Today’s choice
Previous poems
Katherine Duffy
Wake
(Leaving Amorgos, Greece)
The ferry pushes the sea,
forces a long, white reply
that speaks of where we’ve been –
a hulk of rock, a prison
in the time of the Colonels,
now a place of painted chairs,
fairy lights. I lean over,
try to read the disarranged water,
the sea in dark mode.
I count the times we’ve
come and gone. More
behind us now than before.
We sail on, past other islands
brothers gently sleeping.
The white scroll
reaches back,
undoes itself.
Katherine Duffy lives in Dublin. Her poems have appeared in many publications, including Poetry Ireland Review, Crannóg, The Interpreter’s House, etc. She has published collections with The Dedalus Press (Ireland) and in 2018 a pamphlet with Templar Poetry.
William Manning for Mental Health Awareness Week
My room is infested with bedbugs
I’m covered in bites, not love bites
Anna Brook
I want to borrow gods
(as Adrienne does,
though she knew better)
their sad logic
their templates
Nigel King
Turn the mud. Bo Peep’s head tumbles out,
wide-eyed, mouth a little open.
Mohsen Hosseinkhani translated by Tahereh Forsat Safai
Men are the color of soil
Women are sitting on the ashes
Stephen Komarnyckyj
you are the shadow slipping through the mirror
Jo Farrant
We’re stuck on a scene, frozen, like the ice cubes I begged Mum to get with the little flowers in them. Like taking a test in the school gym but your knees are so big they’re banging into the desk.
Douglas K Currier
Afternoon hangs in the air, and the birds leave.
Frogs begin to talk to each other, and the heat congeals.
Stephen Chappell
If you could call that friend,
the special one,
the one you always love and know loves you
Marius Grose
Until the dead, sucked from leaf mould graves
are rising in forest sap, to make connections
inside strange green brains