Today’s choice
Previous poems
Stephen Chappell
At the Barbers
She has a way of tilting your head
as if lining up a thought.
Neither rough nor tender—decisive,
like someone used to responsibility.
She remembers names,
gently enquires after sick wives,
errant sons, daughters who never phone,
knees that won’t work on the stairs.
Old blokes come in for the cut,
eyebrow decluttering,
nose tweezering,
ears tweaked of fluff.
She works quickly, cheaply.
Cash only. Her father’s rule.
Upstairs he “keeps the books,”
which means smoking by the window.
She wanted to stay at school
she tells me
but left at fifteen
learned the grammar of heads—
quiffs, cowlicks, scars,
the way grief settles.
When I sit she listens
as if the day depends on it.
At the end she brushes my collar clean,
steps back, checks a job well done.
I leave,
feeling better.
Stephen Chappell came to poetry late (he is 72 and counting), finding the writing and reading of it a pleasure and an addiction. He lives on the side of the Malvern Hills with dog, cat and significant other and is mostly happy, especially when writing.
Gary Akroyde
We searched for it
through the tarmac in every rain-bruised sky
in dark Pennine shadows where great mills
spewed out ringlets of ghost-grey fog
Nathan Curnow
I like to think it’s a story about himself and Einstein
floating in zero gravity, Albert sailing through the capsule
toward his drifting pipe, Brian playing We Will Rock You—
Paul Short
Sleep.
Elusive as lucid dreams.
Closed eyes teem wotsit-orange,
spiderweb scarlet &
thatch-brown
Ash Bowden
Out again with the pitchfork churning
compost into the old green bin, stinking
and silent as an ancient earthen vat.
Mallika Bhaumik
This is not a frilly, mushy love letter
to a city whose allure lies in defying all labels and holding the mystery key to a man’s heart, though none has ever been able to lay an absolute claim on it,
Jena Woodhouse
Around midnight, the hour when pain
reasserts its dominance, a voice
behind the curtain screening
my bed from the next patient’s:
an intonation penetrating abstract thoughts
Kate Bailey
They’ve mended the park fence again,
patched it over with the usual ugly metalwork,
like a riot barricade.
Ibrar Sami
Across the barren land
where blood once played its savage Holi,
the fearless migratory birds
have returned again.
Anyonita Green
It wobbles slightly, red wine jelly.
I peer at it, nose close enough
to smell the iron, the scent of coagulant,
inhaling through slightly parted lips