Today’s choice
Previous poems
L.B. Jørgensen
Flintinge
When my dad was a boy,
his parents brought him into the fields.
As the whole town picked sugar beets,
their breath hugged
furrows in pre-dawn darkness.
I think of the tug he was taught,
the sound of roots wrested
from the earth
cold in a child’s palms, smeared with dirt.
I’ve felt the swing he learned
to place one gently in the bed
of the tractor.
I imagine the scent of loam,
the sap of sugar sweet on his skin.
L.B. Jørgensen lives in Denmark but writes creatively in English. She has poems published in various magazines such as Magma, The North and Under the Radar. Her pamphlet A Woman Travelling is published by Paekakariki Press.
David Bernard
I wrote the title of the lesson on the board and underlined it with a flourish. The class listened to my introduction.
Colin Pink
I used to ‘see’ you when you were alive,
I mean when you weren’t there. I carry you
around like a photo in a wallet.
Lottie McCrindell
All summer the sun scorched the city
and the sky held back its tears.
Roz Doe
The night before,
I paced London’s streets
sparkling and fizzing with ideas
the pills used to dull and destroy.
I felt awake, alive.
Iris Anne Lewis
And so I went into the owl.
Eyes, green as moss,
darken to black. Oak tassels
spell-woven to feathers.
Nairn Kennedy
You notice the nose: webbed veins spritzed
with little flicks of red, purple blotches
daubed with a palette-knife, broken ends
where blood-vessels gave up the ghost.
Jason Ryberg
Still Life of Fish and Bird
Mark McDonnell
Fascinated by the priest’s teeth I don’t realise
I’m kicking the pew in front with a restless foot
until someone taps me sharply on the knee.
James Mason
In Italian I have no inner life.
With no past or future tense
My needs are immediate.