Friday Poems
What the owl said to me
by Annie Fisher — I blink, therefore I am. / The moon and stars despise your crude chronology. / The skylark’s ecstasy is the sparrowhawk’s breakfast. // If you're scared of the dark, don't sleep in the forest.
About the Building
by Paul Stephenson — The entry says it’s homely in style, / double-fronted and two-storied / with gable dormer windows in the roof. / It refers to brick quoins and brick surrounds, / two large chimneys, one either side
I’ll Know I’ve Made It When Going to a LongHorn Steakhouse on a Sunday Evening in the Dead of Winter Doesn’t Depress the Hell Out of Me
by Christine Naprava — There’s tremendous hurt / in knowing / that in this booth / I will never be complete.
Everything You Always Wanted To Know
by Mark Granier — At 15, I found Burt Reynolds in my mothers bed, / stowed under her pillow in a Cosmo centrefold. // Impossibly hairy, recumbent on a bearskin rug
Revelations 01/01/2022
by Jane Burn — try harder lose weight skim the weight from your clumsy bones / make a bit more of an effort get fit this is a new start forget / all the empty promises grow your hair vow yourself amazing
Observation
by Nicola Sealey — ‘I like a look of Agony, / Because I know it’s true — Emily Dickinson // I have noticed / when I am gripped and wrung / by agony, and manage / to catch its distilled drops // in a poem
Elephants
by Lorna Dowell — at heart we’re all elephants / compelled to cluster over the bones / of our lost kind we’re all kin / when it comes to grieving / though some choose to forget /
how we fall silent / when crying
Song
by Martin Edwards — As you walk it becomes clear / that the far mountains / will never get /
any nearer. // Although you started out early, / walking briskly and singing / songs about the lands / beyond
Presence
by Marcia Menter — I had to mute my phone and cover the screen / to keep your texts from waking me at night. / Something evil, something you’d almost seen / had breached your dining room and lay in wait —
Waiting with Leszek
by June Wentland — This hospital is a strange place, / he tells us. It’s a ship that sails. // He’s not sure if intent is there or not: / a liner responding to schedules // or a nurse driven mad by over work — / releasing wards
Wind-up people
by Jacqueline Schaalje — Coffee and cakes comforted us that morning. / The seam of her knickers rolled out / like spilt milk so I did some mending. / Stay for lunch, my mother said, but I left, / satisfied her clock was ticking
Lost at the Western General
by Kate Hendry — It only happened once, at night – / the ward we needed wasn’t listed // on any signs and there was no one / in the Covid-empty corridors to ask. // Finally, I recognised the stairs / I’d descended