Toad gives a lecture I vaulted the proscenium arch last night, a one-act show-stopper of my own stealing, featuring a throne of cool wrapped in chocolate velvet, the devastating transparency of Wilde translated by a firebrand Marxist with a fondness for the glottal stop, and a servant whose trousers fall down. That the room … Continue reading ‘Toad gives a lecture’ by Rishi Dastidar
Author: And Other Poems
‘Internet Shopping’ by Jacqueline Saphra
Uncle Ted and I are window-shopping on the internet. I say there's nothing you can't buy remotely and suggest Costco, send him the link. I tell him that the padding’s good, point out it's comforting and solid; for him, only the best. He sends me a link to Amazon: a pine affair, plain … Continue reading ‘Internet Shopping’ by Jacqueline Saphra
‘The Babies’ by Bill Herbert
The Babies I’m driving at night through the countryside trying to decide what it is the countryside is to the side of. Since we all already share a perfectly good roadside – perhaps it’s beside this. Certainly there is more to it than verge: it also has an underneath of sexton beetle, a canopy of … Continue reading ‘The Babies’ by Bill Herbert
‘Leather-Bound Road’ by Luke Kennard
Leather-Bound Road Should anybody ask me how we met I’ll read them Ansel Adams on photography and say it’s in the way the artist brings out of the landscape what the frame brings out of the painting. Which is to say you bring out the best in me, but not the way the Maillard … Continue reading ‘Leather-Bound Road’ by Luke Kennard
‘nothing’ by Andrew McMillan
nothing which is really the sound of everything slowly if you write poetry and are even passably handsome my heart will pretend it loves you for a while all I know is the first empty bed for weeks the first tea of morning the man who was scared of paper was papyrophobic … Continue reading ‘nothing’ by Andrew McMillan
A poem by Agnes Marton
Furaibo, Parting Nothing stays still, nobody stays. Fluffing feathers restless for the take-off, I'm just laughing, sad: love changes its wings too often, too soon. Unveiled cathedral of your face is getting new tulle layers impossible to fly through, blurred vision and slurred speech. But in thought I'm there, woven in that shroud to … Continue reading A poem by Agnes Marton
A poem by Julian Turner
The Seal People I had watched them far off in the rough skerries, their long cries carried to land on spindrift, their bodies slipping like silk between the white knuckles of waves, vanishing in the spray for dives of joy into the great grey acres. It was luck itself to find them there … Continue reading A poem by Julian Turner
‘Bufo Bufo’ by Vicki Feaver
Bufo Bufo Clown’s name for the creature in my cellar. I give him gladly the one room I don’t want - sodden cardboard, wet dark, the gluey varnish of slugs. What he eats: dollops of glassy, yellow-grey meat, host to scavenging mites, the only things down here to move fast. He creeps over the floor’s … Continue reading ‘Bufo Bufo’ by Vicki Feaver
‘Solstice’ by Pippa Little
The shortest day: dusk falls like a stone to earth. Yellow, with greenness of lemons in it. Carpet of snow the long night, a lopped pelt, dog or wolf. Yet, light in unexpected places. “I have come through.” My house, a traveller returned, baring the small, lit window of its heart. In-gathering of … Continue reading ‘Solstice’ by Pippa Little
A poem by Pat Winslow
Storm Thunder is the returning hero you haven’t seen for a long time, the voice in the hall that sends you rushing like a girl, the tall man with the good looks. He’s rumbling through the rooms now, shaking down your attic full of dreams. And here’s lightning, striding like a pair of scissors. … Continue reading A poem by Pat Winslow
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