How much would you pay for a fresh punnet of kisses? Jade Cuttle tots up the sum total of a brief relationship in this witty poem (above).

This poem is the unlikely product of Jade Cuttle’s stint as a litter-picker. Jade has performed her poetry on BBC Radio Three, won competitions run by BBC Proms and Foyle Young Poets, and is a BBC Introducing supported poetic songwriter. She lives in Paris and York.

A Receipt for Our Romance was featured in The Romance Issue of Popshot. Order your copy here.

Florianne Humphrey’s poem was inspired by an American President and Lewis Carroll’s  ‘Jabberwocky’. Illustration by Mitt Roshin.

The Blundergaffe

‘Twas quickly that the Blundergaffe,
Did raise its slithy head when hacks
Made great again its orange schnaff
On fake news paperquacks.

Beware the Blundergaffe, my girl!
The tongue that whips, the claws that grab,
Beware the crooked hounds who hurl
Their knives at those who blab.

He took his pingity in hand
And on the keys he clacky clicked,
Eyes of ire for those who withstand
He bleurged his blubbattack.

And ping! And ping! His crashing voice
Sent flooshing through the data waves,
While the slathering hounds rejoice
And the withstood stay brave.

And while the Blundergaffe cromps down
On those who breathe the fearish truth,
Across the land from field to town
His drak mistakes are streuth.

But will the Blundergaffe be slain?
Or will his chokey reign live on?
Will they ever break the chain?
Or is the chain too strong?

‘Twas quickly that the Blundergaffe,
Did raise its slithy head when hacks
Made great again its orange schnaff
On fake news paperquacks.

The Blundergaffe appeared in The Fantasy Issue of Popshot

Florianne Humphrey is a journalist, writer and workshop facilitator who has written two novels, a play and a collection of short stories, one of which was shortlisted for the 2018 Bridport Prize.

This poem by May Blythe is about how an unexpected, unlooked for encounter can bring about a dramatic change in perspective and trajectory. Illustration by Dóra Kisteleki.

I thought I’d built a fine nest,
A place of security,
But I’d forged myself a cage,
Stifled my own liberty.

Each twig carefully chosen,
Defences plaited and twirled,
More and more interwoven,
A shield for me from the world.

For years I was contented,
To dwell above and apart,
I watched Life and lives unfold,
With a distant detached heart.

By chance one day you glimpsed me,
I shrunk from your drawing eyes,
My refuge in the shadows,
Afraid of the boundless skies.

You prised a chink in my walls,
And reached inside with your hand,
You gently coaxed me to you,
My unravelling began.

Now though I am without you,
I soar with the sun and stars,
No longer Life’s spectator,
Joining with joy in her dance.

‘Nest’ by May Blythe featured in The Chance Issue of Popshot Quarterly.

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David Romanda’s poem was inspired by a childhood encounter with a neighbour. Illustration by Joseph Crisp Continue…

This poem by Helen Cox follows two characters in a transatlantic love affair. Illustration by Charlie Davis Continue…

Lucy Winrow’s poem suggests that even small acts can ease what seems like insurmountable grief. Illustration by Ivan Canu Continue…

The truth remains unsaid in this moving poem by Ruth Steadman. Illustration by Cody Muir Continue…

A painful truth in a relationship is exposed in this poem by Jo Burns. Illustration by Sibel Ekemen Continue…

Louise Green’s poem paints hope as a magical coat that protects both the wearer and those that care for it. Illustration by Slava Nesterov Continue…

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A wave of heartache and depression inspired this poem by Cristina Haraba. Illustration by Daria Skrybchenko Continue…

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Oeil Jumratsilpa’s poem celebrates those few people who inspire you live better and with more spirit. Illustration by Jai Kamat.

You see the halo when they come:
Yellow, laced with dark magic,
Their beauty a little crooked,
A deer ready to leap, a lioness, her teeth bare.

You see their hair:
Long grass, creeping vines in an abandoned house,

Or flames and smoke, a dance in the wind.

They will smile, their laugh will fill your lungs,
Their mind a galaxy, whirling ink and achingly bright,

Captured and jigsawed: a modern fairy tale.

Out of them pour notes, rich as butter,
Splashes and strokes, a dream you’ve forgotten,
Or a waking bell: words, like honey and thorn —
And you’ll itch and your ribs will ache, your throat a screw.

Some will find a spotlight their home,

Some will come into your life, stay or go,

Their halo, yellow and dark magic,

Imprinted,

You’ll know.

Jenna Heller’s poem is a parent’s prayer, urging young minds to stay open to the unknown future and all its possibilities. Illustration by Yaimel Lopez.

You must forget about the horizon
that the world is round
that the earth circles the sun
that a thing cannot be in two places
at the very same time.

