Today’s choice
Previous poems
Michael Mintrom
A Map of Old Battles
They lie deep in a forest, wounds
unseen, unhealed. Further back,
an escarpment with dark scars.
Visiting, perhaps you expected
something tactile, something to hold,
markers of exact terrain, key sites
on paper or cowhide. Who can say
how history unfolds? Waiting for sleep,
visions return — bodies, faces.
Indelible feelings. This topography
I carry. Thank you because you listen,
you understand this haunting.
Should we talk of fit and proper things,
above our power to add or subtract?
This is my map. It is not the only map.
Michael Mintrom lives in Melbourne, Australia. His poems have appeared in various literary journals including: Amsterdam Quarterly, The Blue Mountain Review, Cordite Poetry Review, The Ekphrastic Review, London Grip, The Metaworker, and Shot Glass Journal.
Katie Beswick
You wouldn’t believe how quick they grew —
Our babies were men now. Lifting bags of concrete
they rebuilt cities, slab by slab, reinforcing cracks.
Sally St Clair
I’d asked for this not to be recorded;
this failure on my part, to be a good
parent;
Olivier Faivre
monkey mathematics
A monkey grabs one nut here, one nut
there, and two more over there.
He counts them with care.
HLR
I find six errors in the proofreading manual & the irony doesn’t tickle me.
I am enraged by typos, poor formatting, missing commas. This is my Big Girl Job,
the one I always wanted —
Angela Howarth Martinot
What seems to be the problem ? He asks
in that slightly condescending tone.
Seems, I think, Seems.
It seems, I say,
that I have a problem with my inner fish,
Bianca Pina
My Dad once dismissed a friend as a hypocrite,
which I took to be an induction to the truth.
Lately though, I think the things I love in you
I love because they’re grossly inconsistent.
Ian Badcoe
We are eating dessert when the urge overcomes her
to scrawl mathematics, the night ticks on
Sim Pereira-Madder
Tom Giles once asked me if I had tools and at that
time I didn’t because I was fifteen maybe sixteen
Molly Knox
I count:
four cows in the meadows. Made
friends with them this Spring.