Tag: Poem

K Roberts

a lost friendship
dormant in the mind’s steeple
is an unstruck bell

a furled sail, tethered
horse behind a fence, ignored
by cars rushing past

as I rake yellow
orchard leaves, the last apples – like
red foxes in snow

K Roberts is a professional non-fiction writer, and a volunteer reader and editor for literary magazines. Artwork and poetry credits include Rundelaria, Pensive, Novus, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, and the now-shuttered Panoply and Otoliths, both of which are much-missed.

‘windfallen’ was Highly Commended in the Briefly Write Poetry Prize 2025.

Amy Devine

It is 6am in the city and we are sharing
a wet morning walk and it is still dark and
you are still a wrinkle in my nose on the worst days.
I hold up old clothes and cannot fathom them
being new again. I was so sure that she would die
and I cannot imagine seeing you live, seeing you sleep
in the space between the present and the windowsill.

We could only find five fingers at the last ultrasound.
I imagine the others curled into a fist around my lowest rib.

Amy Devine is an artist from a lineage of artists, based in Sydney, Australia. Her work has been featured in several publications including The Antigonish Review, flashglass and Beyond the Veil Press. She is a Best of the Net nominee and her first book, ‘Speaking of Bees’, was published by Harvard Square Press in 2025.

‘Starting Over’ was Highly Commended in the Briefly Write Poetry Prize 2025.

Cailín Frankland

My mother,
the fourth of five children—or
the sixth of seven, if you count the ones
granny gave away—used to sing
me to sleep. Tales of famine and fever,
lyrics of the lost and losing—she raised
me on old Irish grief, dirges dressed
as lullabies.

I still wake to the ghost of
Molly Malone, to plaintive ringing in my ears.

Cailín Frankland (she/they) is a British-American writer and public health professional. They live in Baltimore with their spouse, two old lady cats, and a 70-pound pitbull affectionately known as Baby. You can find them on X as @cailin_sm.

‘Alive, Alive, Oh’ was Highly Commended in the Briefly Write Poetry Prize 2025.

Anaum Sajanlal

after Ezzideen Shehab, for his cousin Qasem

Here is oppression and high poetry: death
made slow, frequent, staggering. And we turn away. And when it comes
for us, we will be gazing at a painting of a tiny body wrapped
in white, oblivious to the grief of the artist and his canvas he rips out. The wood in
art burns well. He cooks for his family. For ours, we build our monuments to civility.

Anaum Sajanlal is a genderqueer femme lesbian who writes on queerness, survivorship, colonialism, and resistance. They are a settler in Tsi Tkaronto from colonially-named India and Pakistan. She can be found knitting surrounded by her abundance of niece and nephew pets.

‘Golden Shovel Against Bureaucracy’ was Highly Commended in the Briefly Write Poetry Prize 2025.

Kafui Siabi

He sharpens oranges with a blade too clean,
peels them spiral, like he’s undoing a year.
His shirt reads NASA. He’s never left Makola.

Coins clink like small regrets.
He ties the bag, hands it over,
juice trailing down his wrist like truth.

Behind him, a radio coughs into static.
He doesn’t flinch.
The sky threatens rain again.
He bets it won’t.

Ghanaian writer, Kafui Mawunyo Siabi writes with quiet humour, observing everyday life. ‘The Boy by the Kiosk’ is a subtle portrait of labor, unspoken dreams and hope waiting its turn. This poem won Third Prize in the Briefly Write Poetry Prize 2025.

Lawrence Bradby

We had front seats
on the long coach trip to the capital
through hills that ramped down from high tors
and ramped back up. The whole way
we gazed straight ahead.

At our lodgings the landlord leant out of his kitchen window
to eulogise the view of lights pricking out
over the dark estuary: ‘used to be
Europe’s longest bridge’. Stood in the hallway,
each holding an overnight bag, we saw none of it.

Lawrence Bradby writes poems and short non-fiction prose texts and is a creative writing tutor with City Lit in London. Since October 2020, he and his family have lived in Portugal and he blogs about being a foreigner.

‘Shade’ won First Prize in the Briefly Write Poetry Prize 2025.