Today’s choice
Previous poems
Matthew F. Amati
Hands Said To Head
Hands said to Head
look what you’ve made me do
it’s not me, Head said, talk to
Heart, that guy’s sick, Heart
said whoa buddy, I take cues from
Gut, whence all appetites bloom
Gut growled, said nothing.
Head said rumor is Gut’s got
a second brain down there, cooking up
God knows what. when they brought the cuffs
it was Hands that got shackled tight.
do the dirty work, it’s your mud to wash off.
Matthew F. Amati was born in Chicago but was asked to leave shortly afterwards. Over 50 of his poems and stories have appeared in Flash Fiction Online, Clockwise Cat, Oddball Magazine and elsewhere. Much of his work is collected at www.mattamati.com
Mariam Saidan
‘Female singing constitutes a ‘forbidden act’ (ḥarām),
punishable under Article 638 of the Islamic Penal Code.’
Meg Pokrass
This is what happens when she sits alone in her dining room, eating smoked trout and canned sardines.
Chen-ou Liu
this fresh morning
so much like the others …
yet starlings shape-shift
Jim Paterson
A Tuesday morning in November
out on the street taking in the bins.
As a flight of crows flashed past
the street lights went out.
Andy Humphrey
Noises are louder now: the kesh
of tyres on tarmac slicked
with leaves. Rain’s drumming thunder.
Chrissie Gittins
When you’ve used one handle to open the door,
use the other handle to close it.
Morgan Harlow
She hadn’t lost a child but if she had she imagined it would be like that.
Antony Owen and Martin Figura on Remembrance Day
Let fathers bind their sons
to altars, so the wind
might winnow the chaff.
Stephen C. Curro
calm river
again, his fishing line
caught on a tree