Friday Poems

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

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

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