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
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...
Jayant Kashyap
Child as a Piano During the ultrasound, it lies there,dormant, like a landmine inside you.Later, it erupts – a months-quiet volcanoof its own. Now the constant ticks,the continuous whirring of me, me,me, mommy, me. A four-leggedsinister machine in the...
Isabel Miles
Night Vision At noon the garden’s open as a flower,its beauty fitting to our spectrum and our scale.Green lawn, brown earthand flashing red, black, white,three partridges that sprint across the grass.Plain everyday. The midnight garden’s a dark pool.Upon it strands of...
Michael Tanner
Pavement Poppies A half dozen or solending a delicate beautyto vertical brick,trodden tarmac,swayed by the passageof traffic down to the town. None noticed their green emergencefrom the crack that time digsat the base of walls –big enough to admit dustand water, the...
Lisa Lopresti
Dreary Pavements and Roads In the dusky afternoon trafficof a grey tarmac dayan urban fox stands bya zebra crossing, military still. The fox’s coat isa scotch bonnet spiceto the drone of the daypeppering flavour to the scene. Her brush-tailed rushacross the crossing...
Alex Barr
In Praise of Sheds In the glow of a paraffin lamp from ‘Spick and Span’master of my domain long agoin the old rocking chairthat ground the floorboards in a heavy rhythm busy with some childish occupation,humming the ancient hymns I believed inI watched through the...
David Seddon
Return This is a note to say I’ve arrivedin Nowhere-next-the-Sea,I’ve dumped the baggage overboardbut sent you back the key. Hang out the washing on the cliffs,flap and wave the cloth;skiffs will flex their ribs and strakes –embrace the water’s wash. Sun shall rake...