Today’s choice
Previous poems
Miguel Cullen
In Remembrance of Stars Past
The pelican is so dovey, with her funny crème anglaise feathers with pink and her split-ended crest and mouth.
I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and see Pavarotti
singing Lacrimozart by Salieri.
In the park you had a dandelion flower under your chin
there was an ill pigeon that Jake caught in his hands
a nostalgia that day I just wanted to be free like a spore or see a planet which died 103 years ago
and think, jealous, that you are better
feeling things more, I guess I want proof that I’ve lived.
Miguel Cullen is a British-Argentine poet and journalist. He lives in London with his wife and daughter. Cullen grew up travelling from Buenos Aires, the vast expanse of the Pampas, to south-west London and back again. He has published three collections of poetry, most recently In Dreams of Diminished Responsibility. Miguel’s work has been published in, among other places, Magma, Dreich, and Stand. His books have been named “Book of the Year” in The Times Literary Supplement, and The London Standard.
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.
Emma Simon
No-one has seen a ghost while breast-feeding
despite the unearthly hours, the half-light
mad sing-song routines of rocking a child
back to sleep.
Kushal Poddar
The furniture covered in once
transparent now foggy sheets
craft the room a morgue, and we
identity the bodies
Erich von Hungen
And the yellow moths
like some strange throw-away
tissues used up by nature
circle the lamp hanging above.
Helen Frances
I wasn’t in, so she left me a note.
Each word a tangle of broken ends, some oddly linked
to the next with a ghost trail of ink
from her rose-gold marbled fountain pen,
a rare indulgence she’d bought herself.
Suzanne Scarfone
truth be told
part of me has lived
in this box of disquiet
for years and years
let’s see