Today’s choice
Previous poems
Sam Szanto
After a Stillbirth
He had been told the trolley
would be in the corridor at noon.
He could get sandwiches.
It was normally for mothers only
but they’d make an exception.
His wife won’t eat anything.
He has to do something.
He cannot sit and be nothing.
He queues behind
a woman holding a tiny baby,
a woman holding a tiny baby,
a woman holding a tiny baby.
He watches the garrulous juggle,
baby, Diet Coke, sandwich.
They don’t seem to notice him
until he stretches out a hand
for a dry egg and cress.
The server says,
“The trolley is for mothers only.”
Tess Jolly
When I went round the next day
with a bottle of wine, his wife said
he was bruised down both sides
Jenny Mitchell
There’s no one in the flat when I come home from school,
my dinner in the fridge – poison on a flowered plate,
covered with tin foil, surrounded by full shelves of poison.
Sarah James/Leavesley
The sister I don’t have
has pockets bulging
with silver-foiled chocolate
Andy Humphrey
On screen, Dad was
the radical –
the introverted
pen-and-notepad kind,
Chrissy Banks
Sun comes out, my body opens
all its folding doors, its windows.
mulika ojikutu-harnett
remember when we lived
in the shrubs? stewed in a shared
room. its stench. our own
L.B. Jørgensen
As the whole town picked sugar beets,
their breath hugged
furrows in pre-dawn darkness.
Mel Joy
a line of hanging hooks
bent us into the dining hall
where we ate like birds
Judith Taylor
He reads aloud about visiting the Underworld in dreams,
seeing his dead again. Through the big window behind him
there’s a flowerbed and some long grass