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

Jim C. Wilson

Swans At Night

On the wildest night of the year’s beginning,
the park’s a moor, the pond a heaving ocean.
Like hailstones, stars soar past our heads;
the trees are stripped by the shrieking gale.

My eyes stream and my face feels stretched
and I worry about tomorrow. Until,
three areas of wavering light. ‘The swans,’
you say. But it’s dark. I have my doubts.

But the three vague shapes begin to gleam:
It’s them on the bridge, with their necks
folded back and heads half-buried in wings.
Sleeping swans as still as stones, and white

as falling snow. We grow closer.
a head rears up; perfect feathers ruffle.
We slip by into the wind. Beyond the trees
the orange lights wait, and cars are everywhere.

Tonight we’ll sleep as the fireplace howls
and the dead come drifting by again. But
in the light we’ll feed the swans, see them glide,
so white with grace, like galleons bearing gifts.

Found in hallowed soil,
his scoliotic spine strung
loosely like a rosary
(one shoulder higher than the other;
five foot eight but would have seemed
much shorter) he’d been struck
by many men so each
could claim the fatal blow.

History has told of his unhorsing.
Mounted on his courser,
no terrain however steep
would have defeated him.
He could have gone where no roads go,
however crooked he became,
if he had lived.

He would have fought
to reach completion
like the gibbous moon.

He would have sought
to be compared with trees
whose curvature
in bole and bough is grace.

More Guest Poems

Jock Stein

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Jayant Kashyap

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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...

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

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Lisa Lopresti

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Alex Barr

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David Seddon

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Doreen Hinchliffe

In The Wind’s Singing voices are in the wind’s singingT. S. Eliot The sound of the wind beneath the dooris nothing new, and yet tonightI feel compelled to listen to its music. It sings of a rickety stile, a gate that creaksand fields where blackberries hang in...

Alison Chisholm

Intrusion The house is drifting into moon’s dim light.The television’s off and no lamps glow.I’m listening to sounds that stir the night. The carriage clock ticks quietly, there’s a slightpersistent shush where rustling breezes blow.The house is drifting into moon’s...

Alexander Peplow

Sack and Sugar Let us imagine Falstaff as a cake. He sits there, a great cherry-in-a-chair,and lets us watch him, studying outhis layers. Fruitcake, sure, in allits connotations, thumb-pressed throughwith candied peel or currantsconcealed like other people wouldhave...

Anne Stewart

Walking Home at One I have told you how I love the airat 2:00 a.m. when it’s so clean and clearthe night birds’ warnings not to interfereseem to include me in their reach of care. And, here, I’m walking home alone again.But this is early by comparison. Only 1:00.The...

Piers Cain

The Rooks of Stromness It’s plain the rooks of Stromness own the town.They’re taking over slowly, plot by plot.These black and clever birds have been aroundforever, roosting high in trees. They’ve caughtthe change and flown on it. Some surf the breezethen flap to keep...

Gareth Culshaw

I Will Walk Before it Snows Somewhere in the sky the heavy lightness of snowwaits. I snap my knees again hope my trouser beltkeeps me whole until I reach home. My spine tries to balance on the legs, allow yawnsto grow through my windpipe, then release into the skyas...

Christine McNeill

Alive That wet April evening,so vivid in memory; how we marvelledat the trees’ branches intertwined as things connect when we look back and a mirror dropping off the wallwithout being touched we laughed off and unknowingly each yearpass the date of our deathand stay...