Poems Rethabile Likes

The boy child by Abigail George The boy child We built a sandpit for the kid Fed him ice cream and bananas A diet of crisps. Pink milkshakes. He played in the dirt unaware Of climate change. Global warming At the weekend when he came To visit his paternal family. Inside my head I imagine Ted Hughes first meeting with Sylvia Plath and then much later With his lover Assia Wevill. I imagine the fuss. The media. The media’s ghost handling it all. There is a tightness in my chest As I regard all of these things. Church on Sunday. Wreckage or roast. Dysfunctional family retreating into The gardens. The kitchen. Church. The wreckage of the eternity Of wings and drumsticks of chicken. Juice boxes on the kitchen table. Making peanut butter sandwiches. For the school week ahe...

Rustlers at Bethlehem Farm by Harry Owen Rustlers at Bethlehem Farm If the boundary here above Bethlehem is meant to keep out intruders, it isn’t working. Having wandered away from the fence line, we scramble up next to a clicking stream within a coarse stumble of boulders, a dry mulch of grasses and brush. Every few steps we must stop and listen. The rustlers are here already, scraping invisibly, shuffling about their own avian, reptilian, insect business. Under, through. Over, between. No problem. This scribbling stream, too, is a rustler— fluent, yes, but no respecter of fences. The morning is soft, mild, almost English, high clouds breaking fitfully to admit the rustlers’ sun while Old Rocky watches from afar. Fences will never hold him, or them. No theft h...

Song of the Diplomat by John Mole Song of the Diplomat When the Party’s losses are the People’s gains You’ll find me near the border changing trains. You’ll find me near the border changing trains When the blood runs free and the free blood stains. When the blood runs free and the free blood stains The People’s losses are the Party’s gains. When the People’s losses are the Party’s gains You’ll find me near the border changing trains. Poet: John Mole Source: @TLS Books: @AbeBooks You’ll find me near the border changing trains Do take a moment to ...

Praise Them by Li-Young Lee Praise Them The birds don’t alter space. They reveal it. The sky never fills with any leftover flying. They leave nothing to trace. It is our own astonishment collects in chill air. Be glad. They equal their due moment never begging, and enter ours without parting day. See how three birds in a winter tree make the tree barer. Two fly away, and new rooms open in December. Give up what you guessed about a whirring heart, the little beaks and claws, their constant hunger. We’re the nervous ones. If even one of our violent number could be gentle long enough that one of them found it safe inside our finally untroubled and untroubling gaze, who wouldn’t hear what singing completes us? Poet: Li-Young Lee ...

Eve and Adam II by Rethabile Masilo Eve and Adam II They do not want to say that this is why it’s forbidden to go to the centre and taste the fruit, though they know it must be the reason. That fruit is good, and eating it will make them equals of god. So they roam up and down the garden like children, not daring to look at their genitals. Adam’s tuber dangling between his thighs and swinging like a hose as he walks, or runs to tackle Eve without looking at her burning bush, as she dashes between lines of trees with her breasts bouncing. Then they go to the escarpment to roll down a slope before going up to do it again and again, like children at a park, and at last down to the river to wash grime off each other’s body. They always wondered why the fru...

Eros by Louise Glück Eros I had drawn my chair to the hotel window, to watch the rain. I was in a kind of dream, or trance— in love, and yet I wanted nothing. It seemed unnecessary to touch you, to see you again. I wanted only this: the room, the chair, the sound of the rain falling, hour after hour, in the warmth of the spring night. I needed nothing more; I was utterly sated. My heart had become very small; it took very little to fill it. I watched the rain falling in heavy sheets over the darkened city— You were not concerned. I did the things one does in daylight, I acquitted myself, but I moved like a sleepwalker. It was enough and it no longer involved you. A few days in a strange city. A conversation, the touch of a hand. And aft...

Magdalene by Hilary Sideris Magdalene It takes a woman lovely in sin to wash his feet in tears & dry them with her ample hair, a rich girl humbled but brazen enough to speak the news— apostle to the apostles— that he's risen. It takes her unction to anoint his body without wavering, then find it gone. Poet: Hilary Sideris Source: @VerseDaily Books: @AbeBooks Look! Look! he is climbing the last light Do take a moment to read the guidelines . Use this form to sign up and receive poems. Check out my late...

In the Churchyard by Peter Trower In the Churchyard Be still, love, the ghost moves in me again— the whatever, the itch without a name. It has woken like a fox in the numb passages to make me make music in the ashen time. Am I simply mad or was it more than the earth’s outbreathing rose from the churchyard grass to claim me when I was seven till I swayed dazed by the Norman church six centuries ancient, where bas-relief faces haunt the walls and the pews are polished glossy by a lineage of dutiful buttocks, reeled among gravestones locked like mossy grey teeth to the forefathered ground? Am I simply mad or was I truly invaded or taken by something sudden as a wind when the sky grew more blue and lucid than England normally allows a calligraphy o...

What I Believe by Michael Blumenthal What I Believe I believe there is no justice, but that cottongrass and bunchberry grow on the mountain. I believe that a scorpion's sting will kill a man, but that his wife will remarry. I believe that, the older we get, the weaker the body, but the stronger the soul. I believe that if you roll over at night in an empty bed, the air consoles you. I believe that no one is spared the darkness, and no one gets all of it. I believe we all drown eventually in a sea of our making, but that the land belongs to someone else. I believe in destiny. And I believe in free will. I believe that, when all the clocks break, time goes on without them. And I believe that whatever pulls us under, will do so gently. so as ...

The End and the Beginning by Wisława Szymborska The End and the Beginning After every war someone has to clean up. Things won’t straighten themselves up, after all. Someone has to push the rubble to the sides of the road, so the corpse-laden wagons can pass. Someone has to get mired in scum and ashes, sofa springs, splintered glass, and bloody rags. Someone must drag in a girder to prop up a wall. Someone must glaze a window, rehang a door. Photogenic it’s not, and takes years. All the cameras have left for another war. Again we’ll need bridges and new railway stations. Sleeves will go ragged from rolling them up. Someone, broom in hand, still recalls how it was. Someone listens and nods with unsevered head. Yet others milling about already find ...

Judas and the Sanhedrin by Rethabile Masilo Judas and the Sanhedrin Did Judas kiss Jesus as they say just to betray him? The Pharisees and Romans knew not who Jesus was, so when evening approached and they were sick and tired of that bloke who drew multitudes to himself, and unto whom the people of Galilee were attracted, they sent a message to Judas and promised him cash if he could point out the son of man to them. Thirty gleaming shekels; and they asked their messenger to be sure to dangle the bag and jangle the coins before his eyes. Judas was fucked, for he liked money, and although when alone away from the troupe he would sometimes visit the local amusement scene, he had a good heart. The guy found him drinking at a bar, and subsequently left him there, strugg...

Ineducable Me by Norman MacCaig Ineducable Me I don’t learn much, I’m a man of no improvements. My nose still snuffs the air in an amateurish way. My profound ideas were once toys on the floor, I love them, I’ve licked most of the paint off. A whisky glass is a rattle I don’t shake. When I love a person, a place, an object, I don’t see what there is to argue about. I learned words, I learned words: but half of them died for lack of exercise. And the ones I use often look at me with a look that whispers, Liar. How I admire the eider duck that dives with a neat loop and no splash and the gannet that suddenly harpoons the sea. — I’m a guillemot that still dives in the first way it thought of: poke your head under and fly down. Po...