gluey congee cooked with
yellow ginger
salted pork
thousand-year-old eggs
constantly stirred to make sure
it doesn’t stick to the bottom
Tag: poet
ONE POEM – Mel McMahon
As if by sticking up taut yellow tape
They could control the space
Like some kind of boxing match
Where a ring-side bell
Could take a firm grip of time
TWO POEMS – Salvatore Difalco
You reached for the branch
without looking at me as I
signalled you to back away,
to veer away from the tree,
where a snake in full makeup
had hit its mark, awaiting a cue.
COMFORT FOODS // He becomes my child by Sarah Terkaoui
We pass plates of kawage, kibbeh, moutabal
between us around the semi-circle of table.
TWO POEMS – Jim Lloyd
Peregrine has put them up;
one, against one thousand. They
need eyes in the back of their head.
His eyes, forwards only, burning
on the brown-gold and white
pulsating flock.
ONE POEM – Elizabeth Gibson
like you are the aurora borealis, a thirsty balloon,
wanting and worthy of more air, ready to gorge
on forest fruits, and salt and garlic, and cinnamon,
like you are every season and its harvest
ONE POEM – Eugene Ryan
Our joke ran
that I would hand him the ladybird kite,
him in his little black windbreaker,
and I’d plead with him to hold on,
and he’d smile like all the world wasn’t enough,
ONE POEM – Gaynor Kane
My weight is
three black labradors lazing
a mummy moon bear
or a black and white ostrich
ONE POEM – D. Parker
stick your worm-like head
to the surface of muddy waters
will yourself into existence
TWO POEMS – John Kefala Kerr
I grab the deck rail,
expecting a disturbance
—a pitching and yawing—
but the ferry glides smoothly
over the sea’s fleecy crimp,
like a brush through kid fibre.
TWO POEMS – Adam Stokell
I see the cat before the cat sees me.
White with black splotches, a longhair.
Leaving the law behind it,
stealing easily as light fails
ONE POEM – Andrew Button
Everybody called her ‘a character’,
a regular in the library
in her shabby Barbour jacket
and crumpled hat perched
on hair dishevelled as a bird’s nest.
Porridge 