Papers The day I was called into my mother’s bedroom the smell of cornmeal porridge still coloured the air, windowsills full of plants bloomed and dresses half-done hung from wardrobe doors and her Singer sewing machine came to rest like a mail train arriving at its final destination, foot off the pedal, radio turned down, … Continue reading ‘Papers’ by Roy McFarlane
Category: Poetry
Two poems by John Challis
Horses in Upton Park I hadn’t expected the horses, splendid in their yellow smocks and welder’s visors. What they must have thought of us. They lived in stables in the field. In scrapheaps by the motorway, stunted ones, peppered white, wore ornately coloured saddles, were tied to little caravans with cardboard on the windows. Deep … Continue reading Two poems by John Challis
‘Assembling’ by Abegail Morley
Assembling She borrows her pelt from the cat, lies back, wallows in its stunted silken threads, the weave of its stitching, how fur overlaps, silver hair on hair, hind legs soft, subtle as saplings. She takes her eyes from the ancients ‒ black rocks, thick set, as if put in place by a salt gale. … Continue reading ‘Assembling’ by Abegail Morley
Two poems by Kathy Pimlott
The Rookery Redux The rain collects by drains stopped up with fatbergs from the eateries, in cracks and trips of slabs laid slipshod and craftless. Step carelessly and soak your shoes. Do you belong here? Do you loop grey nets to foil the suck and growl of traffic’s heat? Do you open your windows at … Continue reading Two poems by Kathy Pimlott
‘Kyrie’ by Seán Hewitt
Purple blush of sky and lilac drooping by the greenhouse. The last heat of day rests in the grass, and from the shadows under the conifers, there comes a moaning, a pain riddling from the undergrowth, a voice caught out after dark. And my mind, closed off from sight and the body’s reading … Continue reading ‘Kyrie’ by Seán Hewitt
‘Poem for Oscar with Stars in it’ by Kevin Graham
Poem for Oscar with Stars in it Hoisted in the high chair of my arm – all bum and elbows and chocolate ice-cream hands – you point a finger up at the fluid night sky and say star. We’re on the porch of your uncle’s house, on one of the year’s fledgling days, a couple … Continue reading ‘Poem for Oscar with Stars in it’ by Kevin Graham
‘Amy, how to write poems’ by Katherine Stansfield
Amy, how to write poems for Amy McCauley again in these times of boxes and unlearnt languages and cats dreaming twitchyleg distress? I do what the advice books say and write every day but lately o lately my poems are just lists for leaving: buy new cat carriers, microchip the cats, tell the cats about … Continue reading ‘Amy, how to write poems’ by Katherine Stansfield
Séance by Zoe Mitchell
If anyone here can talk to the dead, please tell my Dad the news of his daughters that would bring him the most peace. Tell him of the dreams we made real, and the grandchildren who laugh in his image. Tell him we miss him and we know he always loved us. List … Continue reading Séance by Zoe Mitchell
Two poems by Jessica Mookherjee
The Liar I never believed in Father Christmas as I crawled out of the chimney, soot-stained, ingrained dust in the whorls of my skin. I never feared the dark, crawled under my bed, talking to dust, moulding it into imaginary friends. We sang together to the soil. Suspicious of prayers to invisible gods, I stared … Continue reading Two poems by Jessica Mookherjee
‘Hazel’ by Aled Thomas
Hazel Swedish and new and steel it would take his thumb as keenly and cleanly as the shoots off the hazel canes he’s shaving and stacking against the wall. The wound would be the same, for a bit - the colour of cream and smooth as an ice cube on a zinc bar. The other … Continue reading ‘Hazel’ by Aled Thomas
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