Today’s choice
Previous poems
Clara-Læïla Laudette
The purpose
I’m six days late and this is known
as a delinquent period.
We’re amused by this
if nothing else.
The first thing you do
after I say pregnancy out loud
is sit on the loo and search
sensory deprivation tank London.
I see you typing as I brush my teeth.
You find one in Angel
three sessions for £90
which seems like a good deal;
tell me about the tonne of salt
guaranteeing buoyancy
the music they play at first
the lid they shut over you
then silence
and I am very touched
by the slim pellucid fear
folding and unfolding
in the space behind your neck.
I spit, say I’ll come too
and you say that would
defeat the purpose
Clara-Læïla Laudette is a writer, facilitator and journalist. She won Magma’s Judge’s Prize, placed third in the Poetry London Prize, and has been shortlisted for the Oxford Poetry Prize, Aesthetica Creative Writing Award, and longlisted for the National Poetry Competition. Her work is forthcoming or has appeared in Poetry Review, Propel, Beloit Poetry Journal, fourteen poems and Wet Grain, among others.
Colin Pink
Thread It was gold thread curled tight around a possessive spindle. It was waiting to unspool itself to bind and shape this to that. It had never been in a labyrinth and was not afraid of the dark. Colin Pink has published two...
Donna Pucciani
Smoky Mother chain-smoked, leaving lipsticked butts in plastic ashtrays, where they sent up wisps for hours. Now, wildfires out west blow their dark clouds of sadness eastward to muddy the skies over Lake Michigan that used to be blue. I...
Hélène Demetriades
Mucky fingers A wild daffodil bulb wilts at my feet dug up by a dog. I scrape my fingers into the loam, resettle it in the riverbank. At twilight, two children crouch over a fish – it flaps on the path. There! the boy digs into the wound with his...
Lucy Dixcart
Double Life In the Christmas vacation I work two jobs: an early shift at the sorting office; a late shift at a restaurant. In my daybreak life I become an expert on London postcodes. At night I learn to balance things on my wrists – three plates,...
Charlie Baylis
film stars we don’t go to parties in dark sunglasses we keep our mouths closed we stand under neon lights with tall cocktails clothed in navy blue your arm is shadowy under the peach tree listen we could make it in los angeles leave secret...
Karen Morash
Sourdough My hands heave with microcosmosis. Under my nails a miniscule municipality with pink glass dome, chipped. There is discontent amongst the denizens. Lactobacilli line up throw bottles of urine at Candida eat each other down dark passages...
Hear Me, Hear My Silence Poetry Special: Jennifer A. McGowan
Talking Dirty Ten years after you died I asked you Was it worth it? and this time you did not answer, your mouth being full of dirt. Dirt followed me around. I spent nights vacuuming and mopping, trying to beat out the echo of your footprints....
Hear Me, Hear My Silence Poetry Special: Philip Foster
The Nightwatchman Over his shoulder, I’m watching him chew sarnies out of grease-proof, at his last place of work, cracking a pack of Rich Tea. Between one snap and the next, he follows the beam of his torch, ferreting to the four corners of the...
Hear Me, Hear My Silence Poetry Special: Morag Smith
The Talk There are cheese and onion crisps in a flowered bowl, sliced tomatoes, strong tea, Mr Kipling’s Fondant Fancies, ye always loved those, all the news that matters, a family that doesn’t speak English has moved into Mrs McLeod’s God rest...