Night heart You’re late. I glum in the dim. Home on my own. Night-rain on the roof. You’re later. I fume and feed my sulk’s fire with little broken sticks of your thoughtlessness. Hours go on and my unanswered texts get less brusque, more hysteric. I get littler in this big bed. My sulk goes out and all I’ve got is the drip and … Continue reading Two Poems by Ramona Herdman
The Dress after The Dress I Wore to my Dad’s Funeral (drawn with fingers in graphite dust) 2017, a drawing by Helen Barff The dress she wore to her father’s funeral hangs on a hook in the shadows, a cowled priest shuffling in cloisters, solitary, bent head contemplating feet, mumbling, mumbling. The dress she wore to her father’s funeral hangs empty in the shadows, … Continue reading ‘The Dress’ by Peter O’Grady
Somewhere, near an open window at a time of year full of preparations for a tomorrow, these bustling flowers settle themselves. Each looks up from its place in the shade, spreads excitement. What a gift that you could bring them home: the whole year in your arms — a blue-white memory of snow, an aria for spring in a yellow soprano, the dense velvet … Continue reading ‘Cineraria’ by Maria Isakova Bennett
Quantum Sheep Clouds graze the sky; below, sheep drift gentle over fields, soft mirrors, warm white snow. (Original poem by Valerie Laws) i) white sheep graze below soft sky the warm Clouds drift over snow gentle fields mirrors ii) gentle below over warm Clouds soft sheep drift white mirrors graze the sky snow fields iii) snow below gentle graze the sky over warm fields … Continue reading Two Poems by Richard Skinner
Gweneira The cards flock her windowsill open-mouthed; sing of one hundred years’ turning. She flips the white sheet back with a fairytale number collects family, in groups, spangling the hospital ward. Her blue eyes hold a watery gaze. You’ll have to come and see me. In drifts, she was born. Over the next field, her father had lambing —small new lungs spiked green … Continue reading Two Poems by Suzanne Iuppa
It opened with a gasp, as if it had been holding its breath. Hot to the touch, it was a silver keepsake; a swollen tear my grandfather kept close to his chest in the Western Desert. The clasp undone, I felt a blast of heat, grit in my eye, then all the sand of Africa in the palm of my hand. It burst … Continue reading ‘The Sandstorm in the Locket’ by Christopher James
Bench for Kate Etheridge Every now and then I sit for a while with your wood and grain and bole. I place my finger in the words that say this was from all of us and think about the pulse that thumped your head until no one could take away the pain. You’ve weathered well, attracting squirrels, birds and women who walk their … Continue reading Two Poems by Rosie Miles
Beethoven Haus, Bonn His home is as his mother might’ve kept it – tidied up, waiting. House of a thousand notes and sorrows, he’s already left. He’ll not be back from Vienna this time, and she’s long dead. We find it serious – oil portraits, creaking boards, shuttered windows, facsimile scores behind glass, instruments in cabinets, the Hammerklavier locked up. Here’s his viola … Continue reading Two Poems by Liz Lefroy
Then I was not the antagonist in your fiction Pine needles. The hill breeze. Take me home. It is winter and this has been a while. This silly disorder- nostalgia On a plateau purple peppered, mountain harebell stare; I remember brushing with my finger on a canvas as catholic as the sky a dreamland underneath the blue, punctuated by flocks of … Continue reading Two Poems by Purabi Bhattacharya
Never Force Them to Swim The boy was a rat which is why I loved him, the third of three vermin born to an x-ray technician. Always short of breath, twitching his nose, climbing and chewing on ropes, he worked without success at Boots until he bit the manager and had to move into a caravan at the foot of his brother-in-law’s garden … Continue reading Two poems by Adam Warne
