Today’s choice

Previous poems

Alex Searle

 

 

 

 

Something started you to wake,
leaving sockprints in the parquet,
there was only the dark,
until a hair sliver of light
softly glowed on your feet asleep.
Behind the closed door,
he was there,
your father,
smoking quietly
with himself
staring at the black,
a familiar witness
to the screaming matches
riddling your ears.
You creak on the cold wood
wanting to go in and lie in his lap,
but the light turns off,
your feet become invisible again,
he does not emerge.
You go back to bed,
the light stays black
but he does not emerge.

 

 

Alex Searle is a South African-based writer of essays and poems exploring childhood, relationships, culture and the embodied masculine. He is also a musician, podcaster and corporate poet. He publishes frequently on Substack @alexsearle

Bel Wallace

      Interior My dear, I washed you out of my sheets. And now I sleep softly in them. My dreams are sweet and free. I opened the windows to air out your smoke. I liked it for a while, how it held the past in its wispy fingers. I emptied your cigarette...