Today’s choice
Previous poems
Steven Taylor
SPORTS NEWS
A very long time ago
Stephen Fry’s godfather, the
Justice, Sir Oliver Popplewell
Who chaired the inquiry
Into the Bradford City
Stadium fire that killed
56 football watchers, contrasted
The quiet dignity of those relatives
With the behaviour of the relatives
Of the Hillsborough victims, who
Were forever blaming other people
Instead of accepting
It is the lot of the working class
To suffer in all divisions
They should be grateful
For whatever leisure
They are granted
By their masters, betters
Sir Oliver was a cricketer
Wicket keeper batsman
16 stumpings 60-something catches
After Charterhouse
He went to Cambridge, studied
Steven Taylor was born and raised in Hyde, near Manchester. He now lives in Kilburn, London. Steven’s poems have been widely published in journals including Acumen, Magma, Poetry Business Coal anthology, Stand, The North and The Wallace Stevens Journal. He can be found on Facebook @steventaylorpoetry
Ken Evans
You try doing star-jumps, steps,
or squats, in knee-high wellies.
Joe Williams
I was born in a town of shadows.
Anne Symons
She was only a little woman
five feet nothing in nylon stockings.
‘If I stood sideways they’d mark me absent.’
Ben
When she said ‘could’, it was clearly in italics
and when she said ‘one day’, the creak of glaciers
shuddered around its edges.
Dragana Lazici
the days are long but the years are short.
seconds are tiny kitchen knives in my back.
i stopped reading Dickinson, her voice is a sad parrot.
Abigail Ottley
Faces, unless they come swimming up close. are a blur of piggy-pink and ice-
cream. In the street, she doesn’t know, cannot be certain when to smile, when to
look away
Maggie Mackay
The teacher is an old spindly man. Grim, out of a Grimm’s tale. Scarecrow hair, thinning. Unsmiling.
Natasha Gauthier
The tawny clutch appeared
on high-heeled evenings only,
slept in a nest of white tissue.
Romy Morreo
She only speaks to me these days
through groaning floorboards in the night
and slammed doors.