Today’s choice
Previous poems
Jasmine Gibbs
Messages, Signs, Codes
This morning – Blackstar,
Bowie, those jazz swan songs
sputtering from the CD player,
wild trumpets that convulse
through negative space. Funny,
coincidences like that; awoke
to a bonewrong feeling,
my senses pricked like
antennae cosmically tuned.
Tried not to believe them:
messages, signs, codes –
but then the news Kim
effervescent, ephemeral,
a supernova burned out
in a hospice, long knelled
but refusing The End
as foretold, far too busy
to die, far too gorgeous.
And then I am back
at my shelf, dusting a finger
over cased spines, lingering
at those dark auto-eulogies
by accident? By chance?
watching blackthorns spurt
their nectared nebulae,
crocuses, tulips, daffodils
holding out against the late
frost, a warble of robins
fluttering from the tarmac
like tiny Houdinis only
just escaping the killing
crunch of wheels,
whilst I exhale
smoke signals from out
my kitchen window.
Jasmine Gibbs is a poet from Great Yarmouth. Her work can be found in The London Magazine, And Other Poems, Gutter, and Ambient Receiver.
Gareth Culshaw
I tried to work from a van. Sitting in the passenger
seat listening to a guy whistle. His frown, a cloud
he lost when his mother died. Each wrinkle
Jennie Howitt
Those full udders will slowly burst
spitting milk onto the grass strands.
Matt Bryden
at the cider farm, eight minutes
before handover, we strike on
feeding the donkeys –
Colin Pink
to embrace you is like clasping
a fist full of briars
Simon Williams
What were these fairies called
before we knew of hummingbirds?
Bumblebee moth because of the size?
Reed-nose moth because of the proboscis?
Elizabeth Barton
On Diamond Hill
I didn’t
think of you once
as I climbed
past stunted willows
straggles of gorse
Susan Jane Sims on Mothering Sunday
Matter cannot be created and it cannot be destroyed.
I think of this as I pour the almost white ash from
the green plastic container that came in the post
into the vibrant red metal urn I have ready.
Daniel Sluman
just as the night sky shifts
beyond the minds
of the animals outside
the ceilings
we are pressed beneath change
in aspect & colour
Farah Ali
Notes from nature on how to survive this:
1. Learn crypsis and mimesis be a gecko or a mossy frog
2. Method actors sway like dead-leaf mantises on branches