Today’s choice
Previous poems
Anita Karla Kelly, CE Collins, Clare Painter on International Women’s Day
Eve’s Bite
In the beginning of the end she bit the thing she wasn’t meant to bite.
Apple stuck in her throat, one bite taken, then swallowed whole.
Seeds wait in stomach for sprout, roots climb through veins, branch
pushes through her mouth. White blossom tells tales of what she’s done.
She offers apples out her eyes to any woman hungry for fruit.
And then, branches grow fast, apples everywhere, eyes, face, hair.
Gardener comes home with shears, mutters about order, threatens
lock, key, begs:
he says ‘be good’
‘stay still’ he says
wants her to come to heel like a dog
‘sit’ he says to himself in the kitchen
While she’s outside roots deep in earth
sap strong, trunk bark quickening.
Trees cannot bend in half to sit in a chair made of their own skin.
Anita Karla Kelly is a bi-sexual poet and playwright who writes about sexuality, mental health and motherhood. She has been published by Comma Press, Bath Flash Fiction and Dangerous Women. Highly commended in BBC Audio awards for her writing for radio Red Flags and The Night of the Living Flatpacks with Naked Productions. Her play Buzzing has been shown with Bristol Old Vic and she has worked with Graeae theatre, Theatre Royal Plymouth. Anita has been part of Royal Court Playwrights group and Bristol Old Vic’s Open Circle playwrights group.
Scold’s Bridle
Every day I wake up chewing
A lump that squats on my tongue.
Regolith crunchy, slime sticky –
So round and big it takes pints of water
To choke it down.
All day, my breath stinks loud with it.
And sometimes, sodden crumbs of it
Fall out before I catch them in my palm,
The names of another year’s dead women,
And all the other ones we wade through
That go on and on, ancient as decay –
Ancient as violence. I snort them back to spit them out
With fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.
C. E. Collins is a Morris-dancing, shanty-singing English teacher who writes. Her poetry has appeared in Sudo Journal, Not Very Quiet, Frazzled Lit Mag, Seedlings, and Sardine Can Collective, among others. Come for the energy on Instagram @chriswithawitcheye.
Terms of Engagement
After Artemisia Gentileschi’s ‘Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria’ (painted c.1615-17).
That I shall paint as well as any man,
Mix freedoms on my palette while I may.
That life tilts in your favour, not in mine.
That though I’ll be musician, saint or queen
For your commission, you will not forget
That I submitted to the pain required
At law, endured until the task was done.
That I shall suffer you to hold my gaze,
A long reminder from these silent walls.
That though I’ll play your saint and you’ll parade
My name to your fine guests, be in no doubt
That should you merit an accuser, I
Shall stand and paint, unfold your debts in light.
Clare Painter lives in Oxfordshire, speaks fluent Italian and works in publishing with a special interest in copyright. Bluesky: @clarepainter.bsky.social
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...