Today’s choice
Previous poems
Jeff Gallagher
Ramadan
Colleagues munching bap and burger
thought Ramadan was that juicy winger,
his scorching pace soon snaffled up by City.
Giving stuff up, they say, is murder –
and two weeks into Lent they bring a
secret snack to work through sheer self-pity.
A new year, and my next door neighbour
vows to refrain from cakes and ale,
aiming to be a size twelve by the summer.
Abstention is an earnest labour –
but she is tempted, bound to fail –
so frankly, resolutions are a bummer.
The barbecues are smeared with ash
and fat hands drip with ketchup sauce –
yet times are hard, and cannot get much tougher.
So many people, strapped for cash,
attempt to change their usual course –
all budgeting with care, prepared to suffer.
They feel so good about themselves
but still bemoan what they have lost:
their stomachs fill with hunger and with fear.
And when they view their empty shelves,
they feel the pain, they count the cost,
and wonder why I do this every year.
But this is jahada: desire’s defeat
through self-denial, a cleansing rite –
a noble cause; no hatred-fuelled slaughter
But standing with you in the heat,
to give my heart and find the light,
and let you drink my final drop of water.
Jeff Gallagher lives in Sussex. His poems have appeared in numerous publications, including Rialto, Acumen, New Critique, Cannon’s Mouth and High Window. He also featured (briefly) in an Oscar-winning movie.
Ellie Spirrett and Erin Coppin for our invisible and visible disabilities feature
This is the first time you have been out in three weeks.
Today sits like a joker between diamonds. Your punctured
skin sags over your bones, and you have dragged it
dangerously down the tarmac to mine this charity
shop for new parts.
– Ellie Spirrett
the riding of bikes
the rhythm of legs
the wind-driven tears
the wobbling turns
the handlebarred bags
the motion, the motion
-Erin Coppin
Will Snelling
The garden shudders, brushed with ice,
its edges slightly blurred away
by cloud unfolding over the grass.
Jonathan Croose
The gravel drive seems longer now,
the knock feels like a split of skin
and out on the fen road, by now there are chalk marks,
diagrams and calculations, cones and contraflows,
plastic zips and silent spinning lights.
No more need for sirens there,
but here, here on the doorstep, every alarm must ring.
Gordon Scapens
Hid some between hearing
and interpretation,
made a new alphabet.
Hid some between wit
and pedantic speeches
to fool anyone listening.
Gary Jude
The mandibles look like the tusks
of some gigantic bull elephant bagged
by hunters posing for a photograph
in pith helmets next to a tent
and a wind up phonograph.
David Keyworth
Aldgate had its usual smell of dirty metal and coffee. I jumped from platform to carriage. I squeezed beside a Tate Britain poster, clutched the grab-handle. When I chanced a glance, I saw I was the only one standing. Everyone else was wearing spacesuits.
Winifred Mok, Sandra Noel, Özge Lena and Alannah Taylor for Earth Day
we groan as the mercury hikes
climbing with the ball of fire
the Hot Weather Warning surrenders its flag
feels like 40 and it’s only May Day
-Winifred Mok
where geese balance on one leg
sleeping inside themselves
until they wake for hours of sun
and swimming
-Sandra Noel
You are walking in a half empty street. Carrying a rifle, you are hunting for canned food. Sultry evening falls like an electrified blanket, leaving you breathless. The world you know is long gone. The world has already surrendered to the heat waves followed by water wars, hunger wars. And hunger is a crazy carnivore in your belly. You turn a corner to see two rifles. Pointed at you. You shoot the air calmly.
-Özge Lena
I might eat more slowly, breathe more deeply the fragrance of nettle steep, be more mindful of
the miracle of vegetables of promising colour glinting in the oil of a pan, I might grind my molars
with the thought close that their substance, too, is borrowed from the minerals of the ground
-Alannah Taylor
Cal O’Reilly
I feel the sun, its love and anger,
a baked red brick rubbed
on the back of my calves.
Hiking in a binder was a shit idea,
My lungs reach to surface, come short.
Lucy Dixcart
It Starts Before Birth
Your tadpole-self, displayed to strangers for a thumbs-up.
Then childhood illnesses, faithfully documented.