You must turn your bedroom into a fort
see a spaceship in an empty egg carton
dream up games that only you understand
scratch out comics and never apologise
for the quality of your drawings.

You must find ‘what is’ inside ‘what isn’t’
go north when everyone else turns south
span the distance between dreams and reality
map out uncharted routes and pathways
discover hazy new frontiers.

You must believe in illusion
travel through the looking glass
explore beyond the wardrobe door
trust in platform 9¾
test the wrinkle and forget time itself.

A poem by Luciana Francis, written during her early months as a mother to celebrate witnessing the birth of a voice. Illustration by Marco Melgrati.

Silence surrounds your early vowels
and to rathe consonants a cue
whilst in the wings of the blue hour.

You tiptoe with your tongue
the table is laid, rounded in resonance
language is an expectant satellite.

And like a view from a window: everything’s ahead.

Beginning with this gurgle
from the hollow orb – your berried mouth
where the spelling of days constellate.

A poem by Sean Chard, written after observing hundreds of rooks in a copse while lost in the summer fields of Norfolk. Illustration by Pedro Semeano.

Tree tops liquid full of black ink
Absorbed by leaves in tones of jet

Three hundred prayer flags flap and kink
Arrive and set out from the wet

Pierce clear sky of empty blue
Like drifting plumes they rise and skew

In pairs the ghosts emerge and call
To rusted fields the couples fall

And find the banks of broken land
In gangs that rob the soil unmanned

Shards of darkness scattered there
They cast away to live on air

Three hundred prayer flags flap and kink
Tree tops liquid full of black ink

A poem by Elles Rebelles, written about the journey people take when travelling in and out of heroin addiction. Illustration by Max Temescu.

People could never tell
That you walked a long hard road out of hell
Learnt the right words, perfumed them expensively
Danced and smiled, pranced and shone
So delighted, were they, by your company

You heard it at night, a golden brown hunting horn
The gentle pull started slowly, softly
A single tear would lie on your pillow in the morn
Your fingers itched, phantom pains for a damp room far away
Found yourself in the bad part of town, soul torn
Offending people with your proper talk
You betrayed your broken brothers
But they took you back, back to their beds of chalk

Smile on your face, peacefully you slept
Problems all fled when you dug into your arm
Two sides of town were astonished by your comeback, three lovers wept
With a smile on your face, peacefully you slept.

A potent poem by Gavin Bryce, written after the difficult and potentially dangerous birth of his son. Illustration by Ashley Mackenzie.

She was cornered by a stowaway
in the root of her body
hell-bent on splitting her
like a Russian doll.

Nothing she could do
so closely nailed to her flesh and blood
but flap bodily on the hospital bed
against the blasts of pain.

Seizures gutted out breath,
unhooked her eyes from their lines of sight,
jolted joints in vicious puppetry.

She pleaded in a stranger’s voice,
and all the while the experts
enchanted her with rituals and reliefs
to drive the little devil into daylight

but he twisted stubbornly,
would not be parted.

In the end they slit a smile
across her lower abdomen
and hauled the bunched-up baby out
who unfurled his limbs furiously
and bit the air with war cries
like a demon caught.

A poem by Matthew Fieldhouse, written to address the vast differences between oneself as a child, and as an adult. Illustration by Tobias Hall.

This is the bow and arrowed child,
the supple, soft, bone marrowed child,
the sherbert sweet, marshmallowed child,
with a mouth that’s full of maps,

and rosebud sap,
the kind that coarses through his limbs,
fills his head with playground planets, penny sweets and bruising shins,

that summer skin,
with grit packed scars on mud packed knees,
fills his eyes with cornfield continents, paper planes and clambered trees,

such jamboree,
but as the molten years flick by,
I’ve painted that marshmallow child in Dulux One Coat White,

now out of sight,
layer on layer of matt emulsion,
he’s covered now, white smothered now, this act of adult expulsion,

a strange compulsion,
but on occasion comes a day,
where the paint gets chipped, emulsion splits and that child comes out to play.

Inspired by conversations with his 92-year-old father-in-law, John Rowland’s poem considers the ultimate adventure. Illustration by Bren Luke.

Somewhere, in a quiet place,
On some other day in some other year,
I’ll learn what I need to know.
I’ll see the fear for the lie it is,
Let my spirit slip the lines,
Set sail on a course newly charted;
A course only I may follow.

Those who remain here will remember
The bits and pieces they still hold.
They’ll paint a picture or frame a photo
Believing they knew me through and through.
But the real me will be in the wind,
Leaving only shadows and ripples behind.
History will, as always, be incomplete,
Images captured in the twilight,
Details hidden by the approaching night.

