Today’s choice

Previous poems

Anne Symons

 

 

 

Magic Pennies

My dad was a magician.
He could make a penny disappear
with a twist of his wrist

just vanish in thin air
to pluck it later
from your ear or nose.

People laughed when dad did that.

He’d put a matchstick
in the centre of a clean white hanky,
his Sunday best

fold the hanky, break the match
get everyone to feel it
before he mended it again.

They all said Oo! When dad did that.

But the best was getting chocolate
from the level crossing
behind the house on Gwinear Road.

Dad put ha’pennies on the tracks
for trains to squash as big as pennies
for the sweetie slot machine.

He was clever like that, my dad.

 

 

Anne Symons comes from Cornwall and began writing poetry in retirement. She completed an MA in Writing Poetry at Newcastle University and the Poetry School in London. Her debut pamphlet Shifting Sands, was published by Littoral Press in 2024

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.
 

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,...