Today’s choice
Previous poems
Ben
The Language of Inflections
When she said ‘could’, it was clearly in italics
and when she said ‘one day’, the creak of glaciers
shuddered around its edges. The way she said
‘yes’ was a stone dropping down a bottomless well.
When he said ‘trust me’, it was a foot testing
for woodworm and when he said ‘forever’, it was
the dripping of fuel and the lit cigarette.
His smile was a drawer slamming shut.
When they both said ‘I do’, it was fire and ice
and in the darkness of the night, their breathing
was the sound of children, cowering beneath blankets,
praying that monsters lack acuteness of hearing.
Ben lives in the south of England between the forest and the sea.
Sam Hickford
Familiar Tissue "My father is given to me and I dissect his body. I study him carefully. You ask me where I learn anatomy?" - Stanislaw Szukalski As every sinew, tendon, lies apart I reflect that only, in these loving scrapes will he be at all...
Jenny Moroney
Part We didn't expect it to snow but look it falls in soft flakes. Alone now, we leave the cottage between white folds and aim at mountains. You walk ahead: a gap, I leave and over your footprints, I press my own. We follow the stream winter has...
Colin Pink
Lions in Translation We, at the International Lion Translation Centre, do not believe: If a lion could speak we would not understand him. Through our outreach programme our dedicated team of translators, at considerable personal risk, have found...
Karen Downs Barton
Paper Doll The woman practised control on paper dolls, renditions of perfection in children seen but not heard. She bound their chests in liberty bodices attached with tabs, displayed them in dioramas of salvaged boxes. She wished they had more...
Aidan Semmens
From The Jazz Age The man in the high castle In his elegant turret attic, Tycho Brahe turns the page, turns it back, then back again. No matter how closely he peers at the drawings, or how intently he attempts to recreate in his mind’s eye every...
Jonathan Rosen
Dog In the dog days of this dog’s breakfast world, you remain dogged in your doggy ways; face licker, arse sniffer, purveyor of fetid breath, oblivious to squalor, fantastically lavish with affection. Incapable of guile or guilt, your...
Praniti Gulyani
A Slice of Sonnet Go out with your fishing-net, and sit by the brook, the brook which holds a whisper of moon. Tell them that you’re going out to catch some stray salmon. Then, they won’t smell a rat. Ensure that it isn’t the complete, full moon...
Jack McGrath
(Untitled) just for now (and I doubt persistence) the rubble of my mind is whipped up draftily in a flurry quivers with new direction with something like optimism Jack McGrath is a 23 year old writer living in Manchester. He tends to...
Michael Burton
Rest Assured You won’t be there tonight sagged upon the stool of an emptying bar the same corner where you and Frank used to sit as weekends blurred by. Nor will you stumble into a club after hours to mumble your age, name and how this isn’t your...