Today’s choice
Previous poems
Michelle Diaz
Mum was
a raised axe and a party hat.
A Victorian wardrobe
packed with 1960s kaftans.
She was the twist and the shout,
the let it all hang out.
She was convent school and wine cellar.
She was a month of Ryvitas followed by
a year of cake & Babycham.
She was four and twenty firm rules
baked in a council house.
Mum was a full purse/an empty purse.
A frightened holdall.
A sacred heart and a sacrificial lion.
A feast and famine. A heated face in the kitchen.
Mum was an infectious laugh in a telephone box.
An abandoned church.
She was suspected lock-jaw/diphtheria/cancer.
She was as straightforward as trigonometry,
clever as a calculator.
She was the planet we orbited,
the centrifugal force.
She was The Big Bang.
And a fathomless black hole.
Michelle Diaz has been published in numerous journals both online and in print, e.g 14 Magazine, Under the Radar and Poetry Wales. She has been shortlisted for Best of the Net and nominated for Forward Prize Single Poem category. She can be found on Twitter and Blue Sky.
Marie Little
The Shed Key has a Passive Voice The shed key was lost. The little one tells me it was sucked down a super massive black hole the middle one hopes we will find it by clawing through cat shit the biggest one emits a sound akin to the thump of a...
Quentin Cowdry
Cold Case Their front door. What was the colour? Blue? Green? No, some things they could agree so it must have been white, no doubt a beaten white, needing a repaint. Because, after all this time, it’s the truth he wants, a nailing of fault, he...
Pat Edwards
The printer needs paper We think we know what it means when this message appears, but do we really. Dutifully we search out the half-used packet, refill the over-complicated tray mechanism and carry on printing. But, in what seems like so short a...
Stephanie Powell
The iron moon, looks differently under hospital windows shakes down completely sometimes, touches the eye of the rich drunk- squatting in the alleyway for a piss It is not romantic, no. Does not bring knees to pavement- does not heal broken skin....
Sam Garvan
The Last Train Pulls Away That day, my mother wore her rose-print and wandered from room to room in acres of blossom. She heard a thin, far loophole in the wind sweeter than new-mown hay. Her face was lit. Out of nowhere my father come back from...
Kevin Higgins
Their Return The people who lived here before, we slowly abolish them by buying beaming new fridges, washer dryers, cookers with fan ovens that actually work and two year warranties, more sofas for the cat to do Tai Chi on. Yet the rooms are...
Pen Kease
Visual Impairment for Rowan when you trace her lines brittle teeth cheek-bones you’ll remember your mother’s face know her by her footsteps when there is cacophony speak and sounds will become ordered new ride the water row and pull until you are ...
Emily Sharkey
The Watchmaker stomach stilted, harbour bound, sweet dreams, love – oh, these rain clouds swirl like tea leaves in an ink-stained sky hush now, a golden-toned man hums time’s tune like notes to a song like beats to a heart whilst time scatters its...
Heidi Slettedahl
Flowers and Baguettes Her shopping trolley thought she had the kind of life where flowers and baguettes would feature regularly. She was just shopping for detergent and descaler. She wanted to live up to this imagined life, even sometimes bought...