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
Sarah Hehir
The Poisoner’s Poison
Sleep has led me one step to the left
of lead.
A periodic transition to thallium:
softer certainly,
like freezer bread thawing.
But there’s still no stretch inside this
grey,
tasteless,
odourless shape.
Though they say sometimes
we live in secrets –
that maybe under the double duvet,
your legs glow with a blueish light
that flashes urgency
before settling for eternity
into a freezer’s empty memory:
its power cord cut.
Whatever.
Tomorrow I’ll wake to quicksilver thoughts.
Tomorrow I’ll wake up.
Seán Street
On Hearing of the Death of Benjamin Zephaniah
7.12.2023
Because they told me in the neutral grey of an ordinary day when the
sun neither shone nor
set,
when the rain could do no more than drizzle, when all I was doing
was something I’ve
forgotten, I remember the moment.
Nothing rolled on a drum, no thunder clapped, nothing prepared me,
let me tense muscles
against the punch.
And because I had no one to tell I told myself they must be mistaken,
(that happens you know – urban myths, misheard rumours – it
happens).
But as minutes he was torn from ticked on through the unshockable
unstoppable
clock, time told me to tell me it was true after all.
And because it has to be true, the gathering dust moment – nothing
and normal till then –
freezes forever, and because there is less of me now, there is more of
him
here in what’s left, alive and everywhere always
in black and white.
More Guest Poems
Edmund Prestwich
The Ground of our Music Now the warm moist air is alive with voices.Frogs are singing. Soft introspective crooningmakes the mild night throb with erotic feeling.Somewhere above them owls are calling, female to male; hauntingbreeze-blown signals float between houses....
Beth Junor
Partition i.m. Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920), mathematician Don’t be afraid. Like the first brushstrokeof the Mona Lisa, it begins simply enough. The partition of three is three,the partition of four is five. Meaning, you can arrive at three in threedifferent ways...
Sue Wallace-Shaddad
Twine Lazing on the tablestrung out with a casual loopit could be someone’s noosethe knot ready to slip tighteraround a waiting neck ...
Adam Cairns
Abandoned When the A-Road Was Built How do you find St David’s church?You must search. It is here, but lies abandoned?Look beyond. I see towns, the heavy traffic.Take your pick. Its loneliness makes my heart sick.All progress has its consequence.And our children’s...
Neil Beardmore
Cave Paintings, Onuke Kundi,Near Hampi, India Boulders of granite tossed intumbling piles around a flat oasisof date palms hold the plateausafe from intrusion. Camouflaged by the earth’s ochre,a bulge of rock with deer,where men, no longer sticks with sticks,come to...
Kathryn Kimball
The Ghost Magnolia in commemoration of the opening of the National Memorial forPeace and Justice, Montgomery, Alabama, April 2018 Give me a ladder to climbthe ghost magnoliaon the corner of Pleasant Avenueto sit there with the sweet fragranceof the foot-wide blossoms...
Lola Haskins
The Perch The glacier on which I stand has become an island.Blue and white as the insides of clouds, it calvesinto the sea which is no longer ice, and the newbeings, the calves, sink slowly, but they sink. The glacier on which I stand is a mystery in whichI used to...
Peter Robinson
Evening Primrose You call me out as the light goesto watch our evening primroselemon-yellow petals splay. With more rain threatened for the weekend,sun come and gone all day,getting ahead of itself againcan a summer remember its springtime?Is it welcoming of autumn?...
Jeanette Burney
The Discoverer Undiscovers 1948 Explorers take a trip to discover Antarctica.They take their leave of household chores.They take boats.They take cameras.Then they take white stretches of Antarctic iceonto film. Adventurers take trips too,to get away from home, and...
Geoffrey Winch
Walter Palmer (from Encounters with Oscar) plays painters parties poets –Oscar’s social round never ceasing Ernest Dowson, Aubrey Beardsleyand always Reggie and Robbie fascination of the fond-ofand the influential Lillie Langtry, Henry Irvingand always Reggie and...
Tim Dwyer
After Chang Chi-Ho These twenty years of banishmentbecame a gift. Though it is saidI fled from the world, here I found it – my beloved, the moon,my friend, the sea,my shelter, the sky. I wake to the welcomeof dawn’s open doorand the gull’s spirit call. I didn’t flee...
Jan FitzGerald
Sky Goodbye I didn’t see you at the funeral.You weren’t there.I believe you escaped in a shaft of lightstreaming through the stained glass window,before the organist went all stops outand speakers leant too long on the pulpit —as far away as possible from all that...
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 skirtqueuing for the buffet. Sipping tea.I’m in my pink cotton frock covered in smuts.You’d told me not to sit facing the...
Terry Quinn
The Doppler Effect is me standing stillthe sound of my heartracingto the sound of her voicecalling my nameas she runs up the pathto hand me an ultrasoundI’d left on her ward is me standingmy heart stillas we talkfor a few minutesabout transducersand the right type of...
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,...