Today’s choice
Previous poems
James Mason
Beginner’s Italian
In Italian I have no inner life.
With no past or future tense
My needs are immediate.
I have hunger. I eat.
I have thirst. I drink.
I have the name for wine not peas.
The heat is good. I want.
Yes, I sleep well, thank you.
But I pass a dreamless night.
I am appetite. A thing of flesh.
More, it says. Again.
I do not know how to say enough.
James Mason lives in Worcestershire, UK. He has an MA in Creative Writing from the Open University.
On the fourth day of Christmas, we bring you Leusa Lloyd, Lydia Benson and Charlotte Johnson
It is always Christmas in the loft
On the third day of Christmas, we bring you K. S. Moore, Kate Noakes and Rachael Smart
Picture this:
little witch girl
in Alaskan wilderness.
On the second day of Christmas, we bring you Gill McEvoy, Rachel Burns and Cindy Botha
On the way to the registry office it snows, flecks of white like spittle hitting the steamed-up bus windows, I worry the petals from my wedding posy.
On the first day of Christmas, we bring you Hannah Linden, John White and Stephen Keeler
. . . Now the villages is
en fête: dressed for a party in the dark,
across the fields, along uneven paths . . .
Anna Chorlton
She curled emerald
tights about the core of
an oak
slumbering with thick bare
limbs.
John Greening
On Stage in a home-made model theatre, c.1967 Glued to your block, in paint and ink you wait for Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life to stop. Smell of hardboard and hot bakelite. The lino curtain’s ready to go up. At which, the straightened coat hanger is shoved and on you...
Anna Bowles
Nothing bad can happen on a plane.
Engine fires, earache, hijackers; but no new grief.
Kirsty Fox
Winged Kirsty Fox is a writer and artist specialising in ecopoetics. She writes lyric essays and poetry, and has had work published by Apricot Press, Arachne Press, and Streetcake Magazine. She has a Masters in Creative Writing and is currently studying...
Jason Ryberg
Sometimes I’d swear that
the ancient box fan I’ve hauled
around with me for
years is a receiver for
the conversations of ghosts