Guest Poems

An Elephant has taken up residence on my doormat, no ordinary elephant. When the hall dims how his body, patterned in gold, shines. I whisper to myself he’s a moonchild. A flower stems from his uncurling trunk, another blooms from the leaflike lobe of his ear. His...

Robert Schumann, Resident for a Year at Endenich Asylum, is Under the Supervision of Dr. Franz Richarz Last Tuesday they rolled both pianos down the hill. In the pile at the bottom, near the farm, Are sheet music, newspapers, four notebooks, The upended instruments...

Lori Drummond-Mundal Photo 1964 November birthdays are dark in the North, untouched by the light of four thin candles on a snow-white cake. Her harsh words hit as if honed through generations, your face ironed flat by the scolding’s scarlet slap. You stare into the...

Discontent Blue sky, fast-moving cloud, all the trees with sun-silvered branches, gleaming rushes bent eastwards, backs to the wind we all know is coming, like we turn our backs on the politicians whose untruths sting our eyes if we face them, turn our backs on the...

Context Means All Ysgol can be ladder and school in my country’s other language. No surprise, is it, that Wales has exported all those teachers (maybe still does, in disguised, social media forms). Practical word building in the German Handschuh for glove, Frau and...

Under the Microscope A scientist scrutinises a drop of liquid showcased on the slide through his thousand times magnified lens, with steady eyes wide to its vitality, globules imitating the curve of the world, global scope of this vaccine enough to rattle the...

Words are good ‘Words dry and riderless’, Sylvia Plath, ‘Words’ The echo of the inexpressible appears among lines carving what I don’t know yet configuration of signs. Are words good enough? We feel to use them literally. What’s my pleasure in using words? I encounter...

Staycation No bright. No mullock moon. No day, no night. No texture left, no crack of ice nor ridge of dirt so hard it jars the knees, instead just rain. Muck, sucks and sighs the breath of fog; where mushrooms, mildew, lichen creep like ghosts to polka dot the trees...

The Swim I am tired of people not knowing everything about how we loved each other. Car doors locked from inside, left hand on the wheel so the right can dangle imprecisely whereyouwere, whenyouwerehere. Even I don’t know everything about how. I am tired of forgetting...

Greenfire As frost smothers fire at the fulcrum of dawn, you are there, hands burrowed in your fleece, ambling round our garden, past Silurian ferns. Wood-smoke drifts from November’s stoves. Leaves curl and crisp. The greenfire burns down. It will take all year, as...

Be The Vines Take me with you so I won’t have to write from such distance again or resort to sing-song across the tumultuous blue then be hedged by silence when you leave me in your trails, those dissolving beads and curlicues of sky. Let’s more often twine our...

Live Like A Winter Flowering Cherry In the summer I’m unremarkable, biding my time, satisfied to let peonies and poppies take centre stage. In autumn I begin to come into my own – layering your lawn with a daily tapestry of rust, orange, yellow. When you’ve done...

Blackthorn Edgy, always at the edge but can tip a winter into a pre-spring look of something beautiful. Bonny in blossom, a beguiling frothy white. The humble Blackthorn, its knurly built-in rebuke. Dark thorns, purple, something venomous like being bitten or strung....

Ha-ha! * The trouble with your average wall is visibility. Dezallier d’Argenville had the right idea. He understood the power of illusion, the artifice of panoramic views unbroken to the far horizon and no invading cattle to destroy the lawn or nosey neighbours...

The Blasphemy of Fire The wind still smokes cigarettes of old trees in chaotic packs and throws their ashes onto the village. Numerous people have gathered to save what remains of the ancient forest. Sacred trees, black and white, fall to pieces. They crumble like...