Inside the camphorwood chest – forgotten treasure: a pair of leather cowboy boots with metal toe caps. How they shone. As loud, proud and polished as the men they sparked a trail through. Three decades of dust can’t hide the cracks. A genie-rub conjures up swirls of dry ice, the wink of the glitter ball, … Continue reading ‘High Society’ by Ian Humphreys
Category: Poetry
Three poems by Joel M. Toledo
Ruin And before the end comes, the complete corrosion of all things beautiful, what calls us back to dust and the fine delicate things under rocks, the solemn quarters of the dead, or the believing children who simply cannot resist looking at the sun, curious about the circle behind the wide glare presiding over the … Continue reading Three poems by Joel M. Toledo
Two poems by Momtaza Mehri
Bars Bars Bars how it was is half the fun. half the story. the grit underneath nails. the last bit of meat left on the bone. a clinging of years. yaa the years. softening like plastic. hoarded in narrowing closets in the coldest of spare rooms. mothball mama. all the how it could have beens. … Continue reading Two poems by Momtaza Mehri
Two poems by Nancy Campbell
Sonnet Fatigue Six months on, I don’t know when you were born nor what you’ve been writing, though you tell me when you’ve been writing. I’ve been writing sonnets again, but this once fail-safe form dismays me now. A/B/B/A/: I forge the chain – or force it. The closing couplet seems too slight to hold … Continue reading Two poems by Nancy Campbell
‘The Outing’ by Yomi Sode
Onlookers witnessed your wrath that night how your fist rose to the heavens, striking down as if Ṣango[1] lived within you. Thirty going on thirty-one. I wasn’t sure what to say. I’ve never been here. The papers described him as tall. They said his neck broke before he landed as if his body was a … Continue reading ‘The Outing’ by Yomi Sode
Two poems by Adam Warne
Vandal that dangle by in root nook in Combs Wood beneath the moss a most potent go to fetch more than the size have bumble bees it’s not too late we’re quick we’ll over river to prick fingers Buckle because light thaws about what hops here beneath a thorny bough of a … Continue reading Two poems by Adam Warne
Two poems by Degna Stone
Blackface Live Theatre, Newcastle. 3 December 2016 It’s the sucker punch of an actor walking onstage wearing blackface; the roar from the audience as they piss themselves laughing. The vocabulary has shifted but the old problems remain. I was a fool to think that we’d been moving forward when we were only ever standing still. … Continue reading Two poems by Degna Stone
Two poems by Jacqueline Saphra
All My Mad Mothers My mother gathered every yellow object she could find: daffodils and gorgeous shawls, little pots of bile and piles of lemons. Once we caught her with a pair of fishnet stockings on a stick, trying to catch the sun. My mother never travelled anywhere without her flippers, goggles and a snorkel. … Continue reading Two poems by Jacqueline Saphra
‘Scratched Light’ by Raymond Antrobus
for Phoebe Boswell The heart is circled by sorrows and bitter devotion – Derek Walcott Southbank’s Security guards wake anyone sleeping as if they don’t want us to miss who we might bump into like how I bumped into Phoebe today, sat at the tall window, drawing a man called Anwaar. I pull an extra chair … Continue reading ‘Scratched Light’ by Raymond Antrobus
Two poems by Martyn Crucefix
East-running road for KG You walk out on the east-running road just as far as the field of sunflowers the tarmac bisects where all day south their open faces have pursued the light so to your left they blaze before you while to your right they have turned cold green shoulders but you don’t go … Continue reading Two poems by Martyn Crucefix
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