longing to burn,
days like these are plots from a heathen’s bible.
William Coniston
My second cousin twice removed arrived in May
at her old nest in the eaves of the ruined barn.
Simon Williams
A white cloak that folds like a shopping bag,
like a Pac-a-mac with pagan overtones,
much larger when unfolded than a pocket,
a TARDIS of a cloak.
Emma Page
I grow shoots, acid green;
climb the walls,
surprise myself.
Mary McQueen
It’s starts in utero, painted wood carvings thick as a
finger, gift
wrapped in nostalgia.
Alan Hardy
Made a list.
A record.
The dishes she ate.
Monuments visited.
In Paris.
Susana Arrieta
Tempting death with every cobblestoned step
his face was a collection of broken records
Peter Leight
There’s more waste than we use for the things we ordinarily use waste for, such as piling it on barges and sending them out to sea, tucking it under the surface like a layer of insulation . . .