Two poems from Silent Years Bleak House Dickens was in the house. Bleak to me, we’d say, jostling for bed space, warming up, while fog roiled off the monotype. Bleak to me. Whose turn is it anyway? I think it might be yours. I’d thought the sound of you hardly existed now, except … Continue reading Two poems by Alasdair Paterson
Author: And Other Poems
‘The Mermaid Aquarium’ by Cheryl Pearson
A month or two at most, I told myself; a place to catch my breath. The long, dry haul of my body’s bulk along the shingle, up the beach, the dragged slug of my tail a mess of scrapes. A wake of salt and scale all the way to the waterline. I can’t complain; it’s … Continue reading ‘The Mermaid Aquarium’ by Cheryl Pearson
Two poems by Alice Miller
Fourteen Mistakes ‘You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes’ Razumikhin, drunk in Crime and Punishment How we learned to create a thunderclap in a lab with dust and mirrors How we designed a clap to blast away every echo How we moved to new cities and wrote our addresses in loose font on … Continue reading Two poems by Alice Miller
Two poems by Christina Thatcher
Etching Even now she says the family moved because of me: my plump young needs, the better schools. I had to learn to read. She left Palisades the year they started selling horse meat in the cafeteria. I would have made the honor roll, she says, if it weren’t for that, and if I hadn’t … Continue reading Two poems by Christina Thatcher
Two poems by Khairani Barokka
medusozoa, neuropathic pain in kalimantan, a lake so inland in exile that jellyfish there have no sense of sting; divers swim at ease, brushing legs against ghosts. evolving out of our sense of poisoning tentacles is possibility; breathe this. the world is dying, yet holds both my enduring corpus and animals whose limbs have wept … Continue reading Two poems by Khairani Barokka
‘Changing Room’ by Rebecca Parfitt
At the photo-automat, I exchanged 24 selves for 24 frames. It started with a beret, then sunglasses, then I thought, what-the-hell, and started shedding. At the Saigon Street cafe I sat on someone else’s table and peeled the skin off a summer roll. Inside an abandoned margarine factory in Kreuzberg I pondered the face of … Continue reading ‘Changing Room’ by Rebecca Parfitt
Two Poems by Marc Brightside
Still Wait for 2 a.m. and count to three. Listen for the waveform pulse, a dripping tap, bodies curdling metallic juices. Take a shot. Imagine thunder, jazzmen pounding, horseshoes running into drum kits, every ripple flicking beads away from skin. Wait until it slows. Allow the image to kaleidoscope: steam trains chugging, ancient metronomes, … Continue reading Two Poems by Marc Brightside
Two poems by Romalyn Ante
Destined On their last holiday, they sat on a reed mat laid with local delicacies: a bowl of somtam, a plate of tilapia, cups of khaw, mud-dark, fish-pickle sauce, and a basket of freshly-picked greens from his auntie’s garden. This is how we roll in the province, no need for table or chairs. No need … Continue reading Two poems by Romalyn Ante
‘The One in Which…’ by Marvin Thompson
The One in Which… 2. The one in which I contemplate The Handmaid’s Tale TV series whilst exiting the cinema’s Art Deco doors In pick-n-mix dispensers, fudge shines like the 30-year-old scar on my knee. To reach an anthology with Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and Anansi, I tiptoed on a wooden box and wobbled. My slip was bloody. … Continue reading ‘The One in Which…’ by Marvin Thompson
Two poems by Ben Bransfield
Dorothy Gale The weather man loves clouds and has wanted to be cirrus since he could coil the garden hose without a hand from his mother. Worried by his hours at their barometer, she’d cook her son a storm from tins, give him the lion’s share to munch for brain and heart. Faggots and mash. … Continue reading Two poems by Ben Bransfield