Set in the foggy calm of the Faroe Islands, Matthew Landrum’s poem revels in the present moment. Illustration by Daria Skrybchenko.

On foggy morning when the world recedes and leaves you
islanded, wake to quiet in the house and stand at the window,

rubbing sleep from your eyes, and imagine the mountains
and forests have dissolved,

folded into banks of clouds, that the sea
has also gone. Even the future could be

elided, with all its questions and possibilities, gain
and gloss, leaving you with an endless present – this kitchen,

hardwood cool beneath your bare feet, your breath misting the pane
and the mists beyond. Let future tensing and faith in visible things

give way to pressing blankness, an end without world.
Pour tea. Be anchored by a mug, the ceramic warm

and heavy in your hands. Everything has been reduced
to steam, to breath, to fog.

A poem by Jim Stewart-Evans, taking a comical and violently literal approach to the notion of killing time. Illustration by Tavis Coburn.

His low blows once struck and left no trace,
but today I smashed grandfather’s face,
I smashed his face and cut my fists,
with shard-grained knuckles, scarlet wrists,
I held his hands in mine.

I opened up his antique chest,
snatched the heart out from his breast,
raised the ticker high aloft,
felt its leaden weight was hard not soft,
and marvelled at my crime.

I’ll crush all those that ring alarm,
break each and every waving arm,
smash faces in and sever hands,
bury deep in shifting sands:
today I’m killing time.

A poem by Zelda Chappel on how the arrival, and departure, of a newborn changes one’s understanding of time and its value. Illustration by Ashley Floréal.

You showed us how to measure time properly, how it falls
in the rise of your ribcage, makes space between your breaths.

Forget the years. This is about days, your age in minutes
countable on tiny digits and eyelashes in continuous tallies

a winter bird with a lonely first song. You show us how
to grab the light with your fist and hold it, your grasp of day

so much better than ours. But you weren’t made to keep count
in the ways we were. When time fell short we wanted more.

At night your hair was a thousand earth-winged moths
twitching for the sun. That should have been my first clue.

Carmina Masoliver’s poem addresses society’s view of pole dancing by drawing parallels with playing on monkey bars. Illustration by Paul Garland.

I swing on monkey bars
and hang off primary coloured climbing frames,
where bare legs endure
no more than grazed knees.

They try to tie me into a skirt-suit,
paint on glossy black tights,
tell me to keep court heels tucked into my bag,
and wear trainers for the commute,

but I press my foot down,
push myself up to vertical,
hook my leg around a pole
and hang.

My body turned like an hourglass,
blood rushes to my head.
To let go as I hold on
comes as easily as breathing in and out.

My legs may be bare, may be bruised,
but they are strong, with this metal are one,
so don’t watch waiting for me to fall,
petal, move along.

I may be grown up now,
but I’m still up-side-down
and holding on.

Bryony Littlefair’s prose poem brings a tangibility to the complex emotions associated with recovering from mental illness. Illustration by Patrik Svensson.

When you feel better from this — and you will — it will be quiet and unremarkable, like walking into the next room. It might sting a little, like warmth leaking into cold-numbed hands. When you feel better, it will be the slow clearing of static from the radio. It will be a film set when the director yells cut! When you feel better, you will take: a plastic spoon for your coffee foam, free chocolates from the gleaming oak reception desk, the bus on sunny days, your own sweet time. When you feel better, it will be like walking barefoot on cool, smooth planks of wood, still damp from last night’s rain. It will be the holy silence when the tap stops dripping. The moment a map finally starts to make sense. When you feel better, you will still suffer, but your sadness will be graspable, roadworthy, have handlebars. When you feel better, you will not always be happy, but when happiness does come, it will be long-legged, sun-dappled: a giraffe.

Nancy Charley draws parallels between knitting and the creation of a human life in her delicate poem. Illustration by Rupert Smissen.

You knit me together, Fair Isle in mind,
with pleasing colours in an intricate design
on a circular needle seamlessly
from a fit-for-any-purpose pattern.

But it seems you may have been distracted
by daydreams, the TV or difficult decisions
so purled instead of knit, wove in the wrong wool
and dropped the occasional stitch.

Nor it seems were you inclined to unravel, re-knit,
pick up the lost loops or correct the tension.
I guess you knew that once I was cast off
such faults would characterise me.

Harry Man’s exquisite poem captures the magic and anticipation that surrounds the birth of a child. Illustration by Raid71 — aka Chris Thornley.

The white artery of your spine
hovers beneath a butterfly’s ghost;

wings budding into flight
twice a second, heartbeat by heartbeat.

The isthmus of your foot kicks in the fluid;
the pressure of the sensor, ticklish.

