Today’s choice
Previous poems
Helen Akers
Window of tolerance
we’re trying to construct a frame for this
highly reactive impulsive emotion
the nurse is looking into it meanwhile
we must find something cold to hold lick it
we’re trying to expand the tolerance – think
of a moth thumping at the window imagine
a pane adjustable along the diagnosis
for excessive information’s tiny racing heart
to be processed a bullseye window pivoted
on the horizontal with cunning joints
at either end allowing it to open let it fly
it’s a lovely day if you like lovely days
Helen Akers lives in North Norfolk. She is working on a collection of poems which explore the experience of bipolar disorder from the carers’ perspective. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia.
David Adger
being unnatural
he fixes his sight past the fields
of bere and oat and the woods
of birch, his goat-eyes watch
two worlds at once
NJ Hynes
It was so quiet she could hear her hair grow,
heartbeat stretch across measures, nails twist
into mobius strips . . .
Steph Morris
from another picture swiped a nice cyan
tore the lemon horrors off it
and slapped it straight
in this picture . . .
Amlanjyoti Goswami
In one of those colourful stalls
A gentle man with golden fingers
Carves a wheelbarrow from broken wood
Jacquie Wyatt
I think of that study that showed
the smaller the animal
the slower time passes for them…
Lara Frankena
The poet disregards the soup
she reencounters it on the hob
at a merry boil
not a slow simmer as instructed…
Antonia Taylor
That year I hunted Emily Dickinson. Stood at her grave as the snowbank split me open. Further from love than I’d ever been.
Helen T Curtis
You seemed to be born blind.
At first in cracked pot, in frosted compost
Your leaves pined – jaded limp swords
Christine Moore
If only my tongue were context then my teeth would be meaning and when I opened my mouth
to eat I would find a story there each time.