Poetry

Last Heron As the last heron goes, rooks fall from the sky like old black rags to carpet the new-laid field. Six days now, six days and nights without...

Can you rinse away this city that lasts like blood on the bitten tongue? ~ Agha Shahid Ali Delhi, where parrots lift the weight of tombs, poets offer daggers to deepen...

Briony Willis WITCH WITCH, by Rebecca Tamás, Penned in the Margins, pp. 119, £9.99. (paperback) In her latest collection, WITCH, Rebecca Tamás explores the triumphs and oppression, the...

There are times when I remember / all of them fondly enough for them / to be here once more, all around / this house, which is far away from / where they were around, and at this hour, / far away again from my childhood fears. / Now I can just think of them. And / what is thinking except the mind’s / imaginings, the heart speaking to itself / in the darkness of default, fearing alien / ears, the world’s participation in the shame / of being touched in front of others? [...]

April doesn't rain. We have spent days watching the truant magpies comb our cat-eyed neighbour’s lawn for bottle caps and burnt-out tin foil. The cloying sun has not coaxed...

from Norwegian / oh love, doesn't the fact that the world is so big, / laid out like ripe fruit / make you want to stay? / from Arabic / how I long to cleanse you / in the waters of the Tigris / how I long, as though you were a small and / priceless artefact, / to take you in my arms / from Ant-speak / I will carry you carry you / through legions of grass / protect you from the thumb, / the sole; the eager-feathered bird / will not swoop for you / from American / love is just love, and I'm in it / for the ride, o.k.? that tells me just exactly

Today it’s snowing, snowing In Istanbul, Stamboul, Constantinople, New Rome, Byzantium. The city has mislaid its Jews And most of its Greeks. The bones of its Armenians Are long scattered. Somewhere far...

Exile “I rested my mouth on your memory” ~ Yannis Ritsos, from Diaries of Exile Night arrives like a cart You push it with motionless hands There is darkness But...

The moon is a sealed coffin A boast The moon of poets The moon of dogs The moon of ovaries The moon of astronauts The invisible moon Knived Sick Yellow Waning Moon-wreath of everyday Moon of...

Evening Light Brave bat in a bowler hat Blood shot eyes question What time does this light Depart? The light descends elsewhere Its shadow rising here The bat changes into an...

The first time they lowered the flags The President bowed his head. The next time they placed flowers To mourn the dead. The time after that they held A...

Leminscate, Chris Viner, Unsolicited Press, 2017, pp. 72 The 6th isn’t busy. Six days since the attack And inside the Monoprix The aisles of life still reel...

'No-one has ever written a poem “On His Deafness”'; (David Lodge, Deaf Sentence). - - - - - - - - - - - - - -...

With her eyes closed she has been staring at the lamps on the ceiling for days. By now they must look like Sufi dervishes whirling in white to...

Known in Japan as the 'bank clerk poet', with her work frequently featuring in the bank newsletter where she was employed, Ishigaki's poetry stretches...

What Follows Deer cull, Wytham 7th February 2015 A moment’s pause before a fist of swallows spooks the sky above the nearest trees. Something shakes the fence-bound rows, bursts through...

—inside an old man vacant by the window Hold me occasionally for the light is fading and I can no longer see the hills that once rose...

-for Heaney and the Peace Bridge Grey and greying sky reflected in choppy body, as our matching heron performs his balancing act for all to see. The Donegal hills,...

Andrew Wynn Owen The Scientist Before the time of skiing on Europa,               Enceladus still a far-flung starry dream, When humankind had...

The following piece is published as part of our TLM Young Writers series, a dedicated section of The London Magazine's website which showcases the...

Replete Enough of beauty - I have devoured small boats curtseying at anchor, green palace-dotted hills swarming the spice-scented shore of Asia Minor. I couldn’t chew another mouthful of waves,...

To Steven O’ Brien Grandfather Heaney dug deep Into his country’s soil Another man unlike him left home To burrow through an alien forest In search of enemies The alien...

Old man, you surface seldom. / Then you come in with the tide's coming / When seas wash cold, foam- / Capped: white hair, white beard, far-flung, / A dragnet, rising, falling, as waves / Crest and trough. Miles long [...]

As a man under a restraining order Still follows his ex about from day to day I stalk your shadow as if you could show up In...