With the end of his biro the doctor
circles your magnified hand gloved in light

and this shimmer, this afterthought of air
in the trees is the breath of your mother.

Night-blind you will fumble back
to its anthem through the clicks

of your hardening head.
This song, secret as a light switch,

is how your breathing will be.
The warmth of my wrist on your belly;

your pulse and mine in time–
the first of your strengths is to be loved.

Jon Lemay’s restorative poem addresses the exact moment when one emerges from melancholy into a new frame of mind. Illustration by Jason Mowry.

Now is the time for mending,
the season I shed the dead

skin of old love,
so the heart can once again
become a living thing.

I have been made small in the wake
of winter; I feel feverish & weather-worn
by a particularly soggy spring.

But there is a wren that flutters
inside my chest, trilling
louder than the murmurs of love
that do not stay.

I feel the click of its beak
as it chips away at my sternum,
waiting

for the moment it breaks
through the bone
& hits the nerve that will send me

diving into the summer
with speed and delicacy

in search of new modes of destruction,
singing I have found a trajectory
that is my own.

Megan Rowlands’ poem challenges the supposed ideals of a domesticated life and champions something much wilder. Illustration by Anne Bastian.

The world is ripe with Georgia peaches
plucked straight from the tree;
skins slick with lush creams, essential oils,
pruned perfectly.
Destinies polished and strung tight as pearls
plucked, one by one
into corsets and aprons and four-door sedans;
hands smearing flour against child bearing hips.

Yet another fruit grows,
delicious and dark as wet stone;
thorny limbs spreading into shadows at dusk,
thick skinned, small-boned.
Scotch and clove cigarettes marinating in her veins.
Abandoning the charade of filtered mouth
and rotted dreams and hybrids on a string;
uprooting tradition, smile throbbing
like a heartbeat against swollen lip.

A poem by Sammy Hutton addressing sleep and the soft spaces of time between wakefulness and slumber. Illustration by Anna Horvath.

Keep still.
The morning lies shapelessly in the future.
Imagine that time has stretched itself in front of you.
Notice sleep is still heavy on your skin, in your lungs.
Close your eyes, this room holds no mystery for you;
enduring walls, enduring air.
Focus on your finger tips; rich with thick cotton stitches.
Smooth your hands over a crisp landscape that rests faintly
on your skin, white sheets like paper snow.

Do not stir.
Do not stir an inch, there is nothing out there, I swear.
You can indulge this dilated time a little longer.
Relax your face and imagine that your skin sits as lightly on it
as the sheets lay across your body, as autonomous too.
The pillow case creases are still there,
you can feel them if you try,
woven into the surface like a ghost from a cotton lullaby.

Now, let those hungry hands comb in fistfuls of heavy cotton,
bring them up toward your face,
let the map of creases reunite with your skin,
white paper doll, fragile thing.
Open your mouth and let the weight seep in,
swallowing down behind feathery teeth.
Allow veracious lungs to inhale starched sheets, white pleats.
Don’t move and very soon you’ll sleep.

The day can wait for you.

A poem by Melanie Whipman, inspired by a skipping rope that was handed down the maternal line of her family. Illustration by Constanze Moll.

My grandchild peels back
The frail layers
Of vein-blue tissue,
Slides her fingers down
The long twisting rope,
Takes the palm-worn handles,
Smoothed by my mother’s
Grip, then mine.

I wish I had time
Enough to watch her skip
To the schoolyard chant,
To smell the tarmac,
And see the soft smack
Of her plait on her back.
And the puff of dust
As the rope kisses
The ground.

To feel once more,
The rhythmic ease of skipping feet,
Watch the endless circles
Of the scything loop,
The flare and fall, flare and fall
Of her skirt,
Soft as a caress,
Against the sweet skin of her knees.

Published in our brand new Future issue, Katie Byford’s delicate little poem looks at love in the present moment. Illustration by Aiste Stancikaite.

Your lashes kissed
the lip of my ear
— a very small thing,
molecular — and you asked
where I would like to be in
five years’ time, as if this were
an eyelash on a thumb.

I said that time hardly ever does
what I tell it to. It has a history
of arguing with my feet,
bends them backwards too often
to trace out plans like these.

But were it not listening in
so jealously, my love,
you must already know
that to be just as we are
with lash on lip of ear
and lashed together

would be the loveliest little plan
my lips could muster up
for five years on from now.

A poem by Zelda Chappel on the transitory nature of life, exploring what it means to find acceptance in loss. Illustration by Simon Prades.

Before I knew it you were pulling clay from beds
and pushing it through fluid to their meetings
making tiny collisions, subtle shiftings of earth.

