Today’s choice
Previous poems
Catherine Shonack
white flag, black flag
he lived with his hand permanently
on the throttle, like it would kill him
if he let it go.
existence passed in flashes, his alcohol soaked dreams
indistinguishable from reality—he was a victim of his divorced mind
chalking up his raucous leanings to the drink
he feigned playing dress up, it was not he
who committed such wicked acts, it was his
debaucherous pirate personality. his maritime haunts did not belong to him,
who he was at sea was not who he really was.
when confronted with vast, endlessness of the ocean
who wouldn’t go mad?
Catherine Shonack is a writer from Los Angeles who obtained her master’s degree in playwriting and dramaturgy at the University of Glasgow. Her poems have been featured on the Kirkstall Poetry Trail and the LOS ANGELES zine, and her radio play ‘How to Drive in the Dark‘ was performed at ChapelFM as part of their Writing on Air Festival in 2024. She doesn’t believe in coincidences, superpowers, or being afraid of falling, which, according to her ice skate coach, is the only way to learn.
Ansuya Patel
Women scrape coins from their purse,
count pennies, one lifts up a watermelon
in mid-air like raising a newborn to light.
Pippa Little
a woman’s rage cannot raise the dead
but it may split stone like lightning
Abiodun Salako
a boy grows tired
of dying again and again.
i am building him a morgue
for Thanksgiving.
Patrick Wright
It’s as if the dream
is telling me we are still joined
somehow, despite waking
and me trudging on, even though
your voicemail is off, your locks
changed.
William Collins
We carry the shame of Paragraph 352D
folded into suitcases at foreign borders,
where love is questioned like a crime,
and disbelief stamped heavier than visas.
They tell us to run for our lives —
but only if we can do it quietly.
Oz Hardwick
The ghost of my mother knows the names of everything, but
she can’t tell me, because ghosts, whatever you have heard
to the contrary, can’t speak.
McLord Selasi
I walk the flat barefoot,
step over old dreams
still curled like cats
in the corners.
Warren Mortimer
& you’ll understand if i leave open this theatre of air
not as the invite for another loss
but to honour their world unwilling to collapse
Jena Woodhouse
Language reinvents itself,
coruscates in signs on walls;
falls silent, mute as clay and stone
on tablets that enshrine its form.