Today’s choice

Previous poems

James McDermott

 

 

 

Samsara

if samsara’s concrete please don’t come back
as black jackal for I live in Norwich
nor spineless worm as I don’t have a lawn
ditto poppy fields with my hay fever
nor breeze I don’t open those windows now
so I might not hear you nor beige house moth
nibbling my pink knitwear nor hot new squeeze
father for ease please just come back as you
I shake my head aren’t I then fixed to lose
you all over again and I don’t want
you to be on a loop as I won’t be
fireproof and I don’t want you to be
kicking to sink your son praying Jim won’t
rise as poppies jackal that worm this wind

 

 

James McDermott’s collections published by Nine Arches Press include ‘Father Myself’ and ‘Wild Life’. James’s poems have been published in Poetry Wales, Magma, The North, Butcher’s Dog and Interpreter’s House.

Daniel Sluman

just as the night sky shifts
beyond the minds

of the animals outside

the ceilings
we are pressed beneath change

in aspect & colour

Farah Ali

Notes from nature on how to survive this:
 
1. Learn crypsis and mimesis be a gecko or a mossy frog
 
2. Method actors sway like dead-leaf mantises on branches

Helen Finney

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.