Anxious, I gave you my bones for scaffold, placed
them neatly in careful constructs and hoped they would
contain you, keep you nested, whole. Growing,

you broke your clay cocoon to reveal bare skins,
made eyes then took up your search for air. First
stretchings almost fail, the boundaries barely flex.

Nightly, I made you feathers from milky moons, slim
crescents of passing months hanging over us and watching
as I sewed them into flesh so they would not be lost.

I used the days to knit patchworks of leaves with songs
in their pockets and wedged them safe between ribs.
I’d wait ‘til autumn for you to show them breath.

As you emerged you could not be held, but needed air
so I took your tethers and cut them, opening my hands
to watch you take flight through my fingers.

Finally. Wings grow small in winter sky.

A poem by Karen Jane Cannon, inspired by her father’s voyage across the English Channel as a novice sailor. Illustration by Oli Winward.

The summer our father sailed the English Channel,
we rolled packets of Polos into smooth white paper tubes.
My sister used her felt tip pens to write EMERGENCY

MINTS down each bony spine.
You were our polar explorer,
arctic adventurer.

We charted your route, coloured
the curved waves of land, solid
blue slab of sea.

And when you came back — all
St Tropez tan and French laugh,
Cognac and St Christopher,

we listened to your stories of basking sharks
and places orcas go to die, or you lashed
to the mast in a great wild storm, sucking

mints like tiny lifebelts. How you
were blown weightless
across the harbour, just missing the light

ship in the fog, the three of us
clinging to your legs as if your very voice
could stop us from drowning.

Miki Byrne’s poem attempts to get inside the hearts and minds of those who are forced from their own countries. Illustration by Podessto.

Meet me at our crossroads, where the twisted oak
throws shadows, and leaves whisper old songs
of the people who made our past.
We shall travel to Calais, board a heaving ferry,
watch white cliffs ghost England into our eyes.
Tread hopeful beaches, push into our new land
like roots that ease away soil, gripping firm
within earth’s green breast, to fasten and fix us
deep into different ground, where we may step up
to promise, a future, new life and you will hold my hand.
Cradle me in your heart as you reside in mine.
With memories, language, past lives packed away,
used within our own space, private times,
when we shall weave memories,
offer each other comfort in homesickness,
the struggle to integrate, to work.
We will embrace our new country, make a home,
a retreat, a haven, leave behind cruelty,
the shackles we will shed.

A poem by Frankie Kennedy, suggesting that the exploration of fellow humankind is often the greatest form of travel. Illustration by Dave Hänggi.

Forget the trains, the trams,
the planes we would take to get there,
those miracles of rock, of stone, of glass.

Forget the bronze sand, the scent
of warm salt and spice, the music of foreign tongues,
that benevolent babble as dusk falls.

Forget the world’s cities and seas,
its forests and plains and mountains,
its buildings, its parks, its streets.

Forget all of this. The greatest adventure
does not live within continents, countries,
states or counties.

It lives in bone, in brain, in blood,
in the beat of the heart and the tip of the tongue,
the soles of the feet, waiting to run.

Sharon Black’s poem considers the humble stone and its ability to tell its story through shape and form. Illustration by Stu Loxley.

I throw a stone far across the river,
it plops and flits a lazy zigzag to its bed
where, tired from so much unexpected travelling,
I like to think it sinks its twinkling head.

I skim a stone across this glassy surface
it pirouettes across its watery stage
then at the rousing, crowd-pleasing finale
it bows below into its curtained cage.

I drop a stone into the rippling contours
of feet steeped deep in sands of shale and weeds
it casts aside its dull and grainy mantle
for a cloak of dragonflies and silvery reeds.

I take a stone and hold it in my palm
it presses smooth and cool across my veins,
like an eye it holds the secrets of the river
and the dying of the rock beneath the rains.

Roddy Williams’ poem provides a surreal metaphor for the effects of the working week and its division from the weekend. Illustration by Nader Sharaf.

Fridays are heavy
I have to drag them home to die on the carpet
and afterwards I find
my pants are too big.
I need to keep hoisting them
like a denim flag of surrender
to the weekend.

By the time Sunday leaves
with his coat on, smiling,
into humid night
I have resorted to braces
to hold up my roomy pyjamas
ballooning around me.

I can rise for a while now
into the sky diary
and sketch the jigsaw fields of days
that lie before me
indistinct
shimmering at the edges.

They’ll spin their boundings
tight around my legs tonight
and haul me down,
down to the place where the Mondays wait
to be picked up,
plump and smiling like wise babies.

Inspired by his resurgence from a tough period, Kieran Cottrell’s poem articulates the transformative effects of love. Illustration by Leib Chigrin.

I had a heart like an upturned ashtray.

