Red Rose City Red bricks, blushing redder at sunset. Red as flesh held tight. Not rock, but pressed roses. We lean close and smell the sun fermenting inside each brick. This is how summers have grown to house us. * They say the light held within these bricks is older than … Continue reading ‘Red Rose City’ by Rosie Breese
Author: And Other Poems
‘Plotkin’s cat’ by Colin Will
Plotkin's cat The neighbour’s cat gave birth under our bed. As good a place as any, we thought, in the old empty suitcase father brought home after the war. Four black-and-white smudged kittens wriggled blindly in a smell of birth. We wanted to pet them, my brother and I, and I remember a hand, his … Continue reading ‘Plotkin’s cat’ by Colin Will
Two poems by Nick Makoha
Stone The best thing I did was move my body from one side of the world to the other. This required a visa which required a bribe. The bribe placed in the palm of a man with a gun, took my mother’s monthly wage packet. The man with a gun let you speak to … Continue reading Two poems by Nick Makoha
Two poems by Mark Robinson
Primary The trees at school talked to themselves while I held firm and fierce at right back. The dinner hall looked just like it smelt – off white, peeling, corrugated like the cardboard lining my grow-into shoes. A queue of children holding chairs two feet off the ground snaked past. Then a sudden burning … Continue reading Two poems by Mark Robinson
Two poems by Rowyda Amin
Desert Sunflowers While they waited for the weather to turn, Fermi offered wagers on the odds of igniting the atmosphere and destroying the earth or just New Mexico. Teller made them nervous, slapping on the sunscreen. Oppenheimer wore dark glasses like the rest and held onto a post with damp hands. He had ten dollars … Continue reading Two poems by Rowyda Amin
A poem by Bill Doan
Despite Contact Despite contact no bond was made from the heat of your beer soured breath as you whispered a threat no one else could hear Despite contact no bond was made by the grip of your muscular hands on my cotton pajamas as you yank me from sleep pajamas tearing from my body … Continue reading A poem by Bill Doan
A poem by Jill Sharp
Jam doughnut Saturdays I cycle to the bakery where, behind the shop, the floury men bake and banter. I serve in my cap and apron their warm loaves and melting cakes to a quiet queue of ladies, who smile as they fill their bags and snap their purses. D’you know how we … Continue reading A poem by Jill Sharp
A poem by Bill Greenwell
One afternoon for Chris One afternoon he actually died during one of his anecdotes, one which he’d started in one village, and had persisted in so that by the time they’d reached the next one he was still going, having taken a tangent at some crossroads and kept on with the tale, so that … Continue reading A poem by Bill Greenwell
Two poems by Ailsa Holland
English Fern You are coiled like an easy spring, like a wild green tongue. Your roots are strong and deeper than winter. Has anything changed? My eyes are still bluebells. Here is this mossy place. Most Foul Licking her lips, she drips the pearls of poison in and fills my ear. We … Continue reading Two poems by Ailsa Holland
A poem by Katrina Naomi
Lunchtime Recital, with Animals It wasn’t just the elephant in the Chamber of Deptford Town Hall, there were three brown horses too. None of us noticed, at first, as we studied the pianist’s fierce contemplation, how she scorched the score with her gaze; as we studied the violinists’ lumpy cheeks, as if each suffered … Continue reading A poem by Katrina Naomi
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