Today’s choice
Previous poems
Andrea Small
Night Out
a flower is not a heron
does not stand on one leg
spear-billed over golden carp
does not rise on wide wings
neck curving into the blue
flight like a slow heartbeat
a heartbeat is not a flight
does not lift a wary body
translate a girl into a bird
a bird is not a girl
does not freeze
at a rough shout
does not run
down a dark street, her hand
a key-bladed hedgehog
does not endure
the instruction to understand
she was asking for it
Andrea Small is a multi-disciplinary artist. She has an MA in Poetry from MMU; her poetry has been published in journals and anthologies. Andrea lives in Sheffield, believes that we can all sing, and is learning to be a clown.www.andreasmall.co.uk
Stephen Keeler
Something about arriving somewhere new
just as afternoon is leaving . . .
Geraldine Stoneham
The silence and peace of this place
creeps through on birdsong.
Emma Lee
The instruction invites overthinking:
describe your hometown through
the medium of simple sentences
Vanessa Napolitano
I ask my father to dinner, pretending he is still alive,
ask him what he’d like. He says a pork chop which is not
something I know how to cook.
David Forrest
I don’t know why you bother with poetry Vlad mutters as he adjusts the current in the magnets, forcing them to rhyme with each other.
Neil Fulwood
Today’s operative on the ohrwurm shift
has hacked the WiFi password
in the ear canal and now I’m looping back
endlessly to a misheard lyric . . .
Ira Lightman
Laid down, his upraised face is
White – offputting – on a plumped pillow.
Dave Wynne-Jones
“The all-consuming passion
is rarely found
more than a recipe
for misery,”
you read
Pat Edwards
He appears like a paper bag blown onto the feeder,
punching his beak time and again into the peanuts.