Today’s choice
Previous poems
May Grier
That Three-Tusked Beast
I wasn’t to know
that it was a three-tusked
beast; that there was not one,
not two, but three
that grew the seed of me.
Back then, who’d ever heard
of that unlikely jungle lore?
In school there was room
for two, no more: a mum
and a dad. My skin grew hot
when it was time to present
our tree. On both sides
I wrote ma mère in extra-small,
traced their faces faint, idly
added cousins I’d never known
to an ivory branch. I could never
quite get to the nub of truth–
always rubbing the animal
out, never letting it wander in to flick
its tail, wave its trunk around.
My inside-beast was so strong.
It didn’t let intruders in. It didn’t
take kindly to being found out.
May Grier (she/her) was born and lives in London and works a nurse. This is her first published poem.
Lorna Rose Gill
Maybe I remember getting brunch;
or the time the dog ate my croissant;
Adam Strickson
He couldn’t play rugby – the oval slithered away
whenever he touched it and he fell in the mud
or more often was pushed with some viciousness.
Leigh-Anne Hallowby
When we first came here two seasons ago
You were barely as high as my hip
Now you can look me right in the eye
It’s almost impossible to believe
Tadhg Carey
When our plaything ricochets
falling
who knows where
everything hinging
on the line
Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal
I hear the roar of
the ocean. I hear
a series of shrieks
and long screams.
Natasha Gauthier
Nobody knows what Cicero’s gardener whistled
to his figs and olives, what the consul’s young wife
hummed to herself while slaves combed beeswax
and perfumed oils from Carthage into her hair.
Jean Atkin
She creeps under the opening, then stands.
Her guide passes her the stub of a candle,
holds up his own to show the ceiling rock.
Iris Anne Lewis
The track leads through thickets, threaded with eyes.
Elusive scraps of dreams, they gleam, flicker out.
Antonia Kearton
On my son’s desk lies
the periodic table of the elements.
I look. Amongst the arcane names
I recognise, easy as breathing,
carbon, oxygen, gold, beloved of kings.