Today’s choice

Previous poems

Rob A. Mackenzie

 

 

 

Sea Lily
after Alison McWhirter

Everything is moving. I have to remind myself
it’s a flat canvas and behind it a wall that’s solid
as I am.
Although three quarters of my heart,
and one third of my bones, are water. Which
explains a lot.
Appearance can be deceptive
sometimes, but never here. I root among
many layers: clouds of mustard, pink ribbons,
haloes of smoke, lightning streaks, the sea
lily on its stalk, fragile in depth
plant-like
animal, I’ve swum into this shapeshifting
world, no longer quite sure of what I was
or might become.
Everything that matters
in art resists all explanation, but is bound
to emerge anyway, and to keep emerging.

 

 

Rob A. Mackenzie has published two poetry pamphlets and four full collections, the latest being Woof! Woof! Woof! (Salt Publishing, 2023). His work has been translated into French, Italian, Serbian and Czech. He founded and runs Blue Diode Press. bluediode.co.uk

Dragana Lazici

the days are long but the years are short.
seconds are tiny kitchen knives in my back.
i stopped reading Dickinson, her voice is a sad parrot.

Abigail Ottley

Faces, unless they come swimming up close. are a blur of piggy-pink and ice-
cream. In the street, she doesn’t know, cannot be certain when to smile, when to
look away

Emma Simon

No-one has seen a ghost while breast-feeding
despite the unearthly hours, the half-light

mad sing-song routines of rocking a child
back to sleep.

Helen Frances

I wasn’t in, so she left me a note.
Each word a tangle of broken ends, some oddly linked
to the next with a ghost trail of ink
from her rose-gold marbled fountain pen,
a rare indulgence she’d bought herself.