The Wheel
by Kathryn Bevis — It begins like this: in January a single stitch / slips from her needles. By Candlemas, / her paintings, shelves of knick-knacks start / to stray
The Friday Poem archive
Snowday
by Ian Harker — The cars are falling with long sighs / down Monk Bridge Road, their tanks empty / and the beck grinding to a halt
The Climbing Frame
by Sarah Corbett — Square of hot concrete and new plimsolls / pulled on, elastic at the front, the soft/snap / over my heels & I leap up
Photobombing Dad’s moment
by Maggie Mackay — I am playing fiddle with the Volga boatmen. / My father conducts from the riverbank. / His baton swings like a machete.
Mom cooks fish
by Samiksha Ransom — from my nose to my chest / i feel the pangs of panic / and want to un-smell it // vile saltiness / swish of the sea
Big Barn Migration
by D.W. Evans — The bowed roof of the side-less barn / shows and tells two things easily: / firstly, red oxidised neglect runs like bloody farewells
Swimmers
by William Thompson — Next time you dive / into a public swimming pool / think of the taxes, / the architects, the builders, // the water gushing
Dog-walking in a Cemetery
by Helen Kay — The older headstones, snug in lichen / shawls, lean towards me, console. / Do they scent my old friend’s death? // The dog
Insomnia
by James Nixon — How did I ever fall to sleep easy as pressing the basement button / in an elevator sinking through the floors of my mind / and coming to rest
Collateral
by Helen Evans — And if you let go, for a while, / of whatever is damaging you, / and head for a good place // like this woodland, whose heart / was ripped out by bombs / dropped
Holy
by Serena Alagappan — Holy those colors in rain / after drought, a puddled vow, / iris damp and aching. // Holy the indigo aura / that casts doubt on a landscape’s / verity.
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