Today’s choice
Previous poems
Amirah Al Wassif
A Thumb-Sized Sinbad under My Armpit
Beneath my armpit lives a Sinbad the size of a thumb.
His imagination feeds through an umbilical cord tied to my womb.
Now and then, people hear him speaking through a giant microphone—
Singing,
Cracking jokes,
Laughing like mad,
And impersonating a lonely banana suddenly abandoned by its peel.
The men of our town have no idea I carry a Sinbad inside me.
They say, “A woman—formed from a crooked rib.”
They say, “A woman—waiting for Prince Charming.”
But Sinbad stirs within me like a fetus,
Restless, chasing after adventure.
My aunt pinches my knee
For slipping into daydreams.
The good girls say yes.
But what about no?
What about what Sinbad tells me every night?
No one knows.
No one cares.
Amirah Al Wassif is an award-winning published poet. Her collections include For Those Who Don’t Know Chocolate (Poetic Justice Books & arts, 2019), How to Bury a Curious Girl (Bedazzled Ink Publishing Company, 2022), and her most recent work, The Rules of Blind Obedience (December 2024). She is also the author of the illustrated children’s book, The Cocoa Boy and Other Stories (2020)
Christopher Barnes
ALMANACS 21. Your optics’ fuzz is merciful. Value speckles on mirrors. Above par days have routed. Profess want of upset - Grizzled hairs invade, marauding. 24. Festoon pine 'til glitzy. Shroud bounty in vivid overlays. Letterbox cards will roll....
L Kiew
L Kiew is a Chinese-Malaysian based in London, and works as a charity sector leader and accountant. Her debut pamphlet The Unquiet was published by Offord Road Books (2019). She was a 2019/2020 London Library Emerging...
Jinny Fisher
Containment I drive your lemon yellow Smart ForTwo six hundred miles home from your flat— stuffed to the roof, my suitcase crammed on top, your miniature car swells to welcome a pile of your leavings, rescued from Junk-It Ltd. house clearance:...
Manon Ceridwen James
A Parishioner Complains at a Parish Church Council When We Move the Time of Evensong You have changed the Bible you have changed the words in the service you have brought in girls to serve at the altar and women can now be sidesmen and any minute...
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...