Today’s choice
Previous poems
Kevin Denwood
Waiting Room
Name called.
Not mine.
Wasn’t I
here first?
A new arrival
spreads out.
One chair
always left empty.
I glance at copies of
National Geographic,
Vogue,
Woman’s Weekly —
all out of date.
It’s possible
they expired
while I was waiting.
Impatient sighs
mix with the soft
turn of a page.
I glance
around the room.
Nothing catches.
Some scroll frantically.
Others pretend to decipher
The Economist.
Most stare
into space
or at their shoes.
I read the poster
about prostate cancer
again.
Kevin Denwood is a Cumbrian poet whose work explores memory, ageing and everyday social observation. His poems have appeared in Free the Verse, Obsessed with Pipework, and Poems, Tales & Other English Words.
Lesley Curwen
Her feet snagged in a cleverly-placed net
my sister waits for him to untangle her,
to hold her head still between thick fingers . . .
From the Archives: In Memory of Jean Cardy
Denizens Mice live in the London Tube. A train leaves and small pieces of sooty black detach themselves from the sooty black walls and forage for crumbs in the rubbish under the rails that are death to man. You can’t see their feet move. They...
Tina Cole
Mr. Pig modelling his best Sunday suit of farmyard smells,
flees from the cook’s cleaver to find himself a sow.
Ellora Sutton
My heart is breaking, so I’m setting up my new Wonder Oven.
The waft of toxicity as I run it on empty for ten minutes
is a welcome distraction.
Erin Poppy Koronis
Naked feet rush
over cold pebbles,
phone-torches light
our pathway to the sea.
Bob King
The first wristwatch was first worn
in 1810, despite what old turn-it-up
Flintstones episodes might have you
believe.
Brandon Arnold
Alone, I drive along the midnight, winter road. My left hand at the 12 o’clock position of the steering wheel. And I coast. I let out the day’s long breath, which started out today as a sigh.
Steph Ellen Feeney
My mother is here, and might not have been,
so I hold things tighter:
the small-getting-smaller of her
running with my daughter down the beach . . .
Anna Fernandes
My stubby maroon glove spent a chill night
on the velvet ridge of Clent Hills
tangled in summer-dried grasses