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
Colin Pink
Surveillance
I lie awake at night
the ghost-of-myself paces the city
gets on and off buses
hurries through turnstiles
pauses to look in shop windows
gives a beggar a coin
just stands in the street for no reason
raises suspicion from passers-by
hurries ahead again
enters the Underground, boards a train,
sits staring at the ads opposite
gets up, gets off, exits the station,
goes into Pret, buys a coffee,
finds it too hot, forgets to drink it,
dumps it in a bin
the ghost-of-myself leaves a trace
across the city streets, slick with light,
like a snail’s silver-slime-trail
inscribing the hieroglyphs
of my personal psychogeography
that no one reads, not even me,
my eyes have looked but not seen
my mind has thought and then forgotten
but the cameras see everything,
remember everything, sift the evidence.
Jemma L. King
3 Month Scan
A bell curve of grey static against black.
What new worlds, old suns burn here?
This space, hushed, aseptic. We are sideliners
on the brink of history before her instrument
as it ploughs the stars,
sends galaxies and all of creation tumbling from view.
Flotsam and jetsam wax and wane
are swallowed again by oil slicks,
voids of blood, dark matter.
Unknown forces, such geographies.
A length now, a structure, bone?
Two rounded eye sockets, Martian fingerprints and
the perfection of skin padding an illuminated spine.
Your heart-beat as giddy as a moth.
This, your private universe,
this salted black sea in which you swim
dormant and unseen.
Are you aware of me? My own distant planet
sending signals, signals of life
through the screen, unwitting,
unwoken.
‘It’s a boy’ she says,
and I see light glowing on the horizon.
More Guest Poems
Kim Moore
And As When And as when the houses of Pompeiwere covered in ash, heavy enoughto cause buildings to collapse, and the pyroclastic flows,mixtures of lava blobs and gasran through the city faster than a horse could run,the horses trapped in harnessin the stable, bodies...
Alicia Byrne Keane
Sceach / Uncommon Knowledge The last days of January lap & settlebut, twice now, I have heard birdsat dusk. The skylight that slantson the landing of my parents’ houselooks unfamiliar for a second:some things are seen and seen again.Dust-mauve, that swatheof clear...
Ben Banyard
Car Boot Sale Stall as a Metaphor For Life Do you turn up at 8am, front of the queue,car full of desirable items from an elderly relativewhich savvy buyers peer at through cupped hands,eyes creased, noses fogging the glass,clammy at the thought of bagging a Clarice...
Briege Duffaud
Privilege A school day, normally. He may have thought of that,missed friends and reading books. Or not. (I never knewhis thoughts nor wanted to.) But still. Nine milescutting over frosted fields to the Newtown hiring-fair,to shiver in a hungry street while meat-fed...
David Olsen
Lighthouse i.m. Cathy Young, R.N. (1953-2022) Smooth rounded pebbleschatter in turbulent surf,aspire to perfect spheres. Ribbons of uprooted kelpintertwine. Broken shellsbleach in the sun. Above the shingle,a promontory risesto reveal an obelisk of whitened...
Nick Pearson
Water He spends fifteen minutes bringing stuff in,makes himself at home on the bathroom flooras if he’s arrived at a favourite camp site. I hear him thinking behind the door,his expertise the commodity of silence. He reminds me of a person I’ve seen before,a...
Chiara Salomoni
Heartwood Sheltered by young cypressesand thick-leaved olive trees,a plum tree stands in my family garden. The knobby branches hold clustersof round, juicy plums in summerso heavy they twist. The smiling crop persists for a month at least;the taste is so sweet, it...
Myra Schneider
Brussel Sprouts When the February sky is weighty with clouds and the wind,a ferocious animal, knocks over fences and rickety sheds,rushes rubbish down streets, rocks trees madly,tears off their branches and crashes any it can to the ground, when the paper is packed...
Martyn Crucefix
‘when’ whenlike a falling flower-print cotton dress has dropped its round spoor in the breathy silence...
Michael Henry
The Brownfields of England This “Go-Between” of a summerthe heatwave’s a marqueand hours and days repeat themselves like a slo-mo film. This chameleon summera hare jogging in a fieldturns out to be a man ...
Richard Lister
Turner’s flight Fishermen at sea, 1796 by JMW Turner As a youth he learnedhow watercolours spillthrough canvas grain and weight,now oils shiver in his hands.He paints the wavesclear enough to glow yet with such thump and throwthat they could snap apartthese men upon...
Martin Reed
Finisterre The lawn is browning, hydrangeas are leached,colours dried to taffeta,summer fading early. Parched.Last night we left a saucer of waterfor linnets who gather on the telegraph wire;insects have drowned in it overnight. Through a gap in the ferns beyond the...
Jennie E. Owen
Advice on Caving for Survivalor Marriage as an Extreme Sport Caving is a polarising sport: underground/marriageis one of those places you’re either happy or you’re not. As the leader, you will have to take control. Mistakescould rapidly escalate a situation into...
Simon Jackson
The Light You are composed of heavenly light and shade,arms raised like Caravaggio’s Saint Paulin his Conversion on the Road to Damascus.Your hands reach into the surgeon’s light.I am relegated to the shadowslike Saul’s servant, holding the horse’s head,a role of...
Ali Blythe
Still, still So being in loveis a lake. The worldturns upside down. We shatter itwhen we dive in. How darkit had to become. To see the unnumberedsparks on each shook swell. To feel their goldhooks fixed in us.