Today’s choice
Previous poems
Brandon Arnold
Dusk Was Yesterday
Alone, I drive along the midnight, winter road. My left hand at the 12 o’clock position of the steering wheel. And I coast. I let out the day’s long breath, which started out today as a sigh. Somewhere off in the distance, I imagine rain hitting a living-room window, a crackling fireplace close at hand. It’s just as cozy here. By now I’m no longer driving along the road, but rather, the road comes to meet me. Every second of every minute, like microscopic, glacial waves, lapping one after another. Street lamps pass me by like stars seen from a rocket ship, and each illuminated pocket—a spotlight for a tired actor. Or rather, one that’d like to sit this one out, and let someone else bask in it for a while. The lights begin to blur, each flicker a whisper of a story kept secret, guiding me through the night’s gentle fold. I pass by stranger’s homes, hoping they’re resting their thoughtful heads on soft pillows, wondering what kind of lives they live. I wish I could see their faces when I tell them they’re beautiful. I bet they have kind eyes. As nice as it sounds to rest, I think I’ll keep driving for a while. A simple wheel and pedals can take me anywhere I want to go. It can also lead me in circles. But right now, I think I’m exactly where I want to be.
Brandon Arnold is not a fancy wordsmith or written word artisan. He keeps things simple. His home resides in an unremarkable town in the Midwest of the United States. Brandon also has work forthcoming in the Hooghly Review.
Mandy Macdonald
emerald earrings misfortune from nowhere stooped like a peregrine folded, weaponized slicing away before from after as clean as cutting butter or severing heads half the house is collapsed open to the weather defenceless, astounded the other half...
Maria C. McCarthy
I whipped the clothes off her my mother’s retelling of the quick thinking that saved my skin. I remember reaching for the handle over-edging the table, tipping, scalding, Mum’s hands pulling dress, vest, knickers, stripping fabric before it fused...
Mark Carson
Möbius Strip reducing her life to seventeen bullet points was simpler far than she’d somehow imagined and she had them graven in cursive script on a one-sided strip of her native silver given a twist by a cunning smith hammer-welded so the text is...
Alex Faulkner
Animals Lit by Neon yellow pours down like rain. yellow pours down in sheets. I know they’re out there. I know you’re out there. down here it’s warm we gape through grilles spilling yellow into quivering stripes. dark driven auto vehicle bodies...
Finola Scott
One thousand cranes I want to learn how it feels to give birth in a tunnel in my home city to hear shelling through the night I want to draw straight lines not diagrams of molotov cocktails tourniquets or AK42 rifles or posters pleading for help I...
Mandy Beattie
Mandy Beattie’s poetry’s been published in: Poets Republic, Wordpeace, Dreich, Wee Dreich, The Haar, Purple Hermit, Wordgathering, Clearance Collection, Spilling Cocoa with Martin Amis, Marble Poetry, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Lothlorien Poetry & Book Week...
Phil Wood
Birthday Boyo No sunshine, but plenty of coal to cosy up our terrace. Gran smothers extra toast with raspberry jam, and I'm drawing Caerphilly castle. I climbed that spiral stair today to the office. I was grassed up. Dapper Jones made me empty my...
Debi Lewis
The Gap The space between unrelated things like our ears and the top of the humorous as a measure of strength a simple gap of air that stops a wheel rolling back on top of you the wider ...
Martin Yates
Martyr We’d starve sooner than eat with you, or drink; we’d vomit up, spit out, the bribes you bring and will not slake our thirst or break this fast. The stars, more sensitive than us, will blink; we strain our foolish ears to hear them sing,...