Today’s choice
Previous poems
Mat Riches
Beef Rendang
Hey kid, this won’t mean that much to you yet,
but I didn’t taste my first proper curry
till at least twenty-one—if we ignore
Friday-night jar-based meals your Gran assembled,
a few sultanas mixed in to make things
more exotic. And here we are cooking
on Saturday afternoon, starting off
from scratch. Gently squeezing out small white coins
of dried chilli seeds. We must wash our hands.
I learned the hard way, having wiped my eyes
while trying my best to impress your mum.
Let’s add ingredients rare as hen’s dentures
in 80s Norfolk: lemongrass, lime leaves,
galangal (ginger will do). Together,
they’ll form a bright orange paste when blended
with those twelve red chillis. Black mustard seeds
and turmeric are waiting to zhuzh up
the jasmine rice. Let’s wash our hands again.
Yes, you can help me to open both tins
of coconut milk. You can pour them in.
It’s fine to climb down from your stool for now.
I wouldn’t trade these hours you won’t remember,
being gastronauts while beef falls apart.
Yes, we can play in your wooden kitchen;
your menu sounds great. We’ll come back later
to check our pots, lay cutlery for three.
I promise you it’s always worth the wait.
Mat Riches is ITV’s unofficial poet-in-residence. Recent work has been in Wild Court, Bad Lillies, The New Statesman, and Finished Creatures. A pamphlet, Collecting the Data, is out via Red Squirrel Press. He co-runs Rogue Strands poetry evenings and blogs at Wear The Fox Hat Bluesky: matriches.bsky.social
Rahma O. Jimoh
A bird skirts across the fence
& I rush to the window
to behold its flapping wings—
It’s been ages
since I last saw a bird.
Samuel A. Adeyemi
I can already hear the chorus of my tribe.
They want the ancient blade,
the guillotine that hovered
above my head like a halo of death.
Mofiyinfoluwa O.
when you
know that your time with someone has almost run out, that is what you do. you look for
tiny things buried in the sand so that you do not have to look at the huge broken thing
standing between you both.
Chris Emery
and if we walk to the same sea later
we’ll see something heaving up beside us:
caskets of grey, white-capped, barren and loose,
the way memories are.
T. N. Kennedy
so you collect those poems which reveal
life at its most intense and solitary
turning them on when you most need to feel
Mariah Whelan
St Ann’s Square Manchester, 23rd May 2017 Because I cannot show you what is at the centre of all this I will lay language up to its edge, walk its edges the way I moved through the back of the crowd too afraid to go in. I had to shade my eyes from...
Marissa Glover
What Might Have Been There is a small white house high on a green hill just south of Scotland, an office bright with books and a window overlooking Magdalene, and somewhere on a dirt road between endless pastures of strong red fescue, is a man on a...
Cherry Doyle
/ on the days / blood rushes at the corner of a nail / you cannot keep your jumper off the door handle / table tackles leg / expect the bruise in two days’ time / pansies nodding in speckles of rain /
Jennie E. Owen
and in that last moment
the dead shrug, shake
off their boots, shuffle off
jackets and shirts,