Today’s choice

Previous poems

Ivan McGuinness

 

 

 

Bourn Identity

 

Begins
in a bubble
strained by chalk.
Where the brim-full hill cries,
weeping tracks merge
into an idea of brook:
Letcombe,
until merging with Ock.
Earth accommodates to accumulate,
hollows between course, force and resistance.
Pool falls over rock
riffles
into deeper ways,
cress-beds, crayfish, sticklebacks and bullheads.
Wet footed playground,
skirts tucked up
socks rolled on the bank,
ripple and eddy round skinny white legs,
soft silt cushions tender toes,
nets, jam-jars,
magnified beauties of the deep.

In town, domesticated by brick and stone, after grills and races,
a turning wheel catches life out of the stream, grinds free flow
into value.oMill-tailoooowateroooorelaxesooooafteroooowork.

 

 

Ivan McGuinness lives in Oxford, his poetry has appeared in several magazines including Seaside GothicThe Alchemy Spoon and Dream Catcher.

Emily Veal

      boudicca you’re a brewery down the road i drank a bottle of your finest on the train back from bury st edmunds the red queen (no one will call you ginger) i see you everywhere realised you were also the wetherspoons round the corner the one with...

Lesley Burt

tongue it various      from burr to babel      swish to swirl
rushes between buttresses      plaits threads of currents
where swans lord-and-lady-it along the centre
trips over own flow      with
fish-out-of-water flash      salmon’s silver high-jump

Sam Szanto

This love was. Slowly it becomes formless,
drifting, softening, snakeskin-empty,
the part it has played in who I am now
secreted in a pocket of a coat

Bel  Wallace

      Trespasses Forgive me The E flat on your baby grand (not quite in tune). This same finger in the crack that goes clean through the bungalow’s supporting wall. Then flicking dust from the fringed edge of your floral lampshade. Noticing that they...

Arlette Manasseh

You were the pine, softening the dirt I grew up in: the one I climbed in the breeze. Wanting to describe you, I had called you Paulie. That is not your name.