I spoke smoke. People held their breath.
When I found you, ash was all
I had to pile at your feet.

I did not know what you would do
with my dire, dirtying heart
crumbled there, burning.

Would you brush it off, blow it out,
heap it, beating, in your palm
offend the wind with it?

No, you found soil, seeded it.
You poured my heart in, stirred
what I had wasted. And we waited.

Now here’s a sapling. Soon, an ash tree.

An explosive poem by Sophie Clarke about waking up one morning and feeling completely and utterly alive. Illustration by Tanja Székessy.

This morning I want you to soak me
in rain that chisels my skin, signals a storm’s sudden
attack. For you to stand with me in a white, clapping field,
lightning striking centimetres
from our toes, mouths open as we’re filled like bottles.
I want you to point out the red organs flowering through my skin.
I want you to hurl me onto a rock face and say
climb. Yes. I want even the bin bags at the front gate
to split and the ordered china in the dining room cabinet to explode.
I want you to take a spray can to the city,
words glittering on billboards and bridges and my letterbox.
I want you to take me up on the hill,
point out my old house and the cherry tree we planted,
fierce as ever. God, I want to feel
the very breath burn
through my throat and lungs, my toe nails
to dig into the thick soil, and now
in a language I do not know but which tinkles
in silver and gold, verb conjugations
to bloom again and again in tiny, shivering violets
exploding from my mouth.

Louise Green’s poem depicts hope as a magical coat, acting as a metaphor for anyone who survives hostile times. Illustration by Slava Nesterov.

In past times, when we held wakes
for the death of society
as black boots trampled bean fields
and men on horseback smashed
down gates, rode through city squares,
I wore hope like a conjurer’s coat —
collar turned up against the blizzard
sleeves crammed with conceits
keepsakes sewn into hems.
Wide skirts sheltered my brood as
I magicked smiles and sweets
rabbits and flags, fake-silver spoons.
We travelled in groups, at night
pockets stuffed with false papers
skeleton keys, riddles
for the gatekeepers, passports
to kinder countries.

Nowadays my hope weighs less
no more than a lightweight cloak
for numbered winters.
I bequeath hope’s strongest fabric
to a new generation.
May it hold them up.

J.S.Watts’ poem attempts to capture the emotion engendered by a moment of perceived perfection and possibility. Illustration by Karolina Burdon.

There are some days,
like this one,
I could hold forever,
in the palm of my open hand,
like a pale blue hen’s egg,
bathed in sky and nestled
on the pink of my bare skin,
smooth, delicate, perfected,
filled with life
and curious possibility.

But for life to live,
the egg must crack,
the chick must know the world,
or there will be no further
blue egg days.
And yet,
I miss the frail grace of that abandoned egg:
believing there will be others,
knowing they will never
be quite the same.

A poem by Ewan C. Forbes, written after learning our memories are not of actual events, but our recollection of events. Illustration by Aron Vellekoop León.

My favourite memories are under attack
As I’m moved from those moments one tick at a time
My mind replaces the memory with a memory of remembering

Blurred like a photocopy of a copy
The mental equivalent of well thumbed and worn
Distorted with each uncontrollable casting back of my mind

A pencil on tissue paper: thoughts push hard
In the tearing, time takes the details away from me
You are edited, exaggerated, influenced by a future you are not in

Life pulls us away from one another
And what we’re left with cannot be held or kissed
Imperfect cells replace cells as imperfect memories replace memories

Try to stop remembering while not forgetting
Attempt to slow the involuntary vandal’s rewritings
My memories are under attack and I have to save them from myself

Thomas Willshire’s poem captures that frustrated, deep longing for warmer weather that ascends once winter arrives. Illustration by Katey Harvey.

It’s winter now,
guitars, gardens and sandals,
seem so far away,
almost lost,
amidst drips on noses,
sticky feet,
and skin conditions.

Itch itch itch,
rue gas bills and such,
remembering what a small world it is,
how close the sunshine,
how close the warmth,
the good skin.

But for now it’s winter,
very, very winter.

A poem by Marcus Smith, capturing the energy, atmosphere and excitement that hangs in the air before an adventure. Illustration by Stuart Patience.

The leaves on the oak snapping hard
against each stem binding them fast
are straining to join a silver wind

and somersault into autumn’s sky
to float with the current air and move
with stars, starlings, clouds and smoke,

the leaves that must escape their stems
for the outstretched arms of adventure
and one day do blow free, tumble

across fields to funnel through cities,
to run in red parks, run in the streets
with storms of traffic, then flame out

like brash comets and shrivel and rattle
over cold hard pavement where crushed
and buried when longing to return

to trees and growing and greening
as they once were in a pattern fixed
and clinging before tearing away.

