Emotionless poem

Jade Gibson

I am learning not to have emotions

It is better that way,

not to swear at students

who pay fees to learn, then try

to avoid learning anything at all,

to stare with glazed eyes

at faces begging for money in streets,

not get angry at governments

for inequality, non-service delivery, and corruption

and not want to blow Parliament up.

I am learning to ignore

all the things that used to matter to me.

People will like me more,

my friends will accept me,

I will become popular,

I will only talk about sitcoms and adverts

I will become cool,

not bitter

or sarcastic

like this poem,

which is not sarcastic

at all.

Featured at The Red Wheelbarrow on 5 July 2022

conversation with a mountain stream

Ian Bell

by the time the splash of you has reached this

pool, this rock-hollow in the palm of an ancient

mountains hand, you’ll have heard from fern

and bracken, what birds say in song, the chat

of old baboon and wildcat, clouds whispering the

promise of rain on its way to fill your arteries

you’ll tell me this as I sit with you, yet still you

hear the turbulence tumbling through my own

boulder strewn interior, which you’ll mention

to others, listening, a little closer to the sea

Featured at The Red Wheelbarrow on 30 June 2022

Cicadas

Robin Winckel-Mellish

Cicadas

The cicadas in the trees above

have been making that sharp singing

sound all day, starting and stopping

taking a rest, and then an explosion

of noise, as if trying to drown our voices

in the kitchen, and it has just occurred

to me standing at the window, washing

the breakfast cups, that their lives

depend on their singing, unseen

but constant and that this is the heart’s

greatest project:

learning how to hold on,

to keep on trying to make something

of the bright new surface of each day,

and at the same time recognise

and cherish the great scar of demise.

To live with desire for both, to know

their names, and as the cicadas, sing

out an endless call in the heat of summer,

and when the damp cold winds blow,

return underground, to sip

sap from the roots of trees.

Featured at The Red Wheelbarrow on 23 June 2022