Different Corridors A moment ago, while you still slept, they were all in the same story: the ship, your mother, that job you left. Now, as the room comes back, they are beginning to unravel: you catch at a fact, a face, but they slip by, each diminishing down a different corridor, calling round corners … Continue reading Two poems by Sheenagh Pugh
Author: And Other Poems
Two poems by Richard Price
A stepladder in a white room A stepladder in a white room – the beginning of an alphabet. That was… forty years ago. That was twenty years ago. That was tomorrow was it? … Continue reading Two poems by Richard Price
‘Clearing Out Mum’ by Julia Webb
Clearing Out Mum It’s like unreeling yards and yards of tangled wire, or finding mice in an attic you never even knew you had. It’s like the wash-off, run-through, bleed-right hours of sorting. It’s like squirreling backwards, or finding yourself back in the town that you spent years getting out of. It’s like a thousand … Continue reading ‘Clearing Out Mum’ by Julia Webb
‘The Cord’ by Maggie Sawkins
The Cord When I thought of what she was carrying I imagined it the colour of silt, and if it had eyes then they were the eyes of a fish long out of water. I imagined it soulless, like a stone (a stone cannot haunt one’s dreams), so that if it was taken from us, … Continue reading ‘The Cord’ by Maggie Sawkins
‘Another box of nipples arrived today’ by Char March
Another box of nipples arrived today The hospital computer’s gone mad – that’s the third box this week. You stick them on the fridge door, the phone, the handle of the kettle. And we laugh. Then you are sick again. This evening you sit in your usual chair in the bloat of chemo, your breath … Continue reading ‘Another box of nipples arrived today’ by Char March
A poem from ‘Sunspots’ by Simon Barraclough
Violet violent as an 'ultra' or inviolate as a saint? The reverbs from a viola playing purple passages. A Parma Violet on your tongue, like the contents of your grandma’s handbag, reminding you that childhood is neither sweet nor sour and never tastes quite right; the elusive umami of mommy and daddy. A triolet … Continue reading A poem from ‘Sunspots’ by Simon Barraclough
Three collage poems by Helen Ivory
Helen Ivory is a poet and assemblage artist. Her fourth Bloodaxe Books collection is the semi-autobiographical Waiting for Bluebeard (May 2013). She has co-edited with George Szirtes In Their Own Words: Contemporary Poets on their Poetry (Salt 2012). She edits the webzine Ink Sweat and Tears and is tutor and Course … Continue reading Three collage poems by Helen Ivory
Two poems by Jack Little
Swimming Lessons Hard as stone, Mexico City I measure you in cruise liners far from the sea and hands wider than the whole of Northumberland grasping at clanking locks, the cats in bin liners are lost in their own little world – warm and burly the night light sea, I swear they dance and what … Continue reading Two poems by Jack Little
Two poems by Jasmine Donahaye
Our Sad Captain or: Liam Cunningham’s Middle-aged Ladies Admirers Club It’s the parti-coloured beard that does us in, renders us tender and credulous – a man we’d go to in a crisis because he’d look down, frowning with concern from his six foot one (yes, we’ve each checked the online movie database). Alright, … Continue reading Two poems by Jasmine Donahaye
Two poems by Stuart Mckenzie
Earplugs Some mornings I wake up, find them pressed into my hair, dangling like two small clumps of snow on the ears of a cocker spaniel. I’d like to ask him upstairs as he enters his flat, to please switch off your gristly cough and mute your feet. I know silence, I held it in … Continue reading Two poems by Stuart Mckenzie
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