Today’s choice
Previous poems
Colin Pink
Masquerade
I keep thinking I see you
across the street, hurrying along,
you’re too busy to see me.
Strange, to think of the dead being busy,
people to see, places to go, so many
appointments in the calendar of eternity.
I used to ‘see’ you when you were alive,
I mean when you weren’t there. I carry you
around like a photo in a wallet.
I’m amazed that so many people
turn out to look a bit like you,
so they can, fleetingly, masquerade as you.
It’s a good word masquerade it has just the right
number of syllables and that juicy squer sound
in the middle makes it luscious in the mouth.
You left the dance before the slow numbers;
still, the slow dances were always a bit
of a let-down, if you ask me.
Anyway, I mustn’t keep you,
just thought I’d let you know
I’ve been thinking about you.
Colin Pink co-chairs the Barnes & Chiswick Poetry Stanza. His poems have appeared in a wide range of magazines and four collections, most recently Typicity and Wreck of the Jeanne Gougy. He posts on Instagram @colinpinkpoet.
Oliver Comins
Working the land on good days, after Easter,
people would hear the breaks occur at school,
children calling as they ran into the playground,
familiar skipping rhymes rising from the babble.
George Turner
Some days, the privilege of living isn’t enough.
The weight of the kettle is unbearable. You leave the teabag
forlorn in the mug, unpoured.
Craig Dobson
Slowly, ordinarily, the unimaginable happens,
lowering the past into the dark,
covering it.
Clive Donovan
If I were a ghost
I think I would shrink
and perch on wooden poles
and deco shades – get a good view
of what I am supposed to be haunting
Rose Ramsden
We left the play early. It was the last day before the start of secondary school. Dad told me off for slapping the seats
Seán Street
There was a time when I took my radio
into the night wood and tuned its pyracantha
needle along the dial through noise jungles
to silent darkness at the waveband’s end.
J.S. Dorothy
Find yourself by the lake,
its icy membrane split by the long
arrow of a skein, reflected
flurry of wings, cries
bawling.
Sarah Rowland Jones
The terns lift as one
from the salt-pools behind the beach
– a thick undulating line
Jean O’Brien
Winter soil is hard and hoar crusted,
birds peck with blunted beaks,
pushing up are the blind green pods
of what will soon be yellow daffodils,
given light and air.