Today’s choice
Previous poems
Kate Bailey
Us and Them
They’ve mended the park fence again,
patched it over with the usual ugly metalwork,
like a riot barricade.
That’ll keep them out –
the delinquents,
the ne’er-do-wells,
who break in and sit on the grass in the dark
and watch the moon,
the dirty buggers!
Next week it will be prised away
to leave a gap the width of a person.
Another incursion.
And those scum-of-the-earth
lying under softly budding trees,
counting the stars.
Kate Bailey is a violinist, but she has always loved words. She has two grown-up daughters, and lives in Oxford with her husband and pacifist cat. Her writing has been published in the Frogmore Papers and the Fish anthology.
Play, for National Poetry Day: MD Bier, Catherine Sweeney, Rachel Burns
Those hot hot summer days. Hair curling against sticky clammy foreheads.
Pony tails, pig tails or braids. Keep it off our neck and backs.
Play, for National Poetry Day: Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana, Ruth Aylett , Brian Comber
They can imagine a forest,
we don’t need this minimalist tree,
we’ll represent a place to live without walls, without foundations or a hearth.
Play, for National Poetry Day: Jennifer A. McGowan, Judith Shaw, Robin Houghton, Wendy Klein
Over and over, you are Dorothy
or Glenda the Good,
me the Wicked Witch of the West
Play, for National Poetry Day: Oenone Thomas, Seán Street, David A. Lee
Every evening at the care home, I pull in
two armchairs til they’re facing. Opposites,
we never fist bump, high-five or
touch each other’s vying outstretched fingers.
Play, for National Poetry Day: Gayathiri Kamalakanthan, Paul Stephenson, Jem Henderson
How two men can become
four men can become
eight men
Play, for National Poetry Day: Elena Brake, Karen Downs-Barton, John Mole, Eleanor Holmes
Take eight each of hex bolts
washers, locks…
it’s important
to fasten these tightly.
Jade Wright
Things have been rough lately.
It seems impossible now,
as the breeze relieves us
Ruth Lexton
The new year slouches forward, unlovable,
barely acknowledged but for tired, gritty eyes
and a muffled scream into the kitchen towel.
Claire Booker
Never has there been so much interest
in the humble tongue. It peek-a-boos from my mouth
like the little man in a weather clock.