Today’s choice
Previous poems
Laura McKee
Frida’s corset
after the accident the plaster
held her still
pasted her straight
She reached out her arms
for brushes with colour
plumed birds and sickles
streetcars to live inside
with a knife
she carved a skylight
for her heart
Laura McKee’s first pamphlet ‘take care of your hooves darling’ is available direct from her or from Against the Grain Press. Contact her via X/Twitter: @LauraMcKee_fyeh.
Sarah J Bryson
A tour of Dachau concentration camp Our tour guide knows all this – it is embedded in him it seems. I watch his face, when he’s asked a question. I see his pause, as if he is checking himself for accuracy before speaking. I notice how he wears the...
Ian Green
Consequences of proper litter disposal You barely notice the ubiquitous white and black of a gull passing overhead. You stumble on. One pint too many, tonight; four’s fine, but after five you feel it. You burp, delicately. On a bin ahead another...
Sarah James/Leavesley
International Swimming Pool Rules 1. No ducking, bombing or diving, unless on command from the Pentagon. 2. Lifeguards are there to guard. Please obey their orders respectfully and promptly. The guns are (mostly) only there for show. 3. Maximum...
Kate Garrett on International Women’s Day
A few things cunning women do “…the virtue of word, herb, & stone: which is used by unlawful charms, without natural causes.” – King James VI & I, Daemonologie Accessorise dirt-scuffed jeans with bramble-stain lips – three hares away from...
Jo Bratten
In the shower with Gerard Manley Hopkins Bless me father for I have sinned again Rejoice in soapy foam-fleece fountain furled For I have lied and cursed and fucked with men Flashing quenching sing-shower curtain-curled In hurting self and friend...
Sanjeev Sethi
A Factory of Feelings Your biog is your own, wash it with as many adjectives. Entitlement and empathy are opposites. Dissimulation is elementary to past lovers, like dissemble to ex bosses. Facebook and Twitter are placeboes for amour proper....
Kitty Coles
The moon is a cannibal: she consumes her own body. Flat-footed in her fatness, she sweats and lumbers, ashamed, in the pure of night, of her vast heft. She nibbles her flesh: the taste is oily, repellant, but she swallows it down: the gulps rise...
Lucy Dixcart
Princess Alexandra and the Glass Piano I was a child when I swallowed the piano. My jaw unhinged and down it slid: keys, strings, pins. A dream, I imagined, until a crunch punctuated my footsteps and hammers chinked holes in my thoughts. Rules to...
Steph Morris
Three halves Help yourselves, Alex says, places chocolate on the table, and opens the wrapper, silver wings on all four sides. Three of them, at one end of the table. Charlie cracks a chunk free, one whole end of the bar at a jaunty angle, and...