Today’s choice
Previous poems
Rob A. Mackenzie
Sea Lily
after Alison McWhirter
Everything is moving. I have to remind myself
it’s a flat canvas and behind it a wall that’s solid
as I am.
Although three quarters of my heart,
and one third of my bones, are water. Which
explains a lot.
Appearance can be deceptive
sometimes, but never here. I root among
many layers: clouds of mustard, pink ribbons,
haloes of smoke, lightning streaks, the sea
lily on its stalk, fragile in depth
plant-like
animal, I’ve swum into this shapeshifting
world, no longer quite sure of what I was
or might become.
Everything that matters
in art resists all explanation, but is bound
to emerge anyway, and to keep emerging.
Rob A. Mackenzie has published two poetry pamphlets and four full collections, the latest being Woof! Woof! Woof! (Salt Publishing, 2023). His work has been translated into French, Italian, Serbian and Czech. He founded and runs Blue Diode Press. bluediode.co.uk
Benedicta Norell
Questions
We were always in the car that year the price of having a nice house in a nice area get in get
in it’s time to go where are we going our friends the supermarket the cinema the mall just for
a drive between banks of jaded shovelled snow
Kathy Pimlott
It’s impossible to foretell what will provoke tears, the sort
that well up and tip over while you hold onto the kitchen sink
waiting for them to subside…
Ali Murphy
Mean sister We are stuck in our own words, not hearing each other. Sixty-somethings, we may as well be six, throwing sticks down the beck or poking dolls eyes out of their sockets, scribbling on their perfect faces. We are well rehearsed, know our cues,...
Bruach Mhor
I heard a calm, clear voice.
But not with my ears. Not my outward ears.
It wasn’t madness…
Moira Garland
tall as the absentee house.
How the girl moored her hands and heart charmed by riven bark…
Maureen Jivani
I dream I’m at the hospital
massaging your feet, your tiny feet
that I have freed from their tight
white stockings…
Jayant Kashyap
We are in the bath, your hands
around my back, mine around yours—
everything covered in a fog.
Jane Holland
When fog falls over Rough Tor,
the world creaks
on the end of a string…
Emma Lee
Snow’s Reset The roofs blend with the snow-laden clouds, borders softened so it’s only memory that differentiates my space from my neighbour’s. The wet smell confuses pets whose footprints meander over territorial edges, leave crazed patterns like...