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
Jennie Howitt
Those full udders will slowly burst
spitting milk onto the grass strands.
Matt Bryden
at the cider farm, eight minutes
before handover, we strike on
feeding the donkeys –
Colin Pink
to embrace you is like clasping
a fist full of briars
Simon Williams
What were these fairies called
before we knew of hummingbirds?
Bumblebee moth because of the size?
Reed-nose moth because of the proboscis?
Elizabeth Barton
On Diamond Hill
I didn’t
think of you once
as I climbed
past stunted willows
straggles of gorse
Susan Jane Sims on Mothering Sunday
Matter cannot be created and it cannot be destroyed.
I think of this as I pour the almost white ash from
the green plastic container that came in the post
into the vibrant red metal urn I have ready.
Daniel Sluman
just as the night sky shifts
beyond the minds
of the animals outside
the ceilings
we are pressed beneath change
in aspect & colour
Farah Ali
Notes from nature on how to survive this:
1. Learn crypsis and mimesis be a gecko or a mossy frog
2. Method actors sway like dead-leaf mantises on branches
James Benger
We tore it all down
just to watch it burn,
standing in that alley
of forgotten refuse.