Today’s choice
Previous poems
Sarah Nathan
There’s The Big Things
The ash that screams into the night,
the lake that dries, the child amongst the rubble,
the heat, the fire, the lack of books,
the men who’ve clearly lost their minds.
And then there’s the small. The glass that smashes
on the floor, a relic glazed in blue.
The seedlings devoured in their pots,
the text that rattles round a broken phone,
the children needing less and less,
a sense of being all alone. A backwards glance,
a hurried kiss, left on edge in sweat and fear,
not knowing how to survive at all.
In the night the stomach swells,
and water churns around. A tiny foot
imprints skin, from the inside out.
I’m woken by birds at dawn to this
back-to-front and broken dream
and now you pull away,
umbilicus strained,
a leaf that falls,
a different season yet again.
Sarah Nathan is a teacher and writer from East Lothian, Scotland. She has poems featured in The Dark Horse, Outcrop Poetry, Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature and forthcoming in The Poetry Lighthouse and from the roots (Glasgow University’s creative writing anthology). When not in the classroom she can mostly be found at the beach.
Mark McDonnell
Fascinated by the priest’s teeth I don’t realise
I’m kicking the pew in front with a restless foot
until someone taps me sharply on the knee.
James Mason
In Italian I have no inner life.
With no past or future tense
My needs are immediate.
Claire Miller
rose is thirsty
rose senses water
rose root rummages in the earth
rose root punctures lung and frontal lobe
rose stem is a green straw sucking
Sylvia Banham
Pigeons have invaded the garden, two then four, then a flock.
They roost in the apple tree to nest, reconnoitre or mate
ignore my sorties to deter them and shit without stint
on patio and herb bed, foul lovely hyssop and thyme.
Daniel Naawenkangua Abukuri
What matters now is the feast of this survival.
The glory of our own light, black light.
Look at us: the deeper the root, the sweeter the juice.
Glory of the blacker berry, split wide open to the sun.
Robert Billinski
the sky met the water where the birds met the fish
the sky met the water where the fish met the birds
the sky met the birds where the water met the fish
Gordon Vells
Impotent in family life and ineffectual at work,
sometimes he would spend a full quarter-hour
just circulating the mini-roundabout on his moped,
dizzy from the power of blocking everyone else.
Patrick Wright
i protest say how when i’m gone i’d like to rest before the choice to return & go through
all this again you sigh as though that’s absurd & endings are just endings we’re mulch
& nothing but endless fucking
L. Haiman
My baby is hungry. Grabs
me with both hands. I am
an apple, apparently no will.