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the body

Risky Breasts - by Jay Whittaker

{ Poem }

Enjoy abseiling, hang-gliding, rollercoasters.
/ Are sloping off for a sly fag mid-morning.
/ Don’t care what they eat: fish suppers,
/ pizza, doughnuts, Campbell’s…

The Abdication of Mary Queen of Scots - by Gerda Stevenson

{ Poem }

Tak ma croon, an dinna fash – / aa yon wis ower fur me lang syne.

Baby Hand - by Gillian K. Ferguson

{ Poem }

Not bones but muscular air
/ inside; why starfish spread
/ five doll small living fingers
/ with cushion button dimples
/ for knuckles. All of…

tender - by Sarah Broom

{ Poem }

when I look around me
/ the world is very bright
/
/ it is so light and shiny
/ that my long bones shiver
/
/ I am not…

A Medical Education - by Glenn Colquhoun

{ Poem }

for Dr Peter Rothwell
/
/ In obstetrics I learnt that a woman opens swiftly like an elevator door.
/ The body wriggles free…

Pish - by Andrew Greig

{ Poem }

Privilege or necessity of age
/ this twice or thrice nightly quitting
/ warm pit for a slash in the dark?
/
/ Not that…

Out of the Blue – 12 - by Simon Armitage

{ Poem }

You have picked me out.
Through a distant shot of a building burning
you have noticed now
that a white cotton shirt is twirling, turning.

The Homecoming - by Manuel Rivas

{ Poem }

For Lois Pereiro
/
/ In Ithaca everyone was dead.
/ They say it was me, Argos the dog, who woke first:
/ — Dead, dead, dead!
/ A smell…

Assisi - by Norman MacCaig

{ Poem }

The dwarf with his hands on backwards
/ sat, slumped like a half-filled sack
/ on tiny twisted legs from which
/ sawdust might run,
/ outside the…

Every line is imaginary - by William Letford

{ Poem }

i wish he already knew
/ that finishing lines don’t really exist
/ that the trick is not stopping…

from Song for Yacine Mbaye - by Léopold Sédar Senghor

{ Poem }

Championne 1974 des 1,500 mètres
/
/
/ Mbaye toi aussi Mbaye, si je t’ai choisie Mbaye,
/ c’est pour ta beauté vraie
/ Pour ta…

Miss World: Beauty Contest - by Alastair Mackie

{ Poem }

Their gowns fold and flatten like water
/ on their consummate columns as they go,
/ the paragons and apples of their race.
/ Their nacreous…

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