Today’s choice

Previous poems

Claire Lynn

 

 

 

Out of Place

I lie back, arch my throat,
pretend to relax.  Contemplate

ceiling tiles, and women
who do this weekly

for pleasure.  A basin
strangles me. The palm

of a hand realigns my head: this
is how the ironing board feels

when you dance with it.
I agree to a full fringe

because I can’t identify
the part of the question

I don’t understand. Christmas
seems to come round faster
 
each year.  My small talk
shrinks.  I spray

DON’T SPEAK TO ME
across my reflection.

I’d like to foreclose, cut
the blow dry, but am helpless

as a mermaid; surrender
to hot brush and serum.

Release lifts my hair
like the tail of a kite. I run

all the way home.

 

 

Claire Lynn was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem in 2025.  She won the Tyne and Wear Metro Poetry Prize in 2023, and has been published in magazines such as Butcher’s Dog, Pennine Platform and Alchemy Spoon.

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.

Sarah Nathan

The ash that screams into the night,
the lake that dries, the child amongst the rubble,
the heat, the fire, the lack of books,

Philip Athans

Never shows up late to a single thing he’s invited to
Always brings the most thoughtful and carefully curated and perfect gift
Never shows up early and never once overstays his welcome
Always appears well groomed and clean and appropriately dressed