Today’s choice

Previous poems

Annette Iles

 

 

 

You Again 

across the street 

I am washed off my feet
my heart 
splashes up into pieces 

as if someone has thrown a stone
into the pool of me

all these years 
I thought myself dry ground

but I am a stream  a loch  a river
brim full 
sequinned with light

you smile
I ripple and shimmer 

 

Born in New Zealand, Annette Iles is a Midlands-based poet. Her first pamphlet On New Street I See a Mermaid was recently shortlisted for the 2026 International Rubery Book Award.

Jason Lovell

While children kneel at your cage in awe
edge offerings of cashew nuts, chopped fruit,
curse words into your magnificent beak,
mums settle carrier bags at tired wet feet

Elijah MacBean

      My Name is My Name Ami never let anyone call my sister Sam – it always had to be Samina. She said she’d rather be waterboarded than let her daughter be whitewashed by whites too conservative to spare the extra syllables. Ami never let anyone call...

Damen O’Brien

The coastline’s smile is sharp with blackened teeth,
seabird shelters, scarps, cutaways, broken reefs:
the bloody mouth of a boxer who can’t be dropped,
punch drunk with the brain’s purple pounding . . .