Today’s choice
Previous poems
Robin Lindsay Wilson
Miss Betina Wauchope Disappears
From the 1927 painting ‘Interior: Orange Blind’ by FCB Cadell.
The single crimson rose
she wears in her lapel,
to test his imperfections,
draws him into detail;
pointing a thinner brush
at her wintery cheeks,
the bones of her hands.
A face ready for regard,
emptied with white spirit,
cancelled with a rag wipe,
begun again with doubt.
Behind her, the orange blind,
fuses matter and antimatter.
It guillotines space and time,
until there’s no judgment.
She pretends to love art,
as the rose petals soften.
She tries to love herself,
while he paints her portrait
as orange stupefaction.
She feels anonymous,
not responsible for sunset,
or the malice of the furniture.
Her immortality is powerless –
his contempt is complete.
Robin Lindsay Wilson is a prizewinning playwright and poet. He has three collections of poetry published by Cinnamon Press. His forth collection, The Tender Shore, is scheduled to be published in Spring of 2027 by Cinnamon Press. Robin’s work has appeared in many national and international poetry magazines, including, Acumen, The Amsterdam Review, Magma, The Rialto, Ink, Sweat & Tears, New Writing Scotland, Dream Catcher and Poetry Salzburg.
Fatihah Quadri Eniola
There is an album of all the men
your mother have loved. It sits every
night in the deep silence of the
basement.
Nathan Evans
If they ask where I am, tell them: I am
wintering. I have secreted small acorns
of sadness in crevices of gnarled limbs
and shall be savouring their bitternesses
on the back of my tongue until the days
lengthen.
Jim Ferguson
we can travel anywhere
she winks, but let’s rest here
in amongst these words
a moment can take a while
Gabrielle Meadows
I am tearing the peel from an orange gently and somewhere
Far away a tree falls in a forest and we
don’t hear it but the ground does and the birds do
Hongwei Bao
Every five minutes it does its job,
hoovers every inch of her memory,
declutters all pains and sorrows.
Gary Day
And once the father frowned
As the boy struggled to fasten
The drawbridge on his fort.
‘He’ll never be any good
With his hands’ he declared,
As if the boy wasn’t there.
Royal Rhodes
Perhaps the friends of Lazarus, who died
and slipped his shroud, on seeing him might swoon
or rush to hear the tales of that beyond
they hoped and feared to face.
Dmitry Blizniuk for World Poetry Day
God in his worn, greasy jeans like a car mechanic
is lighting a new life from an old one.
Jeff Skinner
It takes ages. Tell me what it is you’re after
she says, when finally I get through.