Today’s choice
Previous poems
Gail Webb
Something Missing
He cuts. I lie still, teach myself
to dream of St David’s Bay,
seaweed strewn on incoming tides,
surfers slice big waves in half.
He butchers with hammer, saw.
No nightmares, though he says
it’s possible-you could wake
in the middle of the operation,
stirred by loud banging. I advise
him to knock me out good
and proper. We both know the truth,
he will take something from me,
cut flesh away, file bone, move
kneecap, sever nerves, tendons.
He promises to replace pain
with a super joint, a hero.
I come round, crying, smell
of blood and piss. The body knows
muscle and bone are gone.
For months, messages arrive
in my brain, something’s missing.
He does not acknowledge,
it’s part of my DNA now, this loss.
Tristan Moss
The Stack We hold our dead like chairs hold chairs further and further off the floor until one holds no more. Tristan Moss lives in York with his partner and two youngish children. He has recently had poems published in London...
Hannah Linden
Sister Death Sits on the Back of the Settee It shouldn’t be such a surprise. She knew me better than most people, after all. So cosy. And yes, in the womb I gobbled her up and thought I’d won. But you forget such things. Behind me like a pantomime...
Marion McCready
I Fall in Love with a Tree Everywhere I Go When I shut my eyes all I see is the sky hung with oranges like a dozen orange golf balls; the tree itself on display like a circus animal. I am where the palm trees rise and fall on the horizon; where...
Preeth Ganapathy
Morning Conversations Every Gulmohar flower is a vermillion cup of the night’s sweet nectar that drenches the birds’ parched songs. Every branch is a perch for daylight to scout, to rest and to tread lightly without leaving prints. The parrots...
George Freek on Holocaust Memorial Day
Sonata for the Dead (After Li Shangyin) Crows pick at the rotting bones of skeletons who gaze with sightless eyes at the stars, where our dreams abide, but never come alive. Crows, seeking somewhere to feed, scatter like fallen leaves, as wind...
Claire Smith
Fish-Tale She gorged on forests, gluttonous for the town, craved torchlit streets every time she went back to normality. She swapped her tail for a man washed up on the shore along with the shingle, salt-seaweed, and crab-carapace. She burns...
Jay Délise
The Love Poems I finally took the trash out, sent that email, and had enough clean dishes to eat a meal at the table but there was no time to write the poem Before you woke up this morning I slipped into the cool autumn air in search of the...
Gwen Sayers
Simulacra I was six when I shifted a curtain in a dark room at the waxwork museum and peered through glass at a woman I remember hooks and chains her tattered skirts pale lips crimson stains I thought of her first time I lifted black tarpaulin...
John Bowen
The Upminster Train We met on the District Line from Wimbledon to Upminster. Chatted all through Southfields. Hands held by Putney Bridge. Our first kiss at a sudden lurch near Parson’s Green. In love as we pulled in at Fulham Broadway. It was all...