Today’s choice
Previous poems
Sharon Black
Free Range
My thoughts are skittish,
peck at whatever they find.
I flick each whitewash flake
into the bin. Shadows on the walls
are darkened rooms
in which I lose myself, daily:
if I say that I look for this
at the edge of every brightness
would you hand me a prescription?
The house is rustling, I can’t get out.
I have a tongue for truth
and a tongue for lies. My mouth
is dry, all this barking. People say
I have something of the fox.
Sharon Black is from Glasgow and lives in the Cévennes mountains in France. Her fifth full collection of poetry, Things That Fruit in Darkness, was published in May 2026 by Vagabond Voices. She is editor of Pindrop Press. www.sharonblack.co.uk
Vanessa Napolitano
Floors are unvacuumed. Spices remain un-alphabetised.
I bless the spaces between the furniture to keep everyone safe. Seven.
Ben Verinder
Nostalgia as Yogi Bear
Ruminates through you for something tasty,
prizes of the Jellystone mind.
Jane Spray
I’m just an ordinary dryad
not like fancy Eurydice with her sun god father
keep things simple I say I don’t have her dilemmas
Paul Stephenson
The poem of the mask disguises meaning.
The poem of the diet lost seven words.
The poem of the snowman melted.
The poem of the invisible man.
Alex Josephy
Let us now praise hi-vis men
who gather together
round a pothole, filling the gap
with their sticky black remedy.
Claire Lynn
I lie back, arch my throat,
pretend to relax. Contemplate
ceiling tiles . . .
Peter Daniels
This is not you, but someone soaked in fake Brut
coming at me in a gesture of fake generosity.
Emma Farmer
Your face was on a bus pass,
your hair falling around your face like a curly straw,
pressed in a puddle between the Queen’s old face
and an Aldi receipt for slippers and chicken.
Carson Wolfe
I owned a g-string like this,
the back connected by a rhinestone butterfly.
Starved myself at school to save
my dinner money, bought it from Poundland.