Today’s choice
Previous poems
Paul Bavister
Jigsaw
A family photo, blown up and chopped
into a thousand pieces then tipped
on the table. We found our eyes first,
as they swirled through fragments
of black jumper, dark pine trees
and an orange sunset sky.
The jigsaw became a winter tradition,
and as we got older, the worn pieces
got harder to push together.
Sometimes we’d panic
that one was lost, but then find it
still rattling in the box.
When a side was completed
or a face stared back at us,
we’d nod in recognition.
We were always silent
as we put us all back together
in the winter sunlight.
Paul Bavister has published three volumes of poetry, including The Prawn Season (Two Rivers Press). His work has appeared in numerous magazines.
Hongwei Bao
Night Market When the night curtain falls, the crowd start to assemble as if drawn by magnets, as if answering a scared call. Neon lights go up along the narrow pavements, illuminating the concentrating faces of food-sellers. Under boiling noodle...
Michael Shann
Early March, after weeks of rain:
between a young oak’s leggy roots,
a cushion of dun, desiccated leaves.
Darren Deeks
You have been burgled.
While you were out with the dog,
a burglar made best use of that
yawning kitchen keyhole to spook
through tracelessly
Rachel Lewis
I step through missing bricks.
Green graves cluster
on a rise under a yew…
Kexin Huang
She came growling at me like a wolf,
muttering moonlight out of her throat
Joe Crocker
Hold a rule beside her measured look.
Precisely fix the time it took
to meet and break away.
David Adger
being unnatural
he fixes his sight past the fields
of bere and oat and the woods
of birch, his goat-eyes watch
two worlds at once
NJ Hynes
It was so quiet she could hear her hair grow,
heartbeat stretch across measures, nails twist
into mobius strips . . .
Steph Morris
from another picture swiped a nice cyan
tore the lemon horrors off it
and slapped it straight
in this picture . . .