Today’s choice
Previous poems
Sipke Shaughnessy
Morning mis-en-scène
Silence draped across the furniture like
fine webbing to catch intruders.
Toys left mid-performance, before
bedtime’s siren, you marching upstairs.
Night made an exhibit of you,
a collection of imprints in the mess.
I give them titles like Duplo Pirate
Wrestling T-Rex and Lioness, and
The Great Model Railway Accident.
I sit, admire the curation by day’s end.
I hear you stir above, ready to paint
over still lives. Outside, clouds flick
through the sun’s moods, settling
on a playful fire, when you rise.
Sipke Shaughnessy is a poet from West Cork, Ireland now living in Kent. He also has work forthcoming in Southword.
Ken Evans
Octopus I am one Like short of being beautiful. Five hundred more Followers, I’m away to fight culture wars. I Block two for lies Quora does not verify. Counter-factuals are ok, there’s simmering wastelands to make out of vague, but someone sent a shroom...
Mary Mulholland
It doesn’t trust paper. It writes itself
in my head where no one can reach it,
laugh, tear it to shreds, or
call it a waste of space, a disgrace.
Afolabi Ezra
It was a quiet day—
no bad news,
no sudden loss,
no reason to hold my breath.
Karina Jutzi
I think today of the boy in choir class
who closed his eyes when we sang
about Jesus. Who swayed, as if the Lord
Isabelle Thompson
We saw a kingfisher threading the bright needle
of his body along the river. We saw a shag, stamping
her prehistoric shadow on the sky. We saw a hobby,
Roger Robinson
We walk from cane fields,
cotton in our nightshirts, sweet
Amirah Al Wassif
My double sits before me now. I stare deep into her, as I do every day after midnight. When I raise my hands, she raises hers.
Sophie Lankarani
Even though I only once traced your streets with my own feet,
you wandered into my dreams anyway
sliding in through my grandmother’s stories,
Mark A. Hill
She wills his brush in colour
and chalking, fierce hued flaws,
which fall flat on the canvas