dangerous weather the garden exhales puffballs rupture grasses pollinate in the gilded breeze poppies pump their milky sap capsules shake themselves out the air heavy with wind-borne seed your blown kisses remembered drift of your lips waft … Continue reading A poem by Eileen Sheehan
Author: And Other Poems
A poem by Graham Clifford
Shorn Despite photos, up close you are not taking care of yourself: hair greasy as barbed-wire wool. Your once skinny frame is bulky at the shoulders end, and lugworm veins bulge on the backs of your hands. What a thud you would make, falling down now. I feed the Wahl trimmer, mow a broadening … Continue reading A poem by Graham Clifford
A poem by Elinor Brooks
Lines from the Creek You thread the bait on to the barb with semi-circular motion: a pink comma of prawn robing the hook in succulent black- veined flesh. Your feet sink into the shingle shelf: you step back, shift your weight and flick the line, feeling through the rod its tautness out over blue … Continue reading A poem by Elinor Brooks
‘The Worst Journey in the World’ by Clarissa Aykroyd
The Worst Journey in the World We have not yet passed the dip in the track. We have passed Earls Court. At Earls Court we sat for ten minutes and I read The Worst Journey in the World. Apsley Cherry-Garrard was reminded by an ice slope (or an argument or a penguin) of the … Continue reading ‘The Worst Journey in the World’ by Clarissa Aykroyd
Two poems by Amali Rodrigo
GaZeBo Muggy afternoon in class, a word, an inky beetle that scuttles across my open book. I come to with a slap across the page. The teacher squints at it, sari bristling, then sends me out of class, to the principal for doodling dirty words in geography. Booby-trapped, it rolls off my tongue in … Continue reading Two poems by Amali Rodrigo
Two poems by Matt Merritt
The Mind’s Skyline I wanted to write you a poem containing the phrase ‘the mind’s skyline’. I have only the vaguest idea of how this might work or exactly what it might mean, but I like the way it sounds, so please bear with me. It will start with the image of the new-builds … Continue reading Two poems by Matt Merritt
A poem by Kenneth Keating
Rhizome a plateau in the milieu climaxless one long plateau many long plateaux tray-pan-bed trays-pans-beds tray-pan-beds subterranean stem multiplicities without end infinite infinite plateaux interlude intermezzo subterranean plateau climaxless tray-pan-beds infinite subterranean interludes stem without end milieu without end tray/pan/bed one long plateau climaxless stem multiplicities subterranean intermezzo intermezzo infinite subterranean interlude without end … Continue reading A poem by Kenneth Keating
Two poems by Hilaire
The Pianist The pianist knows about knuckles. He knows about stones, about pebbles. He knows how to carry his bulk, how to move across shingle as if nothing could buckle his tread. Rings glint on three fingers; enough to stop questions or chip a tooth. The pianist’s suit is sharp, single-breasted; somewhere between charcoal … Continue reading Two poems by Hilaire
Three poems by Heidi Williamson
Sequence of three poems from Electric Shadow The duty of balance I Incendiary During the Blitz, he said, fire-raisers spat on his street. Aircraft freed their bomblets at altitude, blinding scraps of phosphorus that consumed oxygen to flare, grew as they fell, into scores of fires – beacons for incoming bombers, stowing their … Continue reading Three poems by Heidi Williamson
Two poems by Brian Johnstone
Gable Long gone, those derelict tenements, half-demolished, a row of parlour walls stacked up like sample cards for someone's granny's wallpaper. Their slivers, flapping in the wind, goodbyes. Unlaid, their fires all died, burned shadow black into the grates that stamped each wall with absence, empty as some broken jug which stood once – … Continue reading Two poems by Brian Johnstone