Today’s choice
Previous poems
Sam Szanto
Spotted in a 7-Eleven in North Hollywood
It beckons from between plasters and hand cream,
the box bright-white, the lettering green.
The first time I needed one, I
visited a chemist in London,
murmuring to a middle-aged man
across the counter
as if I asking for marijuana.
He made me stand aside and wait
while he served other people
and I tried to look as if I regretted
having sex on a Tuesday night
without it being signed-for in triplicate.
Should I explain it was my boyfriend’s birthday?
I stood watching the people collect their sexless
prescriptions, hearing my animal-like breath.
When I was judged to look remorseful enough,
I handed over a pound
for every year of my life
and left gripping the paper bag
as if it were my mother’s hand, walking along
staring at the slick mirrored pavements
in case I met anyone from work
who might ask what I had in the bag.
The next time, I was asked to explain
what had happened
before I could hand over my money.
I could tell the man didn’t believe
The condom split.
The third time, my then-boyfriend came.
We were taken into a back room
for a consultation with a woman whose face rippled
with distaste when I said the word sex.
As we left, I saw my boyfriend look down
at the hand that clutched the bag
as if it glittered with slug trails.
Two decades later, I stand
with my husband and two children
in the 7-Eleven in America and imagine
picking up that packet,
the half-awake girl behind the counter
scanning and handing it over
with our chewing gum, suncream and melatonin.
Sam Szanto is an award-winning writer living in Durham. Her poetry pamphlets This Was Your Mother and Splashing Pink – a 2023 Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice – were published by Dreich Press and Hedgehog Press respectively. Facebook: sam-szanto, Instagram: samszantowriter, Blue Sky: samszanto.bsky.social
John Newton Webb
A dental technician rips up a postcard of dental puns Have you known the suffering wrought by damaged mouths? Or the solemn joy of healing? Have you reckoned with the uses of dental records? Think through the murdered and the long dead; think of things...
Simon Alderwick
coffee and the interconnectedness of all things i like the darkness of it, the bitterness, the ring of light reflected on the surface. i like the story. the crushed beans. the crop growing on the side of a mountain. i like the journey, but in...
Alistair Noon
Escape from the Novinskaya Women’s Prison, Moscow, 1909 Let’s imagine the doors that scraped the freshly cemented floors as a gaggle of raindrops escaped from a gutter, the timetabled chores in the crypts for their needles and cradles, the chapels...
Eve Chancellor
The Woods The teacher sighed, as the snow piled up outside, mountain after mountain. The children listened, as the North wind howled, winter after winter. ‘That will be all for today, children,’ the teacher said. The students rushed over to pegs,...
Sue Spiers
February 6th You are naked when I meet you, but then, so am I. I’d been waiting months for this occasion, after a delay we meet a week later. Dark hair is slathered on your forehead unruly with gross pomade. Your voice is a gurgle like creaking...
Sue Wallace-Shaddad
Meditation on Shape I’ve been seeing breasts today. In the park, lavender is shorn into tidy humps and the lawn undulates creating two perfect peaks between some trees. A road sign, tipped over, nestles in leaves, warning that bumps lie ahead, its...
Jackie Wills
Dressmaker at the market I stop at the dressmaker's stall to ask what she does with leftovers. We discuss bunting - it's a slow day. I buy a £10 bag of scraps, swatches, snippets, interrupted patterns and borders. The bag taps a morse of promises...
Donna Campbell
A Murder of Crows I feed the crows that loiter in my back garden. The young ones know no manners and fail to bring me gifts like their older kin. They bring glittery things, discarded wishbones, rusted metal, random objects no doubt each with a...
Joseph Rodgers
Snowlight A window glowing with snowlight and we’re running. Take care not to make me your caretaker. I’m just that tube you suddenly share a tunnel with before we charge into our own darknesses or are whisked into them. Stop the whistle, the...