Stable Writing

Take care. These are delicate engines.

The pin-table predates the tilt,

Two threadbare teams stand riveted

In goalless extra time and the girls

- The Mechanical Toy Museum, Sean O'Brien

Another Birth

It is not through weeping,

but all evening the pale blue eye

on your most photogenic side has kept

its own unfathomable tide.

-At Sea, Simon Armitage

Please Return

It is another world. But what else

Can a mother give a daughter but such

Beautiful rifts in time?

-The Pomegranate, Eavan Boland

Generate Capital

While she discards coat, skirt,

cashmere sweater, a string of pearls,

and lies ready on the bed, left hand

propping her left breast, body twisted

in an S, he fries two eggs

-Naked Girl with Egg, Vicki Feaver

Each Volume

Ambition. Rage. Boredom. Spite. How

how do they taste, smell, sound?

Nobody cares. Jason doesn't. Nor does his dad.

He met a poet. Didn't know it. Uungh.

What would that aftershave say

it it could think? What color's the future?

-Like Earning a Living, Carol Ann Duffy

New Developments

Most of me is marked

by a bitter sense of humour.

I am reminiscent of

intellectual paper-games.

-Opinions of the Press, Peter Reading

Variable Speed

I thought I was dreaming again on the train in the morning

To hear at my shoulder, before I had properly settled,

'Excuse me - is this seat taken?'

-Goldilocks, Mick Imlah

Between Travelling

Hilarious to the virus that has spent
its infinite resources
concocting itself anew,

these healers, helicoptered into a war zone,
with helmets and a peace plan,
pound the maps in a shell of an HQ.
- The Altered Slightly, Glyn Maxwell

Ground Open

Bliss
cleared up
to fill my heart
and
heaven like a lotus
in all its gathered beauty
burst into flower.
-Bliss, Sumitranandan Pant