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
Ursula Kelly
When I Can Make it to the Pub Again
It’s not so much the pain but
fear 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 faith
that a rearticulated ankle will still hold,
the pins will not give way.
Moonboots sound magical. I’ve dreamed of dancing
in the County Feis, defying gravity with scissor kicks
and slip steps, treble shoes clattering on a wooden floor,
finding my feet in speed and fury.
But reality begs to differ, when every visit
to the bathroom must be choreographed.
I pace myself in steady clunks, relinquishing the safety
of the zimmer frame, then managing to make do
with just one crutch. Next up, a walking stick.
When I can make it to the pub again,
I’ll buy you all a drink.
Jayant Kashyap
Child as a Piano
During the ultrasound, it lies there,
dormant, like a landmine inside you.
Later, it erupts – a months-quiet volcano
of its own. Now the constant ticks,
the continuous whirring of me, me,
me, mommy, me. A four-legged
sinister machine in the beginning,
advancing with growth, now it can
multitask – handle scissors before age,
snip your hare/hair carelessly, throw
styrofoam at the dog to feed, or feed
itself, spill water, urine, oil on the floor,
its generous slickiness. This small
machine of easy wear and tear,
easy blithering, breaking, bleeding,
becoming bone-hard, voluntary
but still the hum of mommy, me,
prized possession, precious substance,
jewel, gem, loved, loving learns melting,
waking under warmth.
More Guest Poems
Sydney Lea
Violence 4 August, 2020 We once longed to have bald eagles back. And back they came, from poisons that doomed so many over the years. At last, they’re common again. This morning, I saw two wrangle over a hatchling loon in the crown of a pine. Their little war shivered...
John Muro
Sea Drift Something of this place stays with me still and the hand-cloth of memory will not allow me to wipe it away. It’s pinned beneath a world that’s beyond forgetting and smelling always of salted brume and rusted metal and the nearly sweet scent of diesel fuel...
Greta Stoddart
A Glass of Water So many ways of looking at a glass of water – why is one clearly not enough? Because there are many ways to look and it’s a different kind of sustenance we’re after when we look at a glass of water and maybe there’s no such thing as failure when we...
Rosie Jackson
Grief: A User’s Guide Follow the instructions carefully. Do not use your grief for purposes other than the one for which it is intended. Extreme caution must be taken. Lift your grief, do not drag. If you find any resistance, cut into pieces. Gently shake if...
Doreen Hinchliffe
Memento Mori at an exhibition of Victorian photographs of the dead Posed and dressed in Sunday best, their heads clamped tight in a metal vice, their bodies propped on stands or chairs, they stare at us across the years and fix us with their unreal eyes, inviting us...
Geoffrey Winch
In this Silence To her the silence had been in itself a prayer, the deepest, the holiest, the most illuminating. T. F. Powys: Mister Tasker’s Gods its utter depth and width can only leave one standing on this canyon’s rim entirely without speech its walls stacked so...
Barbara Cumbers
Of all the stars, the loveliest ... Sappho: Fragments on love and desire ... are the Pleiades for they are blue like the sparkles of ice in the coldness of air for they cluster like buds of angelica for the glow that surrounds them is the birthplace of stars for they...
Isabel S. Miles
Sunflower Potatoes, cherry trees and wheat begin in darkness, as sunflowers do, rooted in dank clay, eating ochre, seeking light. With brush for bow and canvases for instruments, in colours only he had vision clean enough to see, he played sonatas filled with blossoms...
Estill Pollock
In Places We Invent In places we invent, cities not cities In ways we knew, in our little understanding Of structures and remorse, where stations prosper From years of long cold, or in savannahs Dry winds strip breathless, our new lives Printed veils of fabrics, tools...
John Gosslee
Below the Night Sky and Blazing My bones hollow, but I don’t grow feathers like a good bird. The village torches mark the trails from the foothills into the rows of shops, onto the box-heavy-delivery-truck-filled roads, the scabs of progress flicker under the...
Robert Dorsett
Voice for the War Refugees The suffering of others is always a foreign language. They speak, leave gaps for others to fill. Keep meaning close, crisp and dangerous. Packed into camps, huddled behind wire, they bandy facts into lies, clench fear into a pause. And speak...
Eleanor Westwood
Breaking News 16.3.22 the child, too excited for school the husband, heart in his guts twisting the woman kissing her parents goodbye the passport bearing her name in her own hands her sweat impregnating the cover joins the man whose family wait for him negotiators...
Hannah Linden
The Woodcutter’s House from Wolf Daughter Now the wolf is dead, dissected into pieces and the knife has been cleaned and put back into the drawer. No more dwelling on it he said. Take some pills and put a smile on your face, no need for red capes now. What was your...
Paul Surman
Sparrowhawk You have come to rest on a stave of the low wooden fence yards from our window, a desperate look of tired ferocity in your eye. Next to our neighbour's forsythia, your feather cloak's duller shine. You look haughty, like an old nobility fallen on hard...
Frank McMahon
Saving Byzantium Every time he asks, is this allowed? They do not paint God’s face, our enemies. They are ocean, plague, unanswered swords, surely God must love them more? They tell him: this is a settled question and this is your commission, The Triumph of Orthodoxy....