Today’s choice
Previous poems
Mary Mulholland
This poem is a secret
after Elma Mitchell
It doesn’t trust paper. It writes itself
in my head where no one can reach it,
laugh, tear it to shreds, or
call it a waste of space, a disgrace.
A poem is grace, a prayer,
my longing for more than I am.
Sometimes I wake in the night
to write it, hear the hushed breathing
of you beside me – waves
don’t lose their power in the dark.
This poem will save me. It gives purpose,
a kind of kindness, a healing balm,
takes me away, the same room as you
while elsewhere.
Mary Mulholland is a widely published poet, most recently Magma 94, Finished Creatures, Poetry News, and her poems are frequently finalists in competitions. Her debut collection is forthcoming this year from Nine Arches and she has two pamphlets (Broken Sleep and Live Canon). www.marymulholland.co.uk
Tristan Moss
I try
not to think
about my daughter’s
condition
when I
hug her
Susan J. Atkinson
I tell you my heart is breaking
but the heart has four chambers
and is not shaped like a heart at all
Peter Daniels
No, no one is who they think they are,
nor what we think they are, either:
the demon inside is thinking it
and you can’t tell him.
Paul Stephenson
Like one of those horses
on the carousel
going round and round in circles
sliding up and down a pole
Rob A. Mackenzie
Everything is moving. I have to remind myself
it’s a flat canvas and behind it a wall that’s solid
as I am.
Melanie Branton
A vixen or a reason. A
rave. No air, no sex, nor
Charlotte Oliver
On a bench outside Next,
a punctured woman
traces circles in the air with
a pale finger
Peter Devonald
He is bitterest regrets,
dark chocolate, olives and kale,
The Telegraph and Magritte’s
pipe, the treachery of images.
Anne Ryland
Restless two-hundred-year-old village elder,
a ragged playground of words, or is it weeds –
fragments of chant to slaps of skipping rope.