Today’s choice
Previous poems
Rebecca Wheatley
Muscle memory
He thought his heart was broken yet the day began again.
He couldn’t marvel in the shine of sunsets rising and falling
and yet he rose and fell in turn.
His hands resigned themselves to tea making
and his legs carried him much the same.
He bundled her belongings into bin liners
and his heart told him it was not her in those bags,
reminded him of her wisdom and her nonsense,
showed her soft face enveloped in the folds of drawn curtains.
His heart hammered so relentlessly he struggled to hold on to it.
Caught unawares by her handwriting on a scribbled note,
her smile in a photo he hadn’t seen,
a grieving friend he couldn’t remember.
Swelling and contracting it sounded the rhythm of his day,
asking so much of him that he sometimes had to lay down and hide.
Not broken, conjuring love from the loss with every last muscle.
His heart had never worked so hard or been more alive.
Rebecca Wheatley is poet, actress and singer in Brighton. She tours her own one woman shows with music and has poems published in The tide rises , Dreitch, Bindweed, Porridge, The New Ulster’ ,Southlight. Galway Review and Salzburg Journal.
Anna Blasiak translates Robert Kania
I saw I saw American night in broad daylight I saw houses worth millions of dollars and houses without windows on the outskirts Detroit I saw my ancestors’ American dream several Mexicans cleaning in a hotel where I danced YMCA at a wedding...
Graham Clifford
Revivifying Bees in the PRU* (*Pupil Referral Unit) A tennis racquet leaves a waffle imprint on the forehead of the boys that get too close. The Jackson 5 at full blast at 08:45 bounces off the Georgian townhouses that surround the PRU. This...
Louise Devismes
fish! that year, the summer was nosebleeds and candy apples. none of our clothes fit us anymore — our bellies burst with fruit and sugar and all the sun we could swallow. we scratched mosquito bites the size of grapes until yellow scabs peeled off, our...
Millie Godwin
Tendril Tongues Why do I keep trying to rekindle old flames when I’ve told her time and time again that a relit cigarette just doesn’t taste the same Willow Becomes Butterfly Our love flows heavy then lingers like tired...
Alice Neal
Helen (Mother) My mother was alone when she gave birth, save for the flocks of anonymous doctors who removed me from her bloodied womb with spears and forceps, whilst my father marked her agony with stains on the bar. When I arrived late, pink,...
Jessica Mayhew
Clippers We took turns on the wooden chair, feet bare-soled on the kitchen tiles, head bent forward as if in prayer, the old towel around your shoulders. As the clippers purred, nape to crown, I folded each of your ears in turn, while outside, beyond our...
L Kiew
You who stand in the red dust know that frogs no longer croak for rain. Bare ground cracks across remains of drains, windows in the taman-taman gape-broken and houses semi-detach, uprooting terraces. Absence is only flaking paint. Blown away are...
Charlie Baylis
finally i’m annoyed enough to write a poem i sit & eat in the vietnamese restaurant long enough to feel annoyed a man is stroking a cat in the doorway i order the number 4 and watch katie cook the chicken on the grill finally i’m annoyed...
Jenny Pagdin
Before the market town with the Pepper Pot building and the concrete bus station and its standing water, we were Hampshire, Beirut and Freetown with neat shelves of Vimto, ivory, Milupa, of Milton, tie-dyes, pink almonds and sugarcane. I picture...