Poems

Print journals include:

Online journals include:  

Standing in for Utah

This poem was awarded the Sonnet Prize in the annual Ware Poetry competition, 2012. The judge, Dean Parkin, wrote ‘For the Sonnet Prize I chose the stirring Standing in for Utah as I appreciated the combination of form with a bold subject. The prose poem Still casting a shadow was commended in the same competition.

You missed the last bus

Because you were standing on the wrong side of the road
and only that because someone had stolen your bike
and only that because someone else had driven through
red lights and left you with a write-off and only that

Because you’d walked out of a job that paid the bills
but punished you when you failed to persuade someone
to settle their account and that only on account of your
father who too had started too late, left too early.

(Published in The North and on Out of Office (Jonathan Davidson).

International Anthony Burgess Foundation, 3 March 2020

Leave a comment