Today’s choice
Previous poems
Helen Finney
The Perseids at Bannau Brycheiniog
At my feet the window sprawls a view of kneaded land,
craggy baked by the hand of the gods, dusted green
with short bit grass. A sheep walks by
along the grey faded road, pitted with age,
worn tired with wear.
Last night I’d lain upon the ground late after dark, the warmth
of the day held beneath me, to await the heaven’s shower.
While all slept but the owl that called, the tears of St Lawrence
wept in the sky, lines of silver silked the black blue,
tacking space to the earth, sewing us into the universe.
With an MA in Fine Art, Helen Finney spent most of her life working as a fine artist in Swansea; however, recently her practice has taken her more towards writing. She has been published in Ink, Sweat & Tears, Poetry Wales, Dreich Mag, Gyroscope Review and elsewhere. She has released four collections of poetry.
Steven Taylor
A very long time ago
Stephen Fry’s godfather, the
Justice, Sir Oliver Popplewell
Who chaired the inquiry
Into the Bradford City
Amirah Al Wassif
Beneath my armpit lives a Sinbad the size of a thumb.
His imagination feeds through an umbilical cord tied to my womb.
Now and then, people hear him speaking through a giant microphone—
Singing,
Cracking jokes,
Mark Smith
In the portacabin that morning, men smoked
and looked at last week’s paper again.
There was no water to fill the urn.
The first job – to get connected
Toby Cotton
A blustery day –
the wind too strong for kites
or for lifts to the sky.
“To a thoughtful spot,” it cites
and pins me to the earth.
Ansuya Patel
except this burnt red vase.
Hand shaped in the muffled roar,
devouring flame in the furnace’s mouth.
Hannah Ward
Look, Drew, the
plums are in
pieces beneath
us. I dreamt:
Andrea Small
a flower is not a heron
does not stand on one leg
spear-billed over golden carp
Usha Kishore
At dawn and dusk, my father
becomes a chant, that flies above
the courtyard of the old house
Jane Frank
The leaves are a colour you’ve never seen
but that I will learn to expect
and there’s a fracas-induced full moon