Today’s choice

Previous poems

Farah Ali

 

 

 

Notes from nature on how to survive this:

1. Learn crypsis and mimesis be a gecko or a mossy frog

2. Method actors sway like dead-leaf mantises on branches

3. Spikes are effective, mollusc shells cumbersome

4. Warning! sea urchins maim and poison in any depth zone

5. Wear red, hiss, spray, rattle in worst-case scenarios

6. Injured starfish grow another limb, they don’t miss the old one,
barely remember it, apparently

7. Hide, freeze, or gallop away from prairie rain and savannah shadows

8. *Important* octopuses can be harmed by their own ink cloud

 

 

 

Farah Ali has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and shortlisted for the Touchstone Awards. She has been published in Anti-Heroin Chic, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Rattle, Right Hand Pointing, tiny wren lit, Tokyo Poetry Journal and many others.

Meg Arnot

      * her black eye . . . red scarf muffles the sting of the north wind * muddy gaiters – Coniston Water in my wardrobe * lamb in the talons of a white-tailed eagle time of the tide     Meg Arnot’s haiku/senryu and tanka have been published...

Pat Edwards

      Various kinds of pin and their uses This pin is for piercing the tube before we medicate the cat in the fur on her neck. She hates us for doing this, senses we are coming for her with our toxins. This one is a safety pin. I open it, slide five or...

Marty McKenna

      i excuse myself from you tonight. there is low cloud on the fields as the sway carries these hands between this and the next stop. i’ve fallen for an other, make eye contact; deliver it through sight. i recognise my place by the trees; wonder...

Lisa Perkins

      Oktoberfest Gretel nurses a knot at a table for two in a dive bar in Berlin. Bloated shadows crawl above the industry of night. He’s late. Nerves ripple crumbs, popcorn for the crows. Habit makes a ghostly work of worry, she orders something...

Corinna Keefe

      Good God Corner, Harlech It’s all Good God Corners around here all hairpin bends and sharp breaths in perpendiculars and parallels that pull you out to sea a riptide of light reaching down from the hills toppling the little train into the water. I...

Jubilee Suite: Sanah Ahsan

    fresher  At the freshers week party bodies pack sweaty into free-floating balloons. A chorus of down it from thirst you almost know. You unwillingly gulp the cold. Mum worked Saturdays to afford you here. Puke crawls up the back of your throat. Swallow...

Jubilee Suite: Gboyega Odubanjo

    Obit. (After César Vallejo) i will die in london in the neighbourhood i grew up in outside the town hall on the high street. i will have been stabbed and my killer will look just like me so no-one will look for him. my body will remain dead in daylight...

Jubilee Suite: Jayda David

      The Queen is a Bloodclart the queen is a Bloodclart dissect the monarchy, pull it apart, reveal the truth that they wish they could conceal; raping, pillaging, stealing, imperialism, colonialism, racism. they protect those with the same face as...

Jubilee Suite: The Repeat Beat Poet

      Tommy Builds A Cocktail   Tommy spied a sun-dried palm tree in an untouched garden with crusty dark skin and cracks riddling all along its side, weeping out of its shell he aimed for a branch and down a coconut fell  it didn’t implode on...