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
Sally Michaelson
No Show Poser un lapin is what I keep doing when I suggest we meet in the forest where the air is soft and the trees leafing as though we could walk side by side without touching as though you hadn’t entwined your feet round mine like roots...
Oliver Smith
The Road to Witcombe Water As she passed the white hemlock weeds that crowded the verges beneath the wires from the Old Exchange, my mother left her footprints remembered by the gravel, dusty tracks by the lichgate, fifty years by the weathered,...
Charles G Lauder, Jr
Sweeping out the Store Before the finality of his broom and the open door he pauses to study the trails toing and froing along the dusty sidewalk some crossing this threshold to buy supplies a pair or two don’t stop head on past to the saloon...
Marie Little
The Shed Key has a Passive Voice The shed key was lost. The little one tells me it was sucked down a super massive black hole the middle one hopes we will find it by clawing through cat shit the biggest one emits a sound akin to the thump of a...
Quentin Cowdry
Cold Case Their front door. What was the colour? Blue? Green? No, some things they could agree so it must have been white, no doubt a beaten white, needing a repaint. Because, after all this time, it’s the truth he wants, a nailing of fault, he...
Pat Edwards
The printer needs paper We think we know what it means when this message appears, but do we really. Dutifully we search out the half-used packet, refill the over-complicated tray mechanism and carry on printing. But, in what seems like so short a...
Stephanie Powell
The iron moon, looks differently under hospital windows shakes down completely sometimes, touches the eye of the rich drunk- squatting in the alleyway for a piss It is not romantic, no. Does not bring knees to pavement- does not heal broken skin....
Sam Garvan
The Last Train Pulls Away That day, my mother wore her rose-print and wandered from room to room in acres of blossom. She heard a thin, far loophole in the wind sweeter than new-mown hay. Her face was lit. Out of nowhere my father come back from...
Kevin Higgins
Their Return The people who lived here before, we slowly abolish them by buying beaming new fridges, washer dryers, cookers with fan ovens that actually work and two year warranties, more sofas for the cat to do Tai Chi on. Yet the rooms are...