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
Seán Street
Breakfast with Michael Longley
River and Fountain
From beyond the window October’s memory
of what summer might have been poured in, and there
was Billie singing God Bless the Child, there was
sun through the apple juice, dazzling the table.
There was Hart Crane, there was Wallace Stevens,
time murmuring and the toast crumbling,
Kunitz, Masefield, Stevens, talk of poets who sang
with you: Heaney, there was Mahon, Muldoon,
the dance of a new poem made, poems
flowing from Pee Wee Russell’s clarinet,
and you said – and the coffee was my witness –
prose is a river, poetry a fountain,
and I knew that because you’d written it, because
I’d long had the text in my head and by heart,
but to hear you say it. To hear you say it…
the table white, silver, a Ghost Orchid there,
Fats Waller’s Honeysuckle Rose. And then it rained,
but Billie sang I’ll find you in the morning sun,
so Autumn resumed, playing still-bright notes that
fell through harvest light, prisms in every one.
Caroline Maldonado
Foraging for the Ideal
The lights of Macerata, Loreto, Treia
pulse across each hilltop town
and fireflies
swing their lamps
over the earth
to echo the stars.
There’s the scent of
laurel, rosemary, lavender
wild mint and fennel.
L’amore che move il sole
e l’altre stelle warms the
perfume of my lover’s skin.
I follow the poets
– so help me –
searching through
the emptiness without
& the darkness within
through villages atilt
after the quake,
through mud that slides
Senigallia’s town to the Adriatic,
in a city through blackshirts
who chant their presence,
arms raised in the Roman salute.
We forage here,
we forage there
for l’ideale che illumina.
More Guest Poems
John Gosslee
Below the Night Sky and Blazing My bones hollow, but I don’t grow feathers like a good bird. The village torches mark the trails from the foothills into the rows of shops, onto the box-heavy-delivery-truck-filled roads, the scabs of progress flicker under the...
Robert Dorsett
Voice for the War Refugees The suffering of others is always a foreign language. They speak, leave gaps for others to fill. Keep meaning close, crisp and dangerous. Packed into camps, huddled behind wire, they bandy facts into lies, clench fear into a pause. And speak...
Eleanor Westwood
Breaking News 16.3.22 the child, too excited for school the husband, heart in his guts twisting the woman kissing her parents goodbye the passport bearing her name in her own hands her sweat impregnating the cover joins the man whose family wait for him negotiators...
Hannah Linden
The Woodcutter’s House from Wolf Daughter Now the wolf is dead, dissected into pieces and the knife has been cleaned and put back into the drawer. No more dwelling on it he said. Take some pills and put a smile on your face, no need for red capes now. What was your...
Paul Surman
Sparrowhawk You have come to rest on a stave of the low wooden fence yards from our window, a desperate look of tired ferocity in your eye. Next to our neighbour's forsythia, your feather cloak's duller shine. You look haughty, like an old nobility fallen on hard...
Frank McMahon
Saving Byzantium Every time he asks, is this allowed? They do not paint God’s face, our enemies. They are ocean, plague, unanswered swords, surely God must love them more? They tell him: this is a settled question and this is your commission, The Triumph of Orthodoxy....
Bert Molsom
Inside the house I am safe, all I want is here. These people tell me – what I think is right. They are my family, think like me, speak like me, behave like me. Outside it doesn’t work as my family say it must. Outside is danger, weakness. We know what is right, the...
Dinah Livingstone
Rose Garden I see things in black and white, he says. He means he sees them plainly with a will proudly to describe the truth in prose and strip away the fantasy and frill. Red rose of passion, yellow rose of peace, the flaming orange and soft violet stir feelings as...