Today’s choice
Previous poems
Jake Roberts
onwards
hamlet asked it to the dark night sea
where do waters end and i begin where the
moonlight shimmers on a cragged rock
to which i tie my errant being
hard against the night
solid against the wind
it still erodes but just more slowly
it cries for help but just more softly
love’s song it sings but just more sad
we couldn’t make it last
except as reverie
hamlet asked it to the voiceless sea
must i be thrust biannually
into water’s salty anti-memory
to be nothing but the fish who takes a timid bite
from the waves’ sick surface surging rolling
hard against the rock
solid against its grain
the washed-up dolt with shrunken cock
sandy naked by the wet brown groyne
is i
the winter sun
and the creaking windows of a seaside town
who sing towards the english sea
o blue i crack and break and leak
i don’t know what i want to be
Jake Roberts is a poet, critic and teacher based in London. Instagram: @jakegrxz
Guy Martyn
Hiding is hiding First it takes away ‘the’ indefinite from your mouth. Then it is its own skin. Space on walls where it used to hang. Edges of time’s slow camera flash burnt like a castle’s kitchen bricks. Then in cracked cards of a book binding...
Ruth Aylett
Physics of sound It’s on the attack; though I turn away it still marches into my head its most effective ambush is from silence a click, a drip, sudden creak, then gone but it can bounce like an acrobat then bounce again.. again.. again strokes my...
Jennifer Horgan
Early Morning Someone spread these crumbs in the dark An off-white offering for city crows Shredded bread like snowflakes in the blackness Caught by the neon glow of the MAXOL sign Where men have begun their work by now Washing metal, checking...
Maggie Sawkins
The House where Courage Lives That night I spent every waking hour staring at my face in the mirror in the darkness. It was the first time I’d looked myself in the eye. In the morning I removed the guard from the fire of my heart, gave careful...
Lance Lee
History Here vineyards spill beyond an autumn hill, each vineyards's grapeleaves a different red or gold, geometric as Cezanne, the arc of the sky a long blue neck by Mondrian. What if the earth breathes its seasons as though alive, for when...
Angela Howarth Martinot
Visit Now that I am here, it’s clear. What I wish for you, Lydia, is that you will be washed up naked and alone on the shore of the Phaiakian’s island, not in this white space with locked doors and that blank-eyed doctor armed with a pile of...
Tom Kelly
The Virgin Mary Is Crying I am thirteen and leaving our house as breath haws out my mouth. When I breathe in hard me nose burns. Hands are dead, fingers tender as if they have been burnt. Hunched shadows hit the work trail; they close gates...
Malcolm Carson
Winging It He loved his pigeons, almost as much as serving his Lord. He would attend to them when his other flock were grazing on life. He’d gurgle along in the loft, ministering to their needs before the race. Setting the clock as they were sent...
Caroline Maldonado
Wax doll From a surfeit of dark you’re wax-cold at the basement window while through the back of the house light filters down the corridor and beyond there’s the garden with banana and bougainvillea and a child under the palm leaves holding out a...