silent summer the door slams shut / she’s gone at last / at last she’s gone / to school & / summer’s done // summer is done // and silence falls / it falls on the silence / that was there before // before she went / before she’d sit / alone she’d sit // … Continue reading ‘silent summer’ by Robert Harper
Author: And Other Poems
Two poems by Gill McEvoy
Derek Jarman’s Film “Blue” His silence now is blue. As if an artist drew a laden brush of paint from alder buds to reeds his mind and mouth and tongue are flushed by blue: the low-slung sky, the feathered seeds, the brook like navy slate beneath a moon, the tassels of phalaris plumes fused with … Continue reading Two poems by Gill McEvoy
Two poems by Kaddy Benyon
The Blue Hour This intense, clear pristine blue that in any other mind could be turquoise, aqua, a warm clear sea around a Grecian isle. Here, lodged just under the arctic, where temperatures quiver between untouched and ruined, this particular blue is of loss, absence; of warped and distorted reflection. This blue: my unasked for … Continue reading Two poems by Kaddy Benyon
Two poems by Sally Evans
Seeds I go outside to my hens, while fifty miles away thin men in Edinburgh are feeding birds. They are always thin, and the birds crowd round, starlings, pigeons, spugs, vying for crumbs of love and humanity, on the bleak squares, the paving where they are tutted at, both birds and men, by hurried passers-by. … Continue reading Two poems by Sally Evans
Two poems by Marion Tracy
Two poems from Dreaming of Our Better Selves Circular Breathing I’m looking up rebirthing online, how to do it best and I bump into a man with a beard on You Tube. He’s breathing in circles demonstrating how to do it, like a prince in a fairy tale trying so hard to be the best … Continue reading Two poems by Marion Tracy
Two poems by Pippa Little
Self-Portrait as a Last Meal Me in this found world. Mother and father, horned, pronged, point due north, guards of white meat on a grey plate. Lone glass, all mouth is not my sister. Here murderers wait to eat the clot-dark looming thing I am with its one eye that hides in plain sight, stares … Continue reading Two poems by Pippa Little
Three poems by Carolyn Jess-Cooke
The House of Rest A History of Josephine Butler, feminist and social reformer, 1828-1906 Eva Then you were here real as a wound. They placed you in my arms with such care I thought you a parcel of feathers that might fly away. I stroked your face – Your eyes were midnight blue. Time bended … Continue reading Three poems by Carolyn Jess-Cooke
Three poems by JT Welsch
The Market Thank god, the past is free from commodity, free to occupy more reliable abstractions. O, to be a tourist of one’s own life, a gift shop full of all the things I always deserved as a child: the graphic novel of my Punic Wars. What could they ask that wouldn’t still be cheaper … Continue reading Three poems by JT Welsch
Poem to Ivor Gurney by John Greening
Dartford To Ivor Gurney A clear Spring morning. The G20 leaders assembling in London. An announcement about the abolition of the old … Continue reading Poem to Ivor Gurney by John Greening
‘First the Music and then the Words’ by Jeremy Wikeley
First the Music and then the Words Listening to Strauss’s ‘Capriccio’ I dreamt I was decked in dark furs and running down the colonnades of a deserted town, one time the capital of a great empire, now in flames. I smashed statues, slashed tapestries and stripped the gold. I pissed in the silverware and forced … Continue reading ‘First the Music and then the Words’ by Jeremy Wikeley