Today’s choice

Previous poems

Annabelle Markwick-Staff

 

 

 

Olympics

I devoured the Olympics, filled my mouth
and scrapbook with sticky ephemera.

I stalked a torch, seized my shining,
perforated prey, and stared into the void

of Wenlock and Mandeville’s eyes.
Sometimes, I am in the Olympics. I crawl

from my bed to my desk, and I sweat for gold.
I clutch my bottle of Lucozade

Sport Fruit Punch – Apple vs Raspberry,
my knuckles stark beneath desiccated skin.

I suckle Isotonic hydration from pink plastic,
electrolytes and athlete images fuel

my endurance, my metaphysical marathon.
Yes, Anthony Joshua, I will Stay Humble

from Gallions Reach to Avalon,
I have many hills to spiral, many petals to burn.
Annabelle Markwick-Staff graduated with an MA in Writing Poetry from the Poetry School/ Newcastle University. Her poems are published in Popshot, Kindred Spirit, London Grip, Sage Cigarettes and Black Bough Poetry Christmas-Winter Anthology Volume 4. She is annabelleocto on Instagram.

Helen Frances

I wasn’t in, so she left me a note.
Each word a tangle of broken ends, some oddly linked
to the next with a ghost trail of ink
from her rose-gold marbled fountain pen,
a rare indulgence she’d bought herself.

Maggie Brookes-Butt

For you, with your toddler bendiness,
the squat is a natural, easy position
while I hurt-strain, thinking of miners
crouched outside their front doors

Carmen Marcus

        extract from The Keen Is ar scath a Chéile a mhaireann na daoine: It is in the shadow of each other we live. Watching with the dying. Travelling with the dead. Phyllida Anam-Áire; The Celtic Book of Dying, Findhorn Press, Vermont, 2022 Àite...