Today’s choice
Previous poems
Jim Paterson
A Curse
Shove it, that farewell
and the sky shimmering with frost
and the waves wrecking on the shore
I don’t care if it is basalt
by the furious firth
hard on hard.
And as for the getting there!
A mis-shapen day
when the sun was unintelligible
over a salt waste
where deserted horses
awaited riderless dreams
tumbled in whirls of sand.
The road lingered
not to arrive among the zombie
when fell the night
empty as a cur’s belly
howling howling.
Release that grip,
go your own way,
proven in fire, quenched in surge
and the sting of salt.
Talk to the hand,
stroll on,
I won’t shake on a dodge,
a busted deal to pack your duvet
against the cold.
Cold on the cliffs
brain bundled by stealth
and heavy by the beachhead
where the tide folds on itself,
turning away from us
and leaping the bank
and skank that still stands.
So, sod off.
I repeat. Sod off.
Even from that height
it’s like you hang
from the shallow pommel
of your corny heart.
Jim Paterson is a translator living in Perpignan who visits Scotland and Ireland. Recently published in City of Poets review 2024, Northwords, Gairfish and elsewhere. A frequent spoken word performer.
On the First Day of Christmas we bring you Sarah Davies, Sophia Argyris , Iris Anne Lewis
‘Not my partridge not my pear tree’
‘BROKE(N)’
‘The World Tilts’
Aoife Mclellan
Charcoal darkness shades late afternoon,
at the narrow edges of a chalk white snowfall.
Beams slide from our single lamp through the pane
onto soft-heaped mounds and frozen branches,
Tim Kiely
I Have Memorised a Series of Statistics About Drowning
after Benjamin Gucciardi
When the bus hits the tunnel and the sun disappears
I remember how the greatest risk-factor for drowning
is being near water; then being near it drunk;
Claire Berlyn
I don’t really care about butterflies, especially when they land in poems
except when a Red Admiral gets lost in the great grey fields
of the curtains and, because you really don’t see them so much
Aidan Semmens
The ash tree A superb winter sunrise backlights edges of cloud tinting sky above and bay below the palest blue, hints of gold glistening on the water. Beneath a faint sliver of rainbow a young ash, bold denier of dieback pushing through a broken wall wears a light...
Gail Webb
How To Remain Human This Year
We give a throwaway kiss
to strangers, to see New Year in.
We plant the seed with hope
it will grow, form fruit, to feed us.
Valentine Jones
CANNIBALISE THE CORRUPTION, I GUESS Ok? Everyone's dying. You're not special. You've a Tree in your stomach, Splitting the roof of your mouth, Leaves curled around teeth, and your skull Cracking like an ancient castle? Nothing I haven't seen before. Had three people...
Amanda Coleman White
I sit in quiet daylight
wondering if I should pray,
hearing mother cardinals echoing
my laments, an aural mirage
mutates into children crying
as a teacher hushes them into a corner,
quiet mice now…
Kelli Lage
Dead of Winter
If my inner child is kidnapped,
I’ll freeze my nightmares to that ole pole.
I don’t know how to use a lighter
is what I’d say if asked.