Today’s choice
Previous poems
Charlotte Holm, Jennifer A McGowan
Tardigrades
A leaky drainpipe drips
creating damp patches on uneven paving,
slime green algae blossoms
forming viridescent ripples
like growth rings and soft
spongy textured moss gently squeezed
produces droplets of moisture;
Adam’s ale, an elixir of microbes.
In backyards everywhere there exists
(unseen to the naked eye)
the whole universe.
Unaware of their titanic sovereigns
millions of tiny organisms are living quiet lives
adjusting hourly to change in habitat
and environmental stresses.
With eight stubby legs they’ve waddled
for millions of years
responding to light with sightless eyes
groping with sharp claws to suck
the juice out of microscopic vegetation.
Using mirrors and plates the little eye
can focus on their transient lives.
A change in weather
and their whole world dries up.
Unlike us, fluctuations slight or catastrophic
are of little consequence to water bears,
and we can only envy their resilience
for long after we have gone
they will be still shuffling along
in their perpetual microcosm.
Charlotte Holm lives in East Yorkshire and is a textile artist, mother and carer. She has had poems published in Black Nore Reveiw, Ink, Sweat and Tears, the Fig Tree, Sixty-Odd Poets, and Black Bough. She was also winner of the Doncaster Rail 200 poetry competition.
In the Meantime, I Study
very small rocks, geographical schemata
of the second-to-last little ice age,
the sixteen legal variants of paisley,
whether I can mine the gold from my teeth
with or without pharmaceutical assistance,
the psi of toes en pointe on waxed floors
versus the flight of a migrating butterfly;
sixteen tons of this and that (I get nothing),
the mutating songs of cardinals and catbirds,
whether my washer on spin can harmonise
with a cat’s purr, the concept of cold
and why I don’t feel it, the back side of water,
how to inlay mother-of-pearl and spin nettles,
what a bird feels when it’s flying,
the language of glaciers, all deep gutturals,
and why Larry is happy. Who the fuck is he?
Jennifer A McGowan has been rewriting myth since before it was mainstream. She approves of fantasy being sold on every bookshelf in stores these days. Her 7th book of poetry is out this year. Her long collections, from Arachne Press, are available here.
Pascal Vine and – – – ajae – – – for our Invisible and Visible Disabilities Feature
Chronic fuck slug
Chronic floor sleeping
Chronic fist seething
Chronic food swallowing
Chronic feuding skin
Chronic foreseen surrender
Chronic failure synonym
Chronic sel(f)-inlictednes(s)
Chronic found inner-piece(s)
Chronic forcibly sending love (&) (kisse(s))
Chronic we (f)ucking mi(s)s you
– Pascal Vine
breaking through the battering lashings of exhaustion and overwhelm,
a quiet, passionate voice buds within you.
it exasperatingly sprouts and presses and pouts, saying:
“we’re forever dogged!
it’s forever dusk!
our soul’s been over-tillaged!
you’re becoming but a husk!
we need a rest
we need a break please!
our brittle bones are steeped in ache.”
– – – ajae – – –
Ellie Spirrett and Erin Coppin for our invisible and visible disabilities feature
This is the first time you have been out in three weeks.
Today sits like a joker between diamonds. Your punctured
skin sags over your bones, and you have dragged it
dangerously down the tarmac to mine this charity
shop for new parts.
– Ellie Spirrett
the riding of bikes
the rhythm of legs
the wind-driven tears
the wobbling turns
the handlebarred bags
the motion, the motion
-Erin Coppin
Will Snelling
The garden shudders, brushed with ice,
its edges slightly blurred away
by cloud unfolding over the grass.
Jonathan Croose
The gravel drive seems longer now,
the knock feels like a split of skin
and out on the fen road, by now there are chalk marks,
diagrams and calculations, cones and contraflows,
plastic zips and silent spinning lights.
No more need for sirens there,
but here, here on the doorstep, every alarm must ring.
Gordon Scapens
Hid some between hearing
and interpretation,
made a new alphabet.
Hid some between wit
and pedantic speeches
to fool anyone listening.
Gary Jude
The mandibles look like the tusks
of some gigantic bull elephant bagged
by hunters posing for a photograph
in pith helmets next to a tent
and a wind up phonograph.
David Keyworth
Aldgate had its usual smell of dirty metal and coffee. I jumped from platform to carriage. I squeezed beside a Tate Britain poster, clutched the grab-handle. When I chanced a glance, I saw I was the only one standing. Everyone else was wearing spacesuits.
Winifred Mok, Sandra Noel, Özge Lena and Alannah Taylor for Earth Day
we groan as the mercury hikes
climbing with the ball of fire
the Hot Weather Warning surrenders its flag
feels like 40 and it’s only May Day
-Winifred Mok
where geese balance on one leg
sleeping inside themselves
until they wake for hours of sun
and swimming
-Sandra Noel
You are walking in a half empty street. Carrying a rifle, you are hunting for canned food. Sultry evening falls like an electrified blanket, leaving you breathless. The world you know is long gone. The world has already surrendered to the heat waves followed by water wars, hunger wars. And hunger is a crazy carnivore in your belly. You turn a corner to see two rifles. Pointed at you. You shoot the air calmly.
-Özge Lena
I might eat more slowly, breathe more deeply the fragrance of nettle steep, be more mindful of
the miracle of vegetables of promising colour glinting in the oil of a pan, I might grind my molars
with the thought close that their substance, too, is borrowed from the minerals of the ground
-Alannah Taylor
Cal O’Reilly
I feel the sun, its love and anger,
a baked red brick rubbed
on the back of my calves.
Hiking in a binder was a shit idea,
My lungs reach to surface, come short.