Today’s choice
Previous poems
Anne Stewart
03:41 Downstairs
a poem for insomniacs
Huddled on the cat’s blanket,
hyenas crying through the night.
Scribbled notes regretting tea,
the need for light.
Time passes, shoulders settle the hyenas
to a quiet shout.
Everything goes cold as energy, as will,
goes out
and him, snoring like a mammoth on
temazepam upstairs.
Sleep, hyenas, sleep.
There, there…
It’s just the sound of safety
winnowing the air.
Anne Stewart created and runs the poet showcase http://www.poetrypf.co.uk. She has won the Bridport Prize and Poetry on the Lake’s Silver Wyvern, and has published 5 poetry collections, the latest: The Last Parent and any minute now. https://www.facebook.com/anne.
Bill Greenwell
Before the first turn of the key, before
adjusting the mirror, before releasing the handbrake even,
Dad said: there are two things you need to know.
Matt Gilbert
Alive, but not exactly,
as it fills the frame, flicker-lit
by lightning. . .
Rebecca Gethin
This morning
the room is bright with snowlight
and everything seems illuminated differently.
Lorraine Carey
Every Sunday he insists on beef
from Boggs’s butchers, a forty minute drive
away.
Gabriel Moreno
It’s hard to say what he did, my father.
His shoulders portaged crates,
he captained boats in the night,
chocolate eggs would appear
which smelt of ChefChaouen.
Henry Wilkinson
I rolled an orange across daybreak;
I waited for the moon to ripen.
On the twelfth day of Christmas, we bring you KB Ballentine, J.S. Watts and Terry Dyson
as wind whispers your name.
Summer’s breaking down and a starker calling comes –
leaves saturated with sunset before surrendering.
On the eleventh day of Christmas, we bring you Helen Laycock, Ruth Aylett and Debbie Strange
we will meet again
on the other side
On the tenth day of Christmas, we bring you Jenny McRobert, Angela Topping and Maria C. McCarthy
The tree makes its way into the garden
looms at the window, a disconsolate ghost