Today’s choice
Previous poems
Regina Weinert
Nothing much
It was the snatch of a dream,
someone said this is not
what you do in the desert,
it was one precise thing, not a list,
and I had to find my way back to it.
They always ask you now, don’t they,
to remember how it felt.
I only heard the words, had no idea
how they matched what I’d done,
something like opening
a door or a window
in a stopped car. I’m practised, so
on waking I saw a British army lorry
on a German country road heading
west. That’s all, because
I don’t go into confined spaces
if I can help it. I’ve learnt not to
from my mother, and to be grateful
for the right Jack and Jock,
Cadbury’s chocolate, understatement.
Regina Weinert grew up in Hamburg, then lived in Edinburgh for many years and now lives in Sheffield. Her poems appear in magazines, e.g. The North, Pennine Platform, Poetry Salzburg Review, Stand, Under the Radar and The Friday Poem.
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...
Mark Connors
Mark Connors is a poet from Leeds. Life is a Long Song was published by OWF Press in 2015, Nothing is Meant to be Broken by Stairwell Books in 2017. Optics was published by YAFFLE in 2019 and After in 2021. www.markconnors.co.uk.
Matthew Paul
The Semi-Fast Service to 1969 I catch snatches of serviced apartment blocks being unbuilt, rows of terraced houses resurrecting from a rubble heap back into their heyday. As per usual, when the train pulls in to 1999, I ease on a pair of swimming...
Jim Young
petrichor it has been raining in the night both french doors are open wide cool damp air converses around my knees not one flower moves except to drip occasionally the gentle violin music flows over the scene of my third cup of tea my third...
Kushal Poddar
Water, Guilt, Hemisphere You come in like water. I hear the ghost note, x, pp, turn to see you eerie in the half and half of the refrigerator light and my shadow. I don't need another guilt trip, stumble upon a photo album, lose myself in a...
Edward Vanderpump
Lost and Slaughtered Sisters The cruel stepmother, the Beast, I read of them, and other grimmer tales but, said mother, some are too nasty, just don't bother with those. That last one, the Bloody Chamber or the Forbidden Room, I shouldn't read...
Philip Dunkerley
Day Off Vultures don’t fly on Sundays, it’s their day off. No use saying you’d like to see them flying about, they won’t do it, haven’t for ages. I can tell you where they are - they’re down by the disused railway hanging out, walking up and down...
Anna Beddow
Clocking off from Sankeys This young man’s veins run with smelted iron. Shift ends. Furnace bellows push him home. He feels for his key in the oil worn bag rummages for fags wedged between Sketchpad and empty sandwich tin. Lighting on the...
Bill Greenwell
Out Of Bounds The sweet shop, for starters. Dabs, dibs, Creamola Foam, anything with a fizz. The maids upstairs in their own dormitory, who passed us a copy of Modern Sunbathing. Travelling too far beyond the cricket pavilion, where temptation...