Today’s choice

Previous poems

Andy Humphrey

 

 

 

Cine Reels

On screen, Dad was
the radical –

the introverted
pen-and-notepad kind,

donkey jacket, beard,
betrayed.

Another time
he played a photographer

eyeballing Liverpool –
statutes, pigeons, couples

out to lunch. Thieves
snapped in the act.

Our hometown Hollywood
never had

content warnings.
Murder

came in piano discords,
a hymn swelling to chorus;

death was a one-word
manifesto

crumpled, windblown.
Fin.

On screen,
they killed Dad.

We watched him die
over and over.

 

 

Andy Humphrey has published two collections of original poetry, A Long Way to Fall (Lapwing Press, ISBN 978-1-909252-40-0, 2013) and Satires (Stairwell Books, ISBN 978-1-939269-16-4, 2015). He lives in York and works as a solicitor. https://www.writeoutloud.net/profiles/andyhumphrey.

Jenny Scoones

We unlearn how it felt to touch
And resume our separate days in shirts and trousers,
Like hazmats against the sun and its longing,
The moon with its underbelly pulls.
 

Janet Hatherley

      In my cookery exam, we have to prepare a family meal This is summer and Mum can’t put out her trot line with its hooks because of swimmers so I buy three mackerel from the fishmonger. I cycle to the school bus stop one arm on the handlebar,...