Today’s choice

Previous poems

Mark McDonnell

 

 

 

First Funeral

Fascinated by the priest’s teeth I don’t realise
I’m kicking the pew in front with a restless foot
until someone taps me sharply on the knee.

I’m near the coffin on its trestles and a plaster Jesus
whose wounds shed drops of hard shiny blood.
I think he looks a bit disappointed in me.

Perhaps he wants me to Be Brave like Him
and not to make things worse for everyone.
I’m not sure if I should cry. I can see

my father is crying and I know that’s
because, He’s lost his soul mate;
that’s what Fr. Stephens told my auntie.

 

 

Mark McDonnell sings, writes and teaches English to refugees.  He used to manage a pharmaceutical company and then a counselling charity.  He has had worked published in a wide variety of journals during the last four years.  See www.instagram.com/mcdonnellpoet5135  and https://www.facebook.com/mark.mcdonnell.9231/

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 . . .

Ansuya Patel

Women scrape coins from their purse,
count pennies, one lifts up a watermelon
in mid-air like raising a newborn to light.