Today’s choice
Previous poems
From the Archives: In Memory of Jean Cardy
Denizens
Mice live in the London Tube.
A train leaves
and small pieces of sooty black
detach themselves
from the sooty black walls
and forage for crumbs
in the rubbish under the rails
that are death to man.
You can’t see their feet move.
They scurry like clockwork mice
and then they accelerate
faster than any clockwork mouse,
faster than the eye can follow.
Your eye jerks to keep up with them.
There are usually three.
You can tell when a commuter has spotted one;
he becomes alert, alive –
it makes you realize the half-world
the other passengers exist in.
Once, a mouse came onto the platform
and sat, cleaning his whiskers,
watched by a silent circle
of respectful giants,
tall as Nelson’s column.
Jean Cardy was a friend to IS&T and proof that it is never too late to keep writing and submitting poetry. She had three collections and many poems published. In her eighties she was teaching Creative Writing for U3A. She died on 20th January, a week before her 100th birthday – that telegram would not have impressed in any case.
We say goodbye to her today.
‘Denizens’ was selected by Helen Ivory, unaware of the connection between Jean and IS&T publisher Kate Birch. It was originally published on 16th June 2013.
Christina Lloyd
Nature Morte The funereal bouquet falls away from itself: sepals are the first to sag, then chrysanthemums drop to the floor like pom-poms. Petal tips and leatherleaf shrink, becoming brittle to the touch. Anthers fur into pollen grains speckling...
Mark McDonnell
Michael ‘A locked garden is my love.’ Song of Solomon When I think of Michael I think of ivory, of the epicene torso of a wounded Christ rising from a loosening loincloth with Pre-Raphaelite lilies; of how he made me stop so Allegri’s Miserere...
David Callin
Twilight in the Forestry Board Garden How easily a willow, loitering by the river, impersonates a figure turning, in the act of asking for directions, or simply wondering whether to step into the water. In twilight things grow fluid, lose their...
John Saunders
The Earl of Charleville’s Forest The grounds of my local ascendancy castle, a favoured haunt for joggers. As I trot along the ancient path lined by centenarian oaks and beeches I imagine himself on his postprandial walk accompanied by his loyal...
Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
Is That Really How To Do It? A seat and shelter commemorating the Tolpuddle Martyrs was erected in 1934 by the wealthy London draper Sir Ernest Debenham. Transporting half a dozen Dorset men on trumped-up evidence: the gentry’s way of thwarting...
Doryn Herbst
Bee Dress After Girl with a Bee Dress image by Maggie Taylor For your sixteenth birthday, you got a dress made from a swarm of live bees, pulled in at the waist with a drawstring, which you were made to wear on special occasions. If you refused to...
Mandy Schiffrin
Soundtrack To A Pause There's a cornered big cat in my attic, snarling, lip-curled; its guttural growl swallowed at the back of its throat. Nearby, the deadened thunk of a skull, knocking persistently against the skylight: tick, tick, ticking, out...
Caroline Gilfillan
The Story of ‘I’ My ‘I’ landed with a thump. One day a mother was chasing the tails of two small sons, the next I was there, orange as an apricot. Distracted, she bundled me into blankets and tired cardigans, carried me home on her lap in the...
Abigail Ottley
Abigail Ottley writes poetry and short fiction from her home in Penzance. As an older woman writer with a passion for history, she usually has at least one foot in the past. facebook.com/abigailelizabethottley...