Austin Harlingham’s poem rallies against the monotony of the rat race, celebrating the world out there we haven’t yet explored. Illustration by Chris Ede.

Put down the frown my dear, you don’t wear it well.
Instead, pull that heavy head from piled paper,
and let’s punch into the days.

Leave behind the masks, tasks, the loitering clock,
then let us walk, run, sprint into the coruscating blue,
into buses, planes, trams, trains,
tracking city streets and summer lanes,

Let us follow the unbeaten paths of this planet,
filling our ears and our eyes,
with mother tongues, foreign things,
vibrant places that sink into skin.

For these days belong to us my dear;
the world is our wilderness,
its cities our playgrounds,
our very own spinning blank page,
waiting, waiting for us to scribble in our stories.

Inspired by a photo of a stranger on a friend’s wall, Sharon Lask Munson’s poem considers the nature of our relationships to our ancestors. Illustration by Yaimel Lopez.

Our children, of course,
retain memories — loving or not.

Grandchildren might remember
the pipe smell of Dunhill London

or sugar cookie dough,
rolled out on a kitchen counter.

For great-grandchildren,
a framed portrait

tucked away in the linen closet
is merely that of a stranger,

something to be added
to garage sale odds and ends

along with the chipped Wedgwood
no one in the family wants.

A great-great grandchild,
rummaging in a local junk shop

might spy a familiar likeness, framed —
heart-shaped face, jutting chin, widow’s peak,

something about the mouth, the jaw
and on a whim, claim the old canvas,

hang it beside a corner bookcase
filled with used novels bought in bulk

to make a new home ageless.

A hope-filled poem by Katherine Venn, referencing the slowness that exists before a major change in one’s life. Illustration by Silvia Stecher.

You’re used to slowness, how most things take their time to shift
from one thing to the next: the way leaves emerge like mist
round trees, unfold into magnificence, then fade and fall,
and gently drift against the mossed garden wall;

the way life gathers shades and textures to itself,
the slow accretions, like dust settling on a bookshelf,
or water collecting, after each soft rain, in a water butt,
the way things drip and pool, spread slowly, silt up;

but sometimes things are different. It’s as if an ocean liner
had sailed right down your street and brassily come to harbour
outside your front door, and holds there, waiting, the sound of faint
music spilling from its deck, your face all astonishment

that this is here to take you beyond what you thought you knew,
delivering the horizon, a gift, to you.

A poem by Gavin Bryce, inspired by the miraculous first few hours of his son’s life and its maritime parallels. Illustration by Ricardo Bessa.

When you burst the air headfirst, it scattered down
your throat and set you going with a gasp,
the sails of your lungs kicked open
by this sudden ocean blast, like a ship
surprised and lurched away downwind,
scrambling to bridle up the dashing air.

I listen to your breath tumbling out-in
unevenly – then stop. ‘Not used to breathing yet.’
I lean over you, my breath like prayer.

I’d seen my father die, his breath undressed
in front of us, his sails of skin and bone,
the riggings of his blood sighing, then still –

but you breathe, and breathe again, and now you’re held:

a gust caught full in broad, new sails.

To mark National Poetry Day 2016 and its theme of Messages, read Lucy Winrow’s sincere poem, published in our latest issue. Illustration by Ivan Canu.

We ink them all over in kisses and hearts
Fuse fingers into nests around each flame
We wait for a slow, rolling heat to blister the air
Letting out a rash of white balloons
Their flickering skins dancing on the blacks
Of our eyes.
And even though my head is in the bin
With the cellophane and its 99p sticker
And even though my head is in a tree
Two weeks from now, imagining the ribs of it
Charred orange with rainwater, bust open
Like someone’s taken a tin opener to it
Our wet words bandaging the branches and leaves
Something heavy has lifted away from me
And it keeps on rising.

A beautiful poem by Inua Ellams, honouring his father’s defiance and ability to laugh in the face of death. Illustration by Richard Wilkinson.

They say
when death laughs at a man, all a man can do is laugh back
all he can do is stare into the definite, definite blackness
reach past the bellied butterflies, their scared wings tickling
bring something between a middle finger and a fist
of giggles into the air, let it hang
defiant, there

When he tried to walk again, he needed two nurses and I
to lift him off the hospital floor. He looked up through
his crashed glasses, stiff left face and drooping cheek
eyes glistening, I held his failed left hand whispering
It will be okay

We work by lamplight. Dad writes a letter, I research how
stroke victims are prone to second ones, when the lamp dies.
He reaches out into the definite, definite blackness, unscrews
the light bulb, delicate in his left hand, the thin glass between
his now nimble fingers, and laughs
defiant, there.

