Today’s choice
Previous poems
Scott Lilley
Doppelgänger
I’ve seen dozens of you about the Fylde,
face all vape, fatigue, some wild sense of
beard, black hair to border it all. Oiled
up Kieran, out cold in the ring; pensive
Kieran, pacing the promenade; I’ll have
spent my own self in this loop of turning
and returning to Asda checkout checking
out what must be your eyelids on the cashier.
It’s tiresome— keeping up with it, learning
your new names. The nights that crack open
like a Strongbow come cloying back; here,
you point, Orion’s belt, your face all teeth,
me not knowing for certain where your finger
points, you, buckled up, almost onto something.
Scott Lilley lives on the Fylde and is studying for a PhD at Lancaster University, his previous work can be found in Wet Grain, 3:AM, and Butcher’s Dog among other publications. Instagram: @poetrytalkingguy
Rich Yates
The bird
crept up on him, threw its voice into an empty tree
Annie Kissack
Girl Awaits the Psychic Investigators They’re late. The table is laid with a clean cloth, all normal and neat. Our visitors, city men, may find it hard to navigate the path but we can wait. They hope to gather evidence of a haunting; whether he’ll...
Jim Murdoch
We don’t decide who we love.
Who we hate, yes,
who we’re jealous of,
but never who we end up loving.
Alex Stolis
It’s 16 below zero. Actual temp. We’re sole owners of the shore, windchill pushes it down to minus 36.
Ashia Mirza
Someone is taking a photo
at a wedding
of their baby
at a celebration.
Phil Vernon
These hills that look towards both weald and waves
hold – in their homesteads, fenced and open land,
trackways and contours – all that’s happened here
Sandra Noel
I’m sorry for the screeching and swearing we winter swimmers do.
Mike Duggan
A decapitated road sign
Spears the yellow verge,
Meaningless as a symbol
Of progress. A vain strut.
Sue Spiers
I wrote a metaphor using eel
for blue-light reflections in water
on a flooded motorway