Today’s choice
Previous poems
Kim Waters
Letter to L
You’re a character, a Roman numeral,
an internet meme. Descendant
from a peasant’s crook or cattle prod,
you’re the twelfth letter of the alphabet,
but missing from a baker’s dozen.
You’re in every email I ever wrote,
appearing in April and July,
but lying dormant in other months.
You bookend the linguistic paradox
of logical and lateral thinking.
I hear your lisp in silence, conjuring
something glamorous in lapis lazuli.
You’re the difference between
the flight and fight response,
the one that can’t leave one alone.
You’ve been known to double down
on bullshit, rollbacks and collusion,
but at the core you’re mellow
and although not easily heard,
you always walk the talk.
L, let’s face it, life begins with you.
Kim Waters lives in Melbourne, Australia. She has a Master of Arts in creative writing. She is currently completing an Advanced Diploma of Visual Arts. Her poems have appeared in The Australian, Acumen, The Shanghai Literary Review, Under the Radar, The Wells Street Journal, Marble and La Piccioletta Barca.
Rizwan Akhtar
Demands now a surreal residue lives on your hair you play with in a corridor checking out light fading smiles a verisimilitude of close hands evenings spent on waiting chairs creaked but that decibel silence torn by a stubborn bird outside...
Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
Break-out Session “I’ll stay here with the strawberries,” he said. He still supposed such droll remarks displayed his youthful eccentricity. The fruit in question, surplus to the buffet lunch, was resting, moist and fragrant, in a bowl, alongside...
Chrissy Banks
Birthday after Dorothea Tanning I can hardly believe you are real, come in the night with a present; here, at my door, in a snow-dappled coat, your hair illumined, your eyes small violets. I have doors beyond doors, canvasses propped against every...
Lorraine Carey
Sundays at Grandma’s Gran’s best friend Susan came every, single Sunday. Whippet thin, I often thought she’d disappear into the vacuum of her own cheekbones, she sucked so hard on those fags. Each week we sat through the drag of Sunday Mass, the...
Julie Mullen
Mother’s Day Wrapped in her silks the blue and the dim and the dark, mists of scent, eyes closed against the half-light. Together we walk squares and shades, beneath spires like washed bone. We walk together faded streets hand in hand, we mime....
Bethan Manley
Melyn (Yellow) I still thank you for making the daffodils grow outside my mother’s house every spring scared she’ll forget you without reminders painted yellow spilling onto the block paved driveway the yellow trails into the house sits in a...
Meg Ross
Mud I’m a little girl wearing a floral dress and I jump straight into the muddy puddle I see before me. I am not even wearing wellington boots. I am unprepared for the dirt but I am sick of being ready for things. I want to talk my way out of the...
Rachael Clyne
Lighting Candles Odessa’s cemetery is a forest of granite, each grave with etched portraits. A football star rests by a famous burglar. We’re led to a few drab stones carved in Hebrew, rescued from the Jewish cemetery that was bulldozed for a...
Chika Jones
Beautiful Nubia sings And I remember my father dancing, A 2 step shuffle, Hips swinging, Palms face down, Elbow to waist, Lopsided smile. Seven mountains, Seven streams, And I remember my mother smirking, Face slightly raised, Back resting lightly...