The Greatcoat My grandmother leaves me a greatcoat made from piano parts - keys stitched in rows like the feathers and wolves’ teeth of a chieftain’s ceremonial mantle. I don’t feel worthy to carry it on my shoulders. Is this Grandma’s reproach for my shirking remote scales and Czerny? But when I fasten the felt-hammer … Continue reading Two poems by John Wheway
Category: Poetry
‘Standing Up’ by Amlanjyoti Goswami
Standing Up Head bowed, his ears perked. Eagle-nosed-spectacled, the teacher asks a common class: Was it really the sun that came in through the window? Or was it the sun’s rays? The class sniggers. The sun, he finally lied, defiant About the slanted truth. His failure, reported, circled in red. The long trudge home. And … Continue reading ‘Standing Up’ by Amlanjyoti Goswami
‘Three Girls’ by Helen Frame
Three Girls after the BBC three-part drama series of the same name Her skin is powdered moon and her eyes slate roofs at dawn and she’s free as a bike ride in Provence and she’s fifteen like holidays in the sun and bubble gum in pink and yellow wrappers and she’s hitting puberty like cardamom … Continue reading ‘Three Girls’ by Helen Frame
Two poems by Emma Lee
When Your Name's Not Smith While he writes I imagine taking his form and folding it into a paper boat, perhaps filling his letter tray with water from the cooler to see if the boat floats or sinks, if ink will seep from paper to water and colour it. Family legend has it that some … Continue reading Two poems by Emma Lee
Two poems by Julia Webb
Radio Nights I slide down deep beneath the covers output may be subject to further interruptions on the subject of snow turn dials by torchlight prop the heavy radio knobs for eyes, large square battery for heart on bent knees the nylon sheet crackles with static imagine Luxembourg as a party shape at the far … Continue reading Two poems by Julia Webb
Two poems by Peter Raynard
Redefining Progress The land man’s drone hovers over his slavering selection of pigs before their poke. The trough is a circle of pink arses - like a ring of buffet prawns - snuffling at the feed, the filth of mud-stuck trotters in a competition of grunts & steam. My father wedges his pale pink difference … Continue reading Two poems by Peter Raynard
Three poems by Tom Sastry
Normalisation It’s like the old days; a fortnight’s needs in tins under the stairs. The crisis, like the weather is changeable. Some days the shops are full, the power constant. Some days the streets are calm. The news is still earnest nothings, outrage, sport and gossip. They haven’t yet asked for your passwords. The leaves … Continue reading Three poems by Tom Sastry
Two poems by Mark Fiddes
An Early Swim She cuts down her lane like scissors through blue silk with barely a snip; her deft turn at each end is a stitch. One morning, she will rise from the ladder, the pool draped over her shoulders like a cape of kingfishers. He rolls like a barrel of vintage port cast overboard, … Continue reading Two poems by Mark Fiddes
Three poems by Suzannah Evans
Three poems from Near Future Summer with Robobees Those long evenings they giddied in the warm wealth of the oilseed rapefields humidity sensors estimating approaching storms * We picnicked on the lawn in July – shuttlecocks pinged distantly our scones and jam unbothered by the robobees their algorithms danced them between marigolds * Sometimes they … Continue reading Three poems by Suzannah Evans
Three poems by Wendy Pratt
October 4th 2003 Our future is a free flying kite or a gull or a scarf on the wind. I bend gracefully to thank and smile, thank and smile; a ballerina in a music box. That night I unpin my hair, in a ritual undressing, a re-virgining of my whole self, it seems absolutely right … Continue reading Three poems by Wendy Pratt
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