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
Jennifer Johnson
Satisfaction
Sometimes, it is the common things that give satisfaction,
such as chopping onions, peppers and tomatoes
despite me rarely enjoying cooking apart from the result,
sharing food with the one who brings some real point to life,
one who lifts me above the depressing images of war on TV
by his energetic talk about some thoughts he’s just had
even when some of what he says floats above my head.
I first fry chicken pieces until the outsides are golden,
then remove and place them on absorbent paper.
That chopping of vegetables makes me feel grounded,
connects me more closely to the earth they come from,
the earth I’m normally distanced from by floors and shoes.
Sometimes, he cooks and I tell him some of my thoughts
and often he goes on to tell me more about the subject.
It’s knowing what the veg looks and feels like before
it’s fried for around five minutes, rice added for another.
Water is then poured in with everything else,
the rosemary, thyme and cayenne pepper together
with the chicken pieces removed from the kitchen paper.
It’s all left to cook for half an hour when I read emails,
check from time to time the jambalaya isn’t drying out.
The result is food that makes us feel well, not like
the cheap food you eat when you’re away from home.
David Sergeant
A Winter Morning
Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm! (Lear)
My heart forgets …
(Burns, ‘A Winter Night’)
The globe has got its change on and frost
the artificer has strolled
madly through the world with a cold
deliberation, nothing so small
that it escapes his notice – the slightest
grass blade has been tooled to a sceptre intense
with the proliferate edges of brilliance –
trees are locked
into shock-
headed cabinets of perfection,
every surface super-rich with detail, the fractal
entail of ice and ice and ice.
A sparrow starts past, and then a pheasant:
oranges lurid as a child’s drink spilt
on a tablecloth, it is terrified
of the new broom felt
at its back.
I expend an ounce of the sun
in yellow rebellion, the snow-face steams
and records it.
Thank God I’m not sleeping out.
More Guest Poems
Denise Bennett
Speaking to my Dead Mother What are we doing here in this station tearoom?We’ve slipped back sixty years.You’re wearing your grey pencil-slim skirtqueuing for the buffet. Sipping tea.I’m in my pink cotton frock covered in smuts.You’d told me not to sit facing the...
Terry Quinn
The Doppler Effect is me standing stillthe sound of my heartracingto the sound of her voicecalling my nameas she runs up the pathto hand me an ultrasoundI’d left on her ward is me standingmy heart stillas we talkfor a few minutesabout transducersand the right type of...
Stephen Boyce
Perigee I have been looking to the Eastwhere they tell you everythingis illusion, nothing lasts. The night of the strawberry moon,though I saw it, I was shutteredin a windowless room. I saw you standing in a fieldwith your back to that glowing moonamong grasses,...
Bridget Khursheed
Plotting Doggerland There are farms you reveal as our plane slidestowards Amsterdam. An ex-navy surveyorof forgotten seafloor, you have seenthis obscure bombscape drilled into neolithic geography. Using a digital weather-eye,submersible and deep dive, you sometimes–...
Colin Pink
Surveillance I lie awake at nightthe ghost-of-myself paces the citygets on and off buseshurries through turnstilespauses to look in shop windowsgives a beggar a coinjust stands in the street for no reasonraises suspicion from passers-byhurries ahead againenters the...
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 sidelinerson the brink of history before her instrument as it ploughs the stars,sends galaxies and all of creation tumbling from view....
Duncan Wu
Fired Up Ruthless hot the angry August sun glaresdown upon the slope. Nothing moves. Mydog sleeps in a pool of light while I stareat a gap in the outer wall which Iwill have to fill. But not right now. With luckI can ignore it till the weather cools.This is the...
Louise Walker
Octave/Sestet With each deep breath, the flute will utter prayer,its voice vibrating with the purest noteof G in the first octave. Then you can floatup to the next because you know it’s there.The painter knows how to balance sea and air,concealing rules that have been...
Deborah H. Doolittle
Like Wordsworth in Wales Who doesn’t like ruins? The oldstone shaped to make the landscape wild. The fragmented walls, like thoughts, framethe sky with Gothic windowpanes. Now, blue is the preferred hue forreflection that is wide enough. Ivy climbs the parts of...
Don Rodgers
Magnolias What do we make of magnolias?Like beaks of exotic birds, their budsbreak from bare branches, singingthemselves open into sculpturalpink and white waxworks of flames. You were given a Magnolia Susanone birthday. Not caring for our garden,it managed one clutch...
Richard Schiffman
The Wisdom of Seeds You don’t seed a cloud with another cloud,but with bone dry particles of dust. Sahara dust blown to the Amazonmakes the mineral-poor soils fertile. The Amazon seeds its own rains which blownoff course make the Sertão desert bloom. Hopelessly off...
Myra Schneider
Jungle It’s January but outside the lawns and grassy vergesare very green after months of rain and the palm treesin the frontage at the end of our road are thriving. I love the spread fans of their spiky leavesand the yellowish cacti spears underneath them –they jump...
Janet Dean
Angels in the Air Morning spills sand from its bucket, a clock ticksone Mississippi, two Mississippi. Deserted by an outgoing tide, an afternoonspread flat and dreary, wet with longing. She spent years learning to silence the ticking clock,change her voice, open...
Jock Stein
The First Snowdrop Modest, trembling, they appeared together:why be first when you can burst upon the scenelike mini US cavalry, genes and ethics matched,despatched midwinter on a mission, gently bentto tame the harsher shades of government,calm down showers of...
Ursula Kelly
When I Can Make it to the Pub Again It’s not so much the pain butfear of pain, that makes me hesitate.I am learning to bear my own weight again,with crutches and a moonboot.Every tiny step’s a giant leap of faiththat a rearticulated ankle will still hold,the pins will...