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
Carolyn McCurdie
To Cleave
This morning a sheer, immaculate sky
was bisected horizon to horizon
by interlacing white and blue threads of a cloud formation,
delicate, curling filaments, intricate weavings
that bound east to west. And held their breath.
I stood at my back door, thinking feather, then quill.
I tried to find some image to hold the loveliness in my mind
and noticed, in this search for words, a clunk of loss.
I looked for thickness, a spine in the feather,
a sharpness of the quill that I could name as nib.
It was sort of a game, but to win was to miss.
As if I’d been shown a poem in unfamiliar, lyrical script
whose mystery might have dusted my skin, my lips, like pollen drift,
and invited some tongue of wordlessness to rise, to sip.
But quick, with a neat sticky label, I’d grabbed. To own.
To keep. A sort of self-caging. Offered a sky alive with
the possible wild, the infinite strange, I’d looked for a nib,
found only an ink-flick of grief.
A crick in my neck. Obtuseness sour in my gut.
I breathed in, breathed out.
When I looked up, the cloud had loosened,
tendrils unlooping, its coherence becoming unnameable open,
unnameable new.
And this. A cloud poem shifting, finding something less certain.
About stillness at my back door? Smallness? Perhaps about staying.
Daljit Nagra
parka
your brother’s made friends with two boys down the road
who are your own background
with their parents from the villages in Punjab
they’re in his year and they’ve been mixing languages
till they giggle their heads off
slipping from rugged London to farmer’s Punjabi
sat sri akal mate – how’s yor old man, mate
he’s all teek – thanks for aaskin dohst
they’ve invented a new speak and you’re in awe
cos you won’t mix suitcases like that with Nigel
your dad, a champion wrestler destined
for the Olympics – except it was amateur stuff,
was told to come over here
for the Sterling slog in Bison’s concrete factory
he’s always at work early and back late
overtime either end and at home half-cut
he’s not gone yet and loiters in his work boots
then empties two raw eggs in two glasses each
and makes you both swallow them down
when you gag, he says you’re both koories, girls
he stands over your brother, who’s older than you
by two years, and says that he’s not to walk
with those boys anymore, one’s a carpenter
caste and the other’s from the cobblers
he won’t have word getting out that juts, landowners
are mixing with riffraff
so when they knock for your brother
the shoulders of your dad narrow the frame
as he tells those ten year olds not to mix with his son
their tiny heads shiver in the hoods of their parkas
everyone knows your dad’s the best arm wrestler
in the factories – they help their own dads
by not walking with your brother again
More Guest Poems
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...
Kenneth Steven
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Wendy French
Crossing It’s two strangerscrossing a bridgein opposite directionsover a dried-up river.And the sun beats downon the back of oneand in the face of the otherand as they passthey are holdersof the moment. One stretchesout her hand,the other takes it.They clasp each...
Jeff Skinner
Returning to the Island you see nowwhat you missed the first time children playing in the streets, barking dogs,balconies of bikes, flowers, shirts dryinglike this Boats bob uncertainly in the harbour The sun is going downtaking the day with it – children, dogs,...
Elizabeth Barton
Polishing his Shoes My father visits me from deepin the cupboard of my memory.He sits in the kitchen, Sunday’s papers spread out on the floor before him.There’s a waft of turpentine as he popsthe lid off the tin, dips bristles in wax and I hear the reassuring sweepof...
Roger Harvey
Questions on a Hill I climbed Cat Bellson the first day of winter:mist above and below me,sleet in the air. The view of lakes and islands,green and brown and silver-grey,was wonderful.No-one could tell it true. I want you to wonderwhy it is that men climb highto feel...
Peter Sutton
Here I Stand Here I stand for I can do no other,tied to my neighbours, my enemies, friends,cousins and siblings, ancestors, offspring,pushing and shoving and reaching for light,building up brawn and strengthening sinews,bartering messages, crisscrossing limbs,digging...
A. C. Clarke
Crossing the language divide We commit to speech as we do to a bridgein the faith it will bring us to the further shorewithout cracking, in the faiththe further shore is where we want to be.What if our words shape themselves differentlyin the listener’s ear, distorted...
Charlene Langfur
On the Cusp of Climate Change Days are like thimbles now, full of small needs,whatever works, potluck, making do.I plant aloe in clay pots on the porch, arugula,orange nasturtium, parsley because it matters.I am a woman walking under the fan palmsunderneath the desert...