Today’s choice
Previous poems
Samantha Carr
The Girl with Goldfish Under Her Skin
She has few secrets with her translucent map skin of blue underground rivers visible to scale. Contours of overlapping knots oblivious to each other and to you – mesmerised by the girl with goldfish under her skin. Perhaps, you reflect, we all have goldfish, but we’ve never thought of looking for them. You make a mental note to check when you get home. But you will forget. Is it her glassiness that makes you dream of putting her in a tank the next time she comes for a consultation? You’re unable to pay attention to her list of symptoms – you’re back in anatomy class with that professor who insisted on failing you. If he’d produced a diagram of her, you’d have been a surgeon for sure! You wait for the flash of a golden tail – hadn’t realised you’d been holding your breath. What do raised antinuclear antibodies mean? Her voice penetrates your consciousness as the glow fades into depths hidden by dense lumpy organs. Oh, those lucky organs. You reassure her with a voice you don’t recognise – Low titre ANA is commonly seen in the healthy population. You rush her out of the room and hope she doesn’t return.
Samantha Carr is a PhD Creative Writing candidate at the University of Plymouth exploring chronic illness through prose poetry. Her work has been published in Acumen, Arc, Corporeal, Consilience and The Storms Journal. She can be found on Threads and Instagram as @samc4_rr
Marcelo Coelho
Hauntings 1 After the funeral, the coughs continued. 2 Care homes regain life at night. 3 Wait. The morgue will reopen soon. 4 They came asking for more starch. 5 For them, lockdown has just begun. 6 He came back. “Forgot the mask”. 7 Sorry for...
Andrew Williams
Rehoboth Bay after Jane Kenyon I was walking on the dock— the kind of activity I go out of town to do— where waterfowl float below with their young. My wife and I fell behind the laughter barreling toward the shore end and at that moment, we heard...
Jenny Hockey
Snow Fall Post operatively he is unable to drive when suddenly snow fills the street. It’s only ten minutes to walk back home. ‘Not in these shoes,’ he says, ‘not in this jacket.’ Why I agree I don’t know for the snow makes a toy of the wheel in...
Laura McKee
the hard animal of her body the woman next to me shows me her bones she delves into her bag and pulls them out to show me the strongest and how it was broken you know like a tree she says when they cut it like this and she lifts her hand at the...
Trelawney
Religious Tack When you turned to God I turned away and in some sort of protest, a double-edged olive branch, I started a collection. Small at first: statues from catholic shrines, rude pewter pilgrims’ badges light-up Madonnas. A dome of the rock...
Molly Wolfe
Daddy’s Issues It’s Monday and screwed-up bits of paper hit her like rocks and bruise her inside and her wine (he said was his) paints the walls and burns like acid, droplets streaming ravines down her cheeks and a demon screams get out of my...
Geoff Sawers
Cage the ocean in a room sloshing against the walls a bee in your closed fist feel the fury of her tiny heart a mouth in a cage forced to speak a second language a rope of sand spun on a wide bleak strand press your ear to the cold wet ground hear...
Rosie Miles after Gillian Lever
Shine After Gillian Lever “What is orange? Why, an orange, Just an orange!” -- Christina Rossetti, from Sing-Song (1873) Sweet naranja, common, in-your-face cadmium, chrome, atomic tangerine. # FF7F00: traffic cone of all colours warning...
Grant Tarbard
Giblet after Claudia Emerson’s on leaving my body to science Pack the forests away in this dyed night, I won’t need them anymore, hair of thin cigarette smoke, trunk of posed opium. I is a liminal state....