Guest Poems
We love to read your poetry and, even though we receive over 1,000 poems per month, we always take time to read every single one.
A few of the poems we especially enjoyed and which were selected for publication in our Journal are reprinted below.
For more information, please see our Submissions page.
Guest Poems
Denise Bennett
Speaking to my Dead Mother
What are we doing here in this station tearoom?
We’ve slipped back sixty years.
You’re wearing your grey pencil-slim skirt
queuing for the buffet. Sipping tea.
I’m in my pink cotton frock covered in smuts.
You’d told me not to sit facing the engine.
It’s like old times, whiling away
minutes between steam trains –
each summer we took three to get to Devon.
I remember you telling me about that first time
we travelled. I was three weeks old,
you, fleeing from the baby snatchers
brandishing adoption forms.
How did you manage cases and a baby?
Did you feed me in the ladies waiting room?
I wish I could ask you how we sheltered
in a tearoom like this,
huddled like fugitives,
you afraid running to the safety
of your family with your burden.
Mother, brother, sister.
Oh, but they took you in, didn’t they?
And they took me in.
Before we say goodbye, I want to tell you
that each year, I still go back
to Devon to lay flowers.
Terry Quinn
The Doppler Effect
is me standing still
the sound of my heart
racing
to the sound of her voice
calling my name
as she runs up the path
to hand me an ultrasound
I’d left on her ward
is me standing
my heart still
as we talk
for a few minutes
about transducers
and the right type of gel
the sound of voices
completely at ease
is me standing still
as she races away
late for her break
my heart sinking
as I hear my voice calling
shall I buy the teas
and she calls back
I thought you’d never ask.
More Guest Poems
Stephen Boyce
Perigee I have been looking to the Eastwhere they tell you everythingis illusion, nothing lasts. The night of the strawberry moon,though I saw it, I was shutteredin a windowless room. I saw you standing in a fieldwith your back to that glowing moonamong grasses,...
Bridget Khursheed
Plotting Doggerland There are farms you reveal as our plane slidestowards Amsterdam. An ex-navy surveyorof forgotten seafloor, you have seenthis obscure bombscape drilled into neolithic geography. Using a digital weather-eye,submersible and deep dive, you sometimes–...
Colin Pink
Surveillance I lie awake at nightthe ghost-of-myself paces the citygets on and off buseshurries through turnstilespauses to look in shop windowsgives a beggar a coinjust stands in the street for no reasonraises suspicion from passers-byhurries ahead againenters the...
Jemma L. King
3 Month Scan A bell curve of grey static against black.What new worlds, old suns burn here? This space, hushed, aseptic. We are sidelinerson the brink of history before her instrument as it ploughs the stars,sends galaxies and all of creation tumbling from view....
Duncan Wu
Fired Up Ruthless hot the angry August sun glaresdown upon the slope. Nothing moves. Mydog sleeps in a pool of light while I stareat a gap in the outer wall which Iwill have to fill. But not right now. With luckI can ignore it till the weather cools.This is the...
Louise Walker
Octave/Sestet With each deep breath, the flute will utter prayer,its voice vibrating with the purest noteof G in the first octave. Then you can floatup to the next because you know it’s there.The painter knows how to balance sea and air,concealing rules that have been...
Deborah H. Doolittle
Like Wordsworth in Wales Who doesn’t like ruins? The oldstone shaped to make the landscape wild. The fragmented walls, like thoughts, framethe sky with Gothic windowpanes. Now, blue is the preferred hue forreflection that is wide enough. Ivy climbs the parts of...
Don Rodgers
Magnolias What do we make of magnolias?Like beaks of exotic birds, their budsbreak from bare branches, singingthemselves open into sculpturalpink and white waxworks of flames. You were given a Magnolia Susanone birthday. Not caring for our garden,it managed one clutch...
Richard Schiffman
The Wisdom of Seeds You don’t seed a cloud with another cloud,but with bone dry particles of dust. Sahara dust blown to the Amazonmakes the mineral-poor soils fertile. The Amazon seeds its own rains which blownoff course make the Sertão desert bloom. Hopelessly off...
Myra Schneider
Jungle It’s January but outside the lawns and grassy vergesare very green after months of rain and the palm treesin the frontage at the end of our road are thriving. I love the spread fans of their spiky leavesand the yellowish cacti spears underneath them –they jump...
Janet Dean
Angels in the Air Morning spills sand from its bucket, a clock ticksone Mississippi, two Mississippi. Deserted by an outgoing tide, an afternoonspread flat and dreary, wet with longing. She spent years learning to silence the ticking clock,change her voice, open...
Jock Stein
The First Snowdrop Modest, trembling, they appeared together:why be first when you can burst upon the scenelike mini US cavalry, genes and ethics matched,despatched midwinter on a mission, gently bentto tame the harsher shades of government,calm down showers of...
Ursula Kelly
When I Can Make it to the Pub Again It’s not so much the pain butfear of pain, that makes me hesitate.I am learning to bear my own weight again,with crutches and a moonboot.Every tiny step’s a giant leap of faiththat a rearticulated ankle will still hold,the pins will...
Jayant Kashyap
Child as a Piano During the ultrasound, it lies there,dormant, like a landmine inside you.Later, it erupts – a months-quiet volcanoof its own. Now the constant ticks,the continuous whirring of me, me,me, mommy, me. A four-leggedsinister machine in the...
Isabel Miles
Night Vision At noon the garden’s open as a flower,its beauty fitting to our spectrum and our scale.Green lawn, brown earthand flashing red, black, white,three partridges that sprint across the grass.Plain everyday. The midnight garden’s a dark pool.Upon it strands of...