Young Poets

Published here are some of the excellent poems we receive from our gifted young writers.

You can submit poems either by post (please enclose a stamped address envelope for reply), via our on-line portal, or by email to acumeneditor@gmail.com. Please mark the contents ‘Young Poet Submission’, put this in the subject line if you are submitting by email, and put your name, age and address on each page of the submission.

Please submit no more than four poems. You should be aged between 16 and 25 years, the work should be unpublished. 

More information about submitting your poetry

Michael Liu

Michael Liu

Hunan

Teeth, the bones I clean,

bite into this pillow.

This bed is not mine,

it is perhaps my late grandfather’s;

or just another metaphor

left in this parcel of land

that could have belonged

to my grandfather.

Inside my eyelids:

two melting balls of chocolate.

Outside my eyelids:

the fields and its bones of rice

seen through the window.

Long ago my grandfather’s son left

for some exodusted nation

and so did I.

Here, the smell is unbearable

and the eyes of my eyes forget themselves

amidst fog, amidst my grandfather’s body

shaped in a certain way when he boils long long noodles.

The chickens sleep and don’t judge us anymore.

They wait, as I do too.

the makings of blood

Under this streetlight you will watch

eight million photons dissect this puddle

until its basic formula is revealed.

From it derives a time without water

when we had held a drop of rain

holier than blood drying

on the side of a temple, a priest

chanting prayers for rain,

holding up a human heart

for the children to see.

From it derives a time without water,

when a hundred thousand trucks

drove down to southern California

with water in their metal wombs.

Let yourself fall in love with it again,

because we are nothing

but memories of the rain.

Look at this puddle one more time,

and watch the rubber wheels of a car

roll through it, blowing out

eight million photons

and the acrid smell of gasoline.

These are the facts of the puddle,

its chemical composition and acidity,

the bottom of little boots that splash them,

and the fingerprints they accumulate.

Ella Pheasant

Ella Pheasant

Gabriel’s Harley

Your old Harley rusts next to a broken ATM,

gum-tacked mirror smashed in by the church’s poker iron,

your fingers bloody and buried inside me,

before dawn daubed its collared black puff

over your thick, stained-glass lids.

I want you to know that I’ve made it real far,

but I won’t tell you how,

not over a cigarette in your barren backyard,

the pond’s filtration system clogged with Christ,

cause I fear that if you knew the truth,

you’d never sleep a wink again.

I’ve never been the pious type, darlin’,

not like you, a sinner now in Gabriel’s glad rags,

but when you got to your knees,

kneeled before me on those

hot, silver-silken evenings,

I hope God was watching.

Dog Teeth

You came walking that day,

past the house of dog teeth,

canine picket white fence, sewn with

human floss and Prussian blue cuffs.

Your limp quickened; hope burnt

out to a prayer’s wick, the shoreline

littered with cigarette ends.

It faltered eventually, snuffed out,

It will never be you. You will never come

back home

to that lonely four-walled woman.

They Asked For One More Day

Time chased them underneath a thousand suns,

missing nothing with her mindful eye,

pocket watch a tall and grand fellow, embalmed

in white-hot iron. Neither fought the dying of

the clement afternoon, for the darkness of dusk

was not feared as long as they dreamt in

colours of vermillion, scarlet, oleander red

in the moon’s pale underbelly. 

More Young Poets

Sidney Lawson

Anecdote I’d like to have her laugh / Which erupts like a broken hose / Fixing at the wrong time, or his shoulders / Which people love to lay their head on. (from The Party by Sinéad O’Reilly) In dizzy rooms awash with eyes of green, The air is smoke, the water...

Audrey Hunter

This Is What I’m Thinking Rain on the window & the ground Everything is impermeable So we leave behind streetside streams & we leave in them I want to go home But I rue the journey Hate the water that drowns the roads Hate the water that ends up where I’m...

Saul Grenfell

Rain and cheer Innocence darted through streets alone,hair dancing in the rush of itamid dense smells and bids and cumin and saffronlittle lungs a-panting. Now, with top button stiffly done,greying hair flattened and...

Sidney Lawson

The First Affair I rinse my hands of the way your skin felt, Brush my teeth thinking of how you tasted. The soap’s scent is reminiscent of your Intense fragrance, something I won’t forget In a hurry. I remember the sight Of you in that red dress, the slight gasps you...

Emily Riley

till dawn do us part late night kisses behind closed doors no one has to know you’re mine for the night unwavering devotion you write novels on my skin then tear them to pieces leaving me severed and shattered your beautiful work destroyed no one has to know...

Charlotte Lebedeker

Josephine It’s been ten years of Josephine, and the world will give us decades more. But if that’s cut short by the gods above, I would upturn all our climbing trees, I would dry out all our oceans, I would leave no corner of the world unchecked searching for her. As...

Daphne Harris

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Florence Grieve

The Bristol hum I’m looking for the secret portal where the air quivers above the grass because I want to get away from here from the place where emotions are berocca dissolved in the white wine served with dinner, swallowed with our plates of macaroni cheese and...

Isaac Cude

Sandpaper There is not much difference between words. Maybe there is, maybe it is different. There is horror in thoughts, in desiring Something unknown; it seems known to others. It is kept hidden, secret, and it is unfair. When words bubble up, they are strange....

Tricia Tan

finding nemo in the ward the aquarium of her ward was rich as ever in the Great Barrier Reef Hospital. Old fish diving in the shallows of the ED. The pillows a lush anemone, her clownfish gown swallowed in. My smile daft as Dory’s. Brief as bubbles, or the...

Emily VanPelt

Adoption I didn’t spend 9 months in your womb, growing into a creation of my own I wasn’t the result of your great love story, but of one unknown You didn’t feel the emotion when the second line appeared There were no tears of joy and no little kicks that you endeared...

Liberty Price

Swapsies Your favourite jumper is draped, Languishing on the back of my chair The tattered sleeves unmoving, Its snot stains ever-present And the colour clashing As always With your imagined outfit. The window looks on, Sheets of sunlight In heavy layers over the...

Grace Marshall

Esplanade I saw a man on the edge of the sea one black morning. No sand, just stones, and me on the Esplanade. He paused at the lap of the waves and surveyed. Where I stood on the grey I could tell his upset Too far from his wife who rose and fell further out....

Alex Walker

Strange Winter river pouring daily puff of coal chatter of friends press of water against the lock gates overflow balsamic moon I am swallowed up I am swept away in the overflow of turkey tails lobular expanses drops of rain strung like beads of liquid starlight...

Anna Ray

Exile Displaced I break myself up in a million pieces Can’t forget the taste of the sky more bitter than my aching tears or the airport-coffeed flavour in my mouth Eyes closed uncomfortable flicker Out of the window the trees are running away Disjointed thoughts to...