Giving my ex-boss a hand job for £20 (mates rates)
by Jane Ayres — His request took me by surprise / since I’d only invited him round for coffee // making it clear there was to be no more sex
The Friday Poem archive
Trial and Error
by Josh Geffin — Sitting cross-legged in a small room / opposite a Zen Master – no shit – / I say I’m not sure what I should be doing, / I don’t know what my calling is. // Smiling
we hope to have sand in our shoes
by Rose Rouse — my friend’s crystal-studded sunglasses match the station / pan-asian cafes and tattoo parlours have moved into public houses
Homage to Avram
by Mark McDonnell — Avram Stencl (1897-1983). // Why this writing, writing? / Why, for example, is Avram Stencl sitting in a cafe in Whitechapel - / one tea, the rental for the table - / writing poetry in Yiddish on the back of a shopping list? // Would he
Dead Letters (xi)
by Carole Coates — Dear J, // Did we ever talk about papier mache? No? / Not in fifty years? Not in all our conversations? / Maybe not. But I did mention Mr Cuthbert surely, / once Lance-Corporal, teaching forty eight-year-olds / after the one year
frog
by Laura Theis — you are walking down the road / at night // out alone with / only a medium size poodle cross for protection // you’re holding a filched branch of spring / blossoms in one hand // a bag with dog poo in the other / just wondering if
Fox
by Rachel Spence — A fox on a wet autumn night outside the British Museum / fleeing into a gas pipe as I chivvy you out of the building / into the rush-hour rainshine of car metal, headlights, // trampled leaves. I’m several steps ahead when / you
Apple blossom
by Jackie Wills — The year Dylan's mother died / I picked sprays of apple blossom, / wound its pink, off-white shades / in raffia for you to take to him. // Every year it's out I think of us, / the children, how apples bring / the tree so low, until they thud
The Big Reveal
by Julie-Ann Rowell — Nantes, teeming rain like an angry child’s tears / and everything closed because it’s Monday. / We topple into a bar tabac. Men cluster / around tin-top tables, a fat Jack Russell / wandering despondently
Evening on the Porch
by Jodie Hollander — The rocking chair is rocking, / though no one sits in it / on this windless evening, / and yet this rocking, rocking, / back and forth as if / a soul could somehow wish / to be here once again / on long warm evenings
The Dowry of Hera
by Rebecca Ferrier — I am training myself in happiness through lemons: / think well, dart citrus to tongue, take joy’s embalmment as sweet lemonade. / Between an avenue of knuckle is a pip I squeeze from joint / and plant to yellow the outside.
Funeral
by Tony Kitt — People from different parts / of one’s life / don’t know each other. // They walk behind the coffin / in silence, / each mourning / a different person.