Today’s choice
Previous poems
Helen Akers
Window of tolerance
we’re trying to construct a frame for this
highly reactive impulsive emotion
the nurse is looking into it meanwhile
we must find something cold to hold lick it
we’re trying to expand the tolerance – think
of a moth thumping at the window imagine
a pane adjustable along the diagnosis
for excessive information’s tiny racing heart
to be processed a bullseye window pivoted
on the horizontal with cunning joints
at either end allowing it to open let it fly
it’s a lovely day if you like lovely days
Helen Akers lives in North Norfolk. She is working on a collection of poems which explore the experience of bipolar disorder from the carers’ perspective. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia.
Anna Maughan
Illness had left me
brittle as frost, icicle-thin
swaddled in borrowed warmth
Angeliki Ampelogianni
on marble tiles bird like
I am a pin measuring drops in the toilet bowl
A W Earl
Doors
My parents’ house became a place of closed white doors,
where sound hung spare and echoes found no junk
or clutter to rest themselves upon.
Finola Scott
Winter dusk soughs in, dark
clouds threaten, tangle her wool.
Huw Gwynn-Jones
Black is the colour inside black light on
blackened brick and slats
Clare Morris
Necessity, that scold’s bridle, held her humble and mean,
So that she no longer spoke, just looked –
Her world reduced to a search for special offers . . .
Alison Jones
Mrs Norris had thought ascension
would be whirligig rides in bright violet rays,
as the training books all implied.
Sandra Noel
The tide unpleats from her godet,
zig-zags in running stitch
round the base of the côtil.
Matthew Caley
supposedly: if I am to render
‘a man’ then
this ‘man’ must I guess resemble me‹›