Today’s choice
Previous poems
Gareth Culshaw
THE APPRENTICE OF GROUNDHOG DAY
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
he laid as mortar on a wall. More bricks, more weight.
I’d watch from somewhere my eyes didn’t see.
I knew my life was years ahead from now.
All this was an experience. A jail-term. Clapped
by a system like using an umbrella in the sunlight.
I thought I heard a bird singing, but it was his whistle.
And a radio that took me back to the kitchen at home.
I tilted the shovel. Made more mortar. His whole life
sat in a pint of moonlight. Sand and cement were names
of exes. The spirit level balanced his newspaper.
He’d headline his own thoughts at dinnertime.
Munching on a pasty like a horse with a carrot.
I never knew his future. Just his past as I wheeled
it in a wheelbarrow.
Gareth Culshaw is an Autistic poet from N.Wales. He has four poetry collections. His latest, Some Things That Have Happened So Far, Backlash Press, 2023.
Annie Wright
Sing silver times, shimmering columns
of light on the wine-dark, temple
to moon-eyed Hecate, the insatiable.
Magnus McDowall
We rolled out on Seven Sisters Road,
two crates of Tyskie empty in my stairwell.
We were talking from the chest, walking backwards
crackling air above our heads like streetlights
Yucheng Tao
But look here, I turned my head
and discovered the Denver Museum
waiting,
nerve, a soft-boned
species hums
Sarah Boyd
He’s a house of cards, a delicately balanced pyramid
held together by hearing aids and dusty bifocals and
wobbling dentures and ageing pacemaker and
shirt with three buttons missing in action and
Samantha Carr
You became obsessed with nucleated red blood cells when you peeked through an
aperture window at your liquid, viscous nature. You became obsessed with maps
Helen Akers
we’re trying to construct a frame for this
‘highly reactive impulsive emotion’
the nurse is looking into it
Jenny Robb
By the light of a wolf moon,
my father turns mad.
Anne whispers to a girl in the wind,
and a friend blows into my life.
Diane Webster
Squirrels dream of a cougar,
a cougar given permission
to crouch like an assassin
awaiting its prey . . .
Bill Jones
Three jackdaws walked widdershins
around the birdfeeding station.