Today’s choice

Previous poems

Jim Paterson

by | Jan 18, 2025 | ,

 

 

 

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.

Kelli Lage

by | Dec 13, 2023 | ,

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.

Shamik Banerjee

by | Dec 12, 2023 | ,

A Rumination

With ginger chai, lounged in the balcony,
Revisiting the years she and her spouse
Endeavoured for a better, self-owned house,
She takes a breath of content, finally.

Benedicta Norell

by | Dec 11, 2023 | ,

Questions

We were always in the car that year the price of having a nice house in a nice area get in get
in it’s time to go where are we going our friends the supermarket the cinema the mall just for
a drive between banks of jaded shovelled snow

Kathy Pimlott

by | Dec 10, 2023 | ,

It’s impossible to foretell what will provoke tears, the sort
that well up and tip over while you hold onto the kitchen sink
waiting for them to subside…

Ali Murphy

by | Dec 9, 2023 | ,

    Mean sister We are stuck in our own words, not hearing each other. Sixty-somethings, we may as well be six, throwing sticks down the beck or poking dolls eyes out of their sockets, scribbling on their perfect faces. We are well rehearsed, know our cues,...