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.
Erich von Hungen
And the yellow moths
like some strange throw-away
tissues used up by nature
circle the lamp hanging above.
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.
Suzanne Scarfone
truth be told
part of me has lived
in this box of disquiet
for years and years
let’s see
Julia Webb
Because a woman woke up
and her head had become a flower.
Freyr Thorvaldsson
A candle eats away at air
At the same rate that we do
Konstandinos (Dino) Mahoney
A teacher guides his pupils past headless marble torsos,
dusty cabinets of tiny Attic coins, pockmarked stylobates,
to a large clay pithos . . .
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
Sally Michaelson
Heads under bonnets
mechanics catch a wiff
of a girl passing
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...