Today’s choice
Previous poems
Philip Rush
Rolled-Up Sleeves
Tom’s advice, mind you,
was to drink hot chocolate
last thing at night
on a garden bench
beneath the moon.
So, we sat there.
Our eyes grew accustomed
to monochrome
and to the unusual grammars
of darkness.
A hazel-nut or two
fell from the tall & leafy tree.
Occasionally
there was
a rustle in the hedge.
Our hot chocolate
perfumed the garden
with a touch of the exotic.
The air did not feel cold
on our bare arms.
Philip Rush was born in Middlesex. Big Purple Garden Paintings was short-listed for the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize; he has also collaborated with the photographer Andrew Fusek Peters. His most recent book of poems is Camera Obscura from The Garlic Press.
Kari Pindoria
i collect items left behind by ex-boyfriends as if they are souvenirs i count myself lucky and hold my breath in the shower to practice peace on days that feel like a blister i know somewhere children are laughing and you are folding your favourite pair...
Sunyi Dean
Kleptomaniac Lover, all my life I've been lightfingered to the nth degree finagling what wasn't mine, some rings and lipstick, once a dress her sun-drained hair, a hidden glance two books I loved yet never read family heirlooms, happiness (all...
Joseph Ajilore
THE CHILD BECOMES A PARENT She comes bearing gifts and apologies Giving love out of guilt From my days as an embryo, I knew her Whispers in my phone past bedtime Climbing through the window past curfews Teenage angst and my insecurity shows 'I hate you,...
Paul Fenn
Lifesaving practice We make a strange creature, him and I. Father and son, endlessly enacting death and resurrection in the local pool. Locked in an awkward embrace, my back forever to his front. My heart balancing on his heart; smooth wet pebble...
Daniel Sluman
morphine the first time i drank morphine a weight slid over my heart & the whole summer collapsed under me my head packed with ice phone overflowing with garbled texts & all because of this vertebra a firecracker in a...
Mike Farren
Out nights were forest with foliage too dense to let in the light of moon and stars – and days were savannah prairie steppe – glory and danger in strangeness of mountain and sea and river – survival was tracking the flock to the watering hole...
Daniel Richardson
A Talkative Saint who lived in a hedge He was caught up in what he did and he couldn’t do enough of it and he did it all the time. He would talk about it to anyone even if they told him they couldn’t understand a word of it and didn’t want to...
Honey Baxter
I’m crying in a bar when a wise old cowboy turns to me and says If you found love now, you’d run it right into the ground. I bet you sit around swallowing up everybody else’s light, wondering why you never end up being anything but midnight. I...
B. Anne Adriaens
The unloved pipes It’s not rats (there are no rats); it’s the goddam plumbing cobbled together by some inept predecessor. Knocking whenever the heating comes on, clanging whenever the shower’s turned on, clicking whenever hot water rushes through...