Today’s choice
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Day Seven of ‘Wonder’ for NPD: Helen Anderson, Sue Johns
I Wish This Phone Had a Better Camera
I need to show you these sunsets/
feisty last breaths/coral on flamingo/blood
yellow carcass/tiny theatre/blazing deaths/o soothing
apocalypse, haul my agitations on your olden back/blue borne/ shallow
purple/day vanquished/deft dip/off-black relief/pledged resurrection/
o so… very… pretty
Helen Anderson writes poetry and prose in a small town on the North Yorkshire coast. Her debut poetry pamphlet ‘Sagrada Familia’ was published by Nine Pens Press in 2022. www.facebook.com/
Written by Candlelight in March
When the light returns
I will remind the garden.
Along with the robins
who have cast off
their Christmas card coyness
to mate.
They’ll say and I’ll agree
that every worm-blind soul
must immerse themselves
in soil.
Embrace a pot plant
as worthy as an acre
pausing only for birdsong –
any bird
or in their absence
a child.
Sue Johns originates from Cornwall where she started performing as a punk poet, in the 1980’s. Publications include Hush (Morgan’s Eye Press, 2011) , Rented, Poems on Prostitution and Dependency (Palewell Press, 2018) and Track Record (Dempsey & Windle, 2021). She was highly commended in the Prole pamphlet and the Amnesty International competition. She has an MA (distinction) in Writing Poetry from Newcastle University/ The Poetry School.
Her work has appeared in anthologies such as can You Hear the People Sing (Palewell Press, 2020), Alter Egos (Bad Betty, 2019) Welling Up (Palewell Press, 2019) and Time for Song, Contemporary Cornish Poetry ( Morgan’s Eye Press, 2009), Ver Prize anthology, 2022 and magazines including Poetry News, The Morning Star, Southbank Poetry, Dreich, The Atlanta Review, Prole, The Alchemy Spoon, Brittle Star, The Big Issue, London Grip, Dream Catcher, Black Iris, Tears in the Fence, Orbis, Magma, Obsessed by Pipework and Culture Matters
@suejohns facebook
@johns_sue insta
Philip Athans
Never shows up late to a single thing he’s invited to
Always brings the most thoughtful and carefully curated and perfect gift
Never shows up early and never once overstays his welcome
Always appears well groomed and clean and appropriately dressed
Michelle Diaz
This is just a woman,
sticking her life back together
after years spent recovering.
Autumn Richardson
What you are –
bodied light, a store of oil
a hive of warm blood
Rebecca Parfitt
In the back of the taxi on my way to the hospital,
thighs clenched together,
the driver asked me,
Samarth Agarwal
Here — in the absolute zero of space — fireworks!
Look how the crucibles of creation,
those million coloured fingers that stretch light years —
Jenny Scoones
We unlearn how it felt to touch
And resume our separate days in shirts and trousers,
Like hazmats against the sun and its longing,
The moon with its underbelly pulls.
Matt Bryden
Now a blanket is spread, offerings
of chutney and shin bones,
a taper held to the fire
that heats the tar beneath our boats.
Kit Duke
I didn’t know then,
moving for a mouth
that refused to yield an inch,
what it wasn’t.
Janet Hatherley
In my cookery exam, we have to prepare a family meal This is summer and Mum can’t put out her trot line with its hooks because of swimmers so I buy three mackerel from the fishmonger. I cycle to the school bus stop one arm on the handlebar,...