Guest Poems

Poppies by the Sea Orangey-red prayer flags of the past – they are opium – a secret incense. They are a doorway to everything – from a small room to an endless blue seascape. They launch all the people that you have encountered – the living and the dead. They are the...

For Beirut A cento I Lebanon shall be turned into a fruitful field a fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon, as beautiful as the famed city of Atlantis. Walk through the lonely ancient woods hear the voices from the Cedars of Lebanon....

The Other One Opening the blue door of a shed he had called The Other One, his old straw hat tips from a nail, doffed by a breeze predicting a storm. Its crown’s unwinding like a work unfinished, black band sweat salted - so much garden slog under a few retirement...

Rooks Greedy rogues and undertakers, graveyard birds and thieves; thus maligned along with other crows, and all unfairly, to me these rooks are wise in myth and fact, riding the tall-tree sky beyond my window, waking up the spring with their clamorous building. In...

Mrs Mortimer’s Podcast Men? Flowers don’t have much choice when it comes to bees, do they? Children. You get what you’re given and as for the virgin birth. Try it. The root cause of all this extinction rebellion and global warming is over-population and...

Masked Too early and unsteady I walk slowly along the half-empty corridor. My glasses steam as I breathe, blotting out direction signs and leaving me stranded in a boat without oars. What has happened to me? What has happened to the alert, making a joke of my hearing,...

Leaving Home You’re waving goodbye from the shore, smiling. I want to get off the boat, but the swell knocks me off balance and with each heave away from you I’m more seasick, homesick. I call gently to you – No fuss, you’d said. I whisper your name to calm myself as...

The Warning A hi-vis hangs from a billboard across the road, flashing in the wind like a warning against an invisible enemy. No one’s claimed it though it’s been there for days. I retreat to the back of the house to make bread. Maybe some kid will yank the vest down...

A Refuge A family who nobody knew moved into the house with no windows and a hole in the roof. There was hay to sleep on and they collected sticks from the forests on the mountain to light a fire in the middle of the room, kitchen chairs arranged in a circle of...

Learning to Swim Every woman should know how to swim, so she can navigate the treachery of land; the currents and riptides dragging her back to the crossroads of youth, paths never taken, the waxing and waning longing of streets. We stand in a line, at the tiled edge...

Love Songs When we banter on the phone, there’s much left to uncover, and how many love songs have I left in me yet? When you humour me, I’m better than myself, how many love songs are hovering in the air? When we pull it together and get lost in our rooms, how many...

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...