She married the heir was what they said. I was four, already in love with the ballroom’s cornices, the bride’s dress. What I heard was married the air. I chose my future then. The air is a good provider. He has given me one house of sky, one house of silk. I love his hands in my hair. He loves my untouched arches. Every … Continue reading ‘The Aerialist’ by Cheryl Pearson
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
I dream forgetfully, retain just a suggestion of something thwarted. My husband dreams of murder, all hands-on: noose, bludgeon, knives. He’s under orders to kill, demurs, he says, in vain. This is a man who dispatches prolapsed chickens, mice, once a muntjac fawn half-garrotted on a wire fence, a man who salts ox tongue, the great muscle sitting outside five days in a big … Continue reading ‘Mercy’ by Kathy Pimlott
As You Are 90, I Must Be 65 There’s something wrong with the guttering: it could be nests. When it rains cataracts drown the geraniums. This is one problem. Another is the rockery, overrun by Creeping Jenny and saplings which would become a forest left to their own devices. Someone stole the lilies-of-the-valley, and the heathers, which promised so well, have disappeared. The … Continue reading 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 all? At night the seven streets pinball each drunk chorus, … Continue reading Two poems by Kathy Pimlott
rain cows do have best friends and become stressed if they are separated how do they know who their friends are really or if it’s going to rain but still they lie waiting bent at the knees (First published in Obsessed With Pipework, November 2014) A recording of Laura McKee reading ‘Rain’ on SoundCloud. the sweat bee he had this craving … Continue reading Two poems by Laura McKee
You open the quarter-lights, get out of the car. ‘Five minutes’ you say ‘and while I’m gone, look for five unusual things’. And I’m alone on a back street of workshops and offices. No-one appears. There are no balloons, no burglaries. Nothing disturbs the street. Two thirds up the warehouse wall the brick course swivels ninety degrees, three fanciful rows and then back … Continue reading ‘Five Unusual Things’ by Kathy Pimlott
Hampstead 1979 He says he’s a Gemini too, always wears white linen to parties and is a recreational heroin user in an open relationship. He whispers lunch and writes his number on a £1 note and yes on a rainy Friday he buys me real champagne at Sheekey’s, feeds me oysters with his fingers pays with the dregs of his overdraft. All night he … Continue reading Two poems by Jacqueline Saphra
And Other Poems 