Today’s choice

Previous poems

Kate Hendry

 

 

 

Burning the Years

Lay down the worst ones –
raze them like swathes
of heather on the moor.

So what if there’s a dead patch.
Remember the havoc
unfettered fire makes –

flames twirl along the ridge,
tumble down the gorge.
Unbreathable heat and ash.

So burn those years
till there’s a dead plot of earth
and disaster’s spurned.

Behind you – safe beds of moss.
Ahead – untouched mounds
of rush like stepping stones.

Spin in the steam and smoke,
jump on the blackened years
sprung like a dance hall floor.

 

 

Kate Hendry‘s poems have been widely published in magazines, including PN Review, The Rialto and Poetry Wales. Her first pamphlet, The Lost Original, was published by Happenstance Press. Her second, MX SIMP (Mariscat Press) was shortlisted for the 2023 Michael Marks Awards.

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.