Today’s choice
Previous poems
Rachael Hill
Venn diagram featuring working-class wages and lemons
Those times my tongue becomes a lemon
filling my mouth with bitter pith
stoppering sound so it coagulates
in my throat, becomes
a stuck fruit;
I must breathe through my nose in short, calm waves;
too fast and the choking begins—
too slow and I pass out from lack of oxygen.
My girlfriend tells me about baking
little cakes with small amounts of choice ingredients
bought in tiny organic quantities
from the wholefood cooperative down the road;
how she carefully measures each dash and sprinkle,
adds her own finishing garnish.
When I visit next she gifts me one;
The small, neat sponge
gently sadistic in my palm.
It opens its mouth;
down through its textured gullet
is a scene of fluorescent aisles
packaging clutching its perishable innards.
When I raise it to my wet mouth and bite
it crumbles perfectly,
tastes like salt rain, a cold winter house, dwindling daylight;
I peer at her quivering joy
try to smile round the globular lemon.
Rachael Hill is a Manchester Poet, founder of The Space Poetic, and an MFA student at The Manchester Writing School. She was awarded by Wirral Poetry Festival, writes at ‘Poet Notes’ on Substack, sometimes IG’s at @rhillpoetnotes, and is a lover of cats and climbing
Stephen Claughton
Winter Road I after Georgia O’Keeffe It’s not exactly a road, more the idea of one and maybe not even that, a symbol, a cedilla, this mirror-written C that sweeps across the canvas, kinking at the top, where Route 84 mounts the crest of a rise,...
Nick Browne
Mother to daughter Rejection tastes like stale beer, stinks like old carpets, cup- a soup. Other people’s grime greases the corners of a rented flat, floating, unmoored in some Midlands town where the rain is unrelenting. The cream immobile phone...
Clare Knock
Ignitor propellant In a gun the main propellant charge needs energy supplied as heat, before it will react and burn. The heat is supplied by the ignitor system that consists of a type of propellant that requires little energy to burn, but is...
R. Gerry Fabian
Opting For Happiness She puts her child in the car seat on the right side of the pickup. It is a ripe Indian summer day. The smoke-like dust from the dry dirt road swirls in the slight breeze and then is no more. R. Gerry Fabian is a...
Adjoa Wiredu
Pink