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
Annie Kissack
Saint with Accoutrements
after ‘Mrs Mounter at the Breakfast Table’ by Harold Gilman
All spotless. Some objects we might deem
especially significant:
the glistening tea pot, pristine cups
lustrous milk bowl, the best surely.
We inhale diverse aromas:
odour of home-made polish, Jeyes Fluid, Vim.
Mrs Mounter, tell us why?
Perhaps she’s a saint, a kitchen anchorite
sealed into contemplation of a state of grace
so very nearly reached.
A martyr to the Sunlight Soap,
the damask drape, her table is in order;
observe her coronet of curious light,
that hint of halo.
At three o clock she sits and waits.
Behind the periwinkle eyes,
a mind is ranging wide through space;
her best is not enough.
Each day she relocates the empty cup
a fraction to the left and trusts
the virtuous will one day be rewarded.
Jonathan Steffen
Car Coat
Through all the subtle chicanes of his existence in the 1960s,
It was his constant companion –
That car coat redolent of hairpin bends and handbrake turns,
Bearing him along shopping parades and in and out of supermarkets,
Evoking pine-clad mountains and Alpine meadows
And the sophisticated heartaches
Of Bacharach & David songs,
Its pockets primed with cigarettes and menthol sweets,
Its collar turned up for raffish effect,
Quilted and poppered and cut short for ease of movement,
Economically negotiating a world of prawn cocktails and vol-au-vents,
Of frozen peas and Black Forest gateaux,
Always on the lookout for that checkout girl
Who would instantly recognise him and,
Slipping on a silk headscarf without a word,
Abandon her supermarket till forever
To accompany him on revving, rolling rides
Down roads the shape of trumpet solos
In the roaring rally car
That he would never own.
More Guest Poems
B. Anne Adriaens
Pietà, inverted I meet you halfwayacross the wasteland of your mindto find you plonked on the ground,drawing circles in the dust.I sit down behind you,wrap myself around your frame,so small I could doubtyou gave birth to me – you,this shell I’m holding and rocking...
Graham Mort
Talking to a Spider in the Bath(January, 2022) There you are in the corner of my eyescurrying sideways a black atom, a stain against enamela venomous intruder or is that me, stepping into theshower’s caul of steam? I notice how careful we areof each other a kind of...
Regi Claire
When it is Time The beeches were the last to leave. Too stately maybeor too full of themselves they stayed on, blazed morefiercely copper in the sun, soaked up dusk until they inkedto darkness. Then they threw their arms around the stars,called them theirs, their one...
Christopher M James
Traces Isaan, the vast rice-growing plateau in north-east Thailand Endless paddiesstencil the land, enmesh the living.Their waters smudge a setting sun’s inks. A handhas wiped leftover pigmentson a cloth of sky. A motorcyclescratches the landfor epidermic dust,...
Nicola Warwick
Launching the Moon Does it really take two hands to toss it skywards? You’d think it could be done in the space of an owl’s blink, but you’re wrong. You cup this glossy thing, roll it over and over in your palm, hold it to the light and it’s a crystal ball crammed...
Robert Stein
Finis This is it: the final leaving,The stars loitering and out of luck.The dice ceased rolling. All numbers up. This is the gone at the end of going,The rotted apple after knowing.The box nailed. The straw. The shut. The trap tripped, sprung through and up.The...
Frances Sackett
Free Spirit Bordering the road,but theatrical, the wayit looked like someonehad planted a gardenrich in wildness. A rocky outcropwith ragwort and willowherb,vetch and wild thyme –the hills beyond mantled with sun. I scatter you here,watch as a wisp of smokelifts along...
Douglas Cole
The Lighthouse Keeper In this season he knowswe are smaller than wind,as the storm blast singsthrough the boarded glass. He opens his doorto the sting and stab of rain,making his way as he leansunder the arc-lamp light. In the radio house he listensto distress codes a...
Cathra Kelliher
we sat holding the lamb we sat holding the lambRichard and Ithe field soft about uscold coming on below the ash treesand the farm buildingssilent as flint through the arrow slits how slight it wasand how meagre the pullof its miniature mouth on my fingera smear of...
Anthony Lawrence
The Moonlit Lakes of John Atkinson Grimshaw have all the hallmarks of ice, when seen througha hawthorn hedge or drystone wall,and you’d be forgiven, the way a witness,driven to description, not of a man,but of animals on the surface of the moon,is forgiven for seeing...
Patrick Osada
Rooks Each evening they appear at duskin ones and twos –return from distant foraging.Flapping untidy wings in laboured flight,they circle,gathering as a cawing group,heading for their roost in Hazelwood. Today, nest building in the tallest treesthat screen the...
Yasmin A. Hussain
Treasure Chests Dad decides to give us pocket money.Mum decides it’s better saved. She buys tinmoney boxes with painted timber panels,crossbands of brass and a central padlock. She holds out the chests as cash is passedfrom Dad to us into the slots. Eventually,mum...
Leo Boix
A Latin American Sonnet CXCVI In a dense forest of the Gran Chaco stretch, ‘the hunting land’,Argentina’s largest known jaguar–the Qaramta–is on high patrol,it’s after giant anteaters, tapirs, capybaras, peccaries and standscrouched down by the riverbed, alert,...
Margaret Wilmot
The Butterfly Effect for Nick and his butterfly I heard Monarch for Monach as a sealrolled high in the curve of a wave, and marvelled that sea-battered islands far west of Scotlandshould share a name with butterfliesin another Far West. Do they still build cocoons in...
Anna Barker
When I think of my body as a crow We slide together:my flesh, your feather, your jet eye, the haw you draw across in sleep,the patient keel of your sternum,the steel of your rib your beak to stitch the vane, the silken ley,the tap of talons on glass,the hollow bone...