Gregory Heath’s poem looks at the powerlessness that can accompany true love, whether you choose it or not. Illustration by Tobias Hall.

When I say I have come to love you
I do not mean that I have become
accustomed to your morning moods
or the way you reduce my friends
to nervous wrecks at parties.

When I say I have come to love you
I am not talking of time having passed,
of feelings that grew imperceptibly as flowers,
bursting one day into tender shocking blooms.

When I say I have come to love you
it is not because you please me.
You are reckless, you are spoilt,
and you are careless with my heart.

God help me.
When I say I have come to love you
I mean that is what I am here for.

Tim Hawkins’ poem captures the feeling of growing up too fast during the transition from childhood to adulthood. Illustration by Chengsi Lu.

Round here, the grass grows at 5000 miles per hour
sprinklers spit carelessly onto blankets of moist green
like sheets wet with the seed of teenage dreams.

Round here, girls and boys run barefoot across that lush carpet
shoots chase lifted soles, each footprint a memory
born and dead in the same instant
a Polaroid spontaneously combusting.

Round here, dogs chase cars, snapping at fleeing bumpers
we sit with girls, light cigarettes
and watch them burn away in a single breath.

Round here, hearts beat fast like hummingbird wings
drowning out everlasting promises
scratched in chalk before the rain
and the girls swell like backwards balloons from the pin-prick.

Round here, the grass grows at 5000 miles per hour
I can hear it from my bedroom window
never-ending, pushing us taller, away from infant roots
gravity pulling so light, we fill our pockets with stones
clutch at weighty bottles and hope we don’t float away.

And I sit and listen to that green sea growing
the world turning so fast it crushes my chest
and pins my ears to the side of my head
and I hear my bones creaking and cracking
and I wonder, who will I be when this is over?

A poem by Jacqueline Saphra, noting how modern entertainment is often found within failure rather than success. Illustration by André Gottschalk.

We’re the sofa public, fingers kissing
power keys. We make our judgements quick
on sing and wheedle, glad it isn’t us
with jitters and bad microphone technique.
We watch for mouths that dry to dumbness,
lyrics stuttered out of synch, a dodgy dress.
Show us your failing breath, a smile to crack
under the lights. Some hold, some break.

You want to make your mothers cry, you ache
for fame, the paparazzi at your gates,
you want us to applaud this new success,
but we prefer to watch you fall, to see you hurt.
Glory’s boring; it’s your pain we can’t resist;
Some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this.

Inspired by her experience of working with the Welsh National Opera, Joanna Jones’ poem considers the rich history that lives within a national song.

A winter chill carries the Welshman’s song
Through puddled streets and lamp-struck fallen leaves
Honeyed mead bubbling from young, tender tongue
And kiss-chapped lips raw from bittersweet deeds.
That same voice echoed through soot-blackened mines
Warming the warren with exultant odes
To sweat-slicked mountains and hoarse battle cries
Of nation and valour and sins homegrown.
That clash and clamour is sunk in the soil
The ring of swords drowned in clogged city drains
And coal mine choristers crumble and spoil
Their faces forgot while the song remains.
Echoes of ages in copper-tint mud
Hum down the pavement and burn in the blood.

Jacqueline Saphra’s poem laments a youthful inability to take risks for fear of the consequences. Illustration by Stephan Schmitz.

Once I had a kite. I guarded it, tried
to hold it near me, flew it safe and low,
dreading that the wind might give it life,
freedom to tear the sky’s fragile skin. You
didn’t know me then. This is the truth:
I feared it; the gasp of twine unravelling,
my dream hurtling towards the world’s roof,
the synergy of air and silk, bent wings.

But that was years ago. Since then, I’ve known
different terrors, remembering the kite
I never flew heavenwards, the way love slips
its noose. I’m turning wild at last. Full-grown,
I long for it: the zip and whizz of flight,
the wind’s force, bloodied palms, losing my grip.

Emma Jones’ poem addresses the love and heroism that’s resiliently present amidst devastating circumstances. Illustration by Kate Copeland.

I saw you once at the site of an earthquake.
A woman lay in the rubble,
Her panic filling the air thick as brick dust
And strangers’ hands, arms, heaved to free her
Strangers’ brows furrowed, rolled with fresh sweat
Strangers’ lips blossomed with whispered hope
And there you were.
In the pulse of blood through thickened veins
In the drop of sweat that darkened dust,
You. There you were.
I saw you on the slave ship
In the soothing hush of mothers’ shush
The warm and murmured lullabies
I saw you in the death camps
You were the last morsel, torn in half
Proffered with knotted, knuckled hands
In these darkest of places
I have to remember:
You. You still survive
In the clutched embraces
And the tears of grief,
You sit, so quietly,
Underneath.