Category: Poetry

Poetry

Prayerbird

By Lyra Button

I was dove;
you were air
and I was happy to fall
as you held me between fingers
Spreading my wings, setting me to fly.

You are gone.
And I am the jackal
piecing away at its own feathers.
Til I’m just a pile of bones,
strangely living.

Bright dead things, the stars of the night.
Old dreams preserved in the silver shadows
of the night’s scars.
A sadness is not always an ugly thing.

So I look to stars
find my north and fly.
And I remember you
as a smile
edging towards a tear.
A sadness is not always an ugly thing.

Now I am something beyond
the bones of being alive.
I am night:
tumour dark; still shining.

Poetry

Soft Ghost

By Olivia Petrini

Spill it, and stare across a wine-dark sea
You, and me, in the rafters of the Old
Church, humming with weary hues and
The purple ring of this prohibited light.

We embrace on pointed toes, creaking
Heavy ones trembling in the honeyed winter night
You skim the spitting flame with icy glances,
Smile and crinkle golden foil.

You sip too quickly at the brim of the
Cut-glass gently crashing between your
Thumb and tactful finger. The dark
Wine weeping from your narrow wrists.

It’s not dawn and you’re outside in a duvet.
Soft bright ghost trailing sodden leaves
And sopping silver over
Gutters. Trampling the path to Cheam.
Blotting sleeves with bleeding mud and
Gleaming rain in thrumming white.

Put out the light!
And then put out the light!

Recall. Recast it all in pitiful bronze
Laid down, and up the swirling, steaming
Stage-light. You frighten me with your
Twitching lips and flick’ring hair.

Poetry

Long Weekend

By Esme Bell

Today at home I cut my nails

to the beat of Rickie Lee Jones

whilst my dad waged sense on Twitter

and my mum did a pagan ceremony

at the kitchen table, making a wreath

with wood and tissues of paper.

My sister tried on my clothes upstairs,

excited to be taller than I was then,

and peace lolled legless into me

like two hounds with silky ears –

feeling time brittled away, past, sullied.

In the valley it had rained but the sun

Came out, red-ringed, before dinner.

Poetry

The Sparrow

The Dead Sparrow, 1905, Franz Marc

By Muna Mir

In the early morning

a sparrow was delivered to my doorstep.

Splayed on the stone tiles, it sits

feathered and still, cold

in the morning light.

I did not wish to look at it.

You know how I am

never wanting to look death in the eye,

only the underbelly

which I thought I could penetrate

before it penetrated me. Still it stuck.

Small god of thresholds,

staring straight,

surely a premonition

for something else,

something worse, I thought,

then grew quickly regretful.

Sorry for my neglect: willful negligence

of soft and easy death

laid bare at my feet, and which I wished

to leave my sight. Assuming providence,

I’d discarded the dead

for some portent of which it was not.

I urged it to withdraw

for fear of what it could do

even after it had done all it would.

It lay cold and quiet on my doorstep.

Poetry

God is with us most

By Tatty Anton Smith

God is with us most in the space between moments.

He rests in doorframes as we move between rooms.

In the floor below a candle as it falls from a bedside table.

In the feathers of a bird’s wing as it flies over our heads.

In the heavy clouds that signal rain.

In the silent eye contact of lovers and the air between their skin.

Poetry

Absence

By Toby Dossett

The forest holds the language of grief

With a fluency I am yet to master

Saplings bow under the weight of the sky

That speaks only in questions

A stag’s steps are forgotten promises

Moving like the edge of a dream

The shadow of a boy I once knew

Is he watching me like I want him to?

The hawk tears too

Crying, waiting

What does it hunt

If not the silence between us?

Like when I call the stag

But my voice is a stone that sinks

He tilts his head

I’ve stopped longing and he knows

The laughter we left hanging in the branches

Alike the memories we whispered to the fire

Now dust upon dust

Was it you who taught me

How to carry the weight of an empty clearing

Or was it the wind

Always pulling, always leaving

To become is to mourn

Still, the forest holds us

Roots tangled with absence

Poetry Uncategorized

Resurrection

By Muna Mir

In January I dreamt you’d been resurrected.

Walking through the woods,

I watched the colours shift

For the first time

When the sun hit your eyes.

The clenching of my stomach, the serpent

Wrapped twice around my chest,

Tempting and stifling. The memory

Of restraint

When the sun rubbed

At your temples. Smooth skin

And your golden hair

Falling over

That temple.

I’d only noticed

The colour of your eyes

The week before.

How often I have regretted

Not noticing sooner, not

Nailing you to a cross

To stare at your eyes forever

Poetry

Embryonic Scavenger

By Olivia Petrini

in the morning I know myself best

my shoulders light and sliding

from the iridescent walls

stretching limbs to trace the

embossed red contours of the map

and you, across the way.

we could criss-cross, you know.

collide, the embryonic scavenger,

tiny neanderthal with a mallet

in one hand,

a stone grasped tightly in the other

staggers over flints like a rock-hopper

to the tangled white arms

which glint up from the sea.

I untangle myself from your embrace

to clamber over the slick roof tiles

and perch at the peripheries

senseless by the lazy messes

of the afternoon.

we advance along the beach

the sunlight bleaching our eyes

a civil orange, rolled between

both palms you cast into the

sky and back again with a

thud

which might once have been a moon

now scatters the bully-rooks

loose from their briar

up into black trees

and once again we retire to

the shadowed nooks of the night.

Poetry

Sonnet for Winter’s First Frost

Post author By Woody Jeffray
Post date November 27, 2024
No Comments on Sonnet for Winter’s First Frost

By Woody Jeffay

Winter’s maiden frost clouds up my window

Through drawn blinds, dulled sun caresses my face

Outside icy grass crunches soft below

Winter’s presence announced with such cool grace

I’m awoken from autumnal slumber

From the depths of sleepy October hush

To mild morning air and misty splendour

The echoless chirp of a lonesome thrush

I stop and watch as she glides above me

Effortlessly she drifts with the wind’s will

Bound to nothing but air, she seems so free

And I swear, in this moment all is still

Stark-blind and cold there’s a peace in the air

The winter sun warms my soul – all is fair

Poetry

Slug

By Esme Bell

Like shame, you stop me sick:

Heaving at your foot, damp sickle

By my feet – who turn away, afraid.

But you, unlike me, can write in silver;

and what plains are forged,

and acres tended, and quiet empires

felled by you, unshelled warrior.

Naked bodkin, singular em dash –

command your line, your road. A car

threatens, and like a dare, you stay.

I won’t think of the wet starburst,

your treasure gorged and spilt as

guts, sharing now with the sky.

I will walk instead around, and keep

an eye open for hedgehogs.

wayzgoose

wayzgoose

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