Today’s choice
Previous poems
Bel Wallace
Interior
My dear, I washed you out of my sheets.
And now I sleep softly in them.
My dreams are sweet and free.
I opened the windows to air out
your smoke. I liked it for a while, how
it held the past in its wispy fingers.
I emptied your cigarette butts
from my ashtray. The Cuban one, heavy.
Remember? It waited a half-life for you.
I scoured your dense coffee
from my cups. You broke one. Elegant,
with painted roses. It doesn’t matter.
I threw away your shoes. Every time,
you left a pair behind, like two footprints
in ancient rocks.
I put back the furniture you’d rearranged,
restored my writing corner. Low sun
streams in, now we’re past the Equinox.
And still, my love, our dead skin cells
persist. We mingle in the house-dust,
dancing in the slow winter sunlight.
Bel Wallace‘s poetry has been short-listed for the Bridport Prize, nominated for the Pushcart and published in a range of journals, most recently Anthropocene, Magma and Under the Radar. She’s trying to finish her first novel, but keeps getting distracted by poetry.
Nick Browne
The single woman’s toolbox It began with a claw hammer, for removing lingering doubt and to bludgeon home the point that Yes, I know my own mind and No is my final answer. I don’t need to ask a friend. The pliers came soon after, along with the...
Penny Blackburn
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John Tustin
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Sally St Clair
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Robin Lindsay Wilson
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Peter Eustace
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Rose Lennard
Lord, grant me… On hot days, the back door stands open to the garden, to sudden wing flurries, sparrow chit-chat. By evening there are bluebottles upstairs, stupidly circling, banging themselves against the place the light comes from. I have been...
Linda Ford
The Fair Leaves Town The hum of early traffic resonates where skeletal rides seek egress on lorries bound for the next town, and the road opens like a wound, becomes a thoroughfare again. We view the marketplace as we would a post-festive room,...
Eugene Stevenson
Mace in Her Pocket She is used to walking unafraid of the echo off her heeled steps, moving through the parking lot in a still-dark, early morning hour. Mace in her pocket, fur coat on her back, fist wrapped around her keys, she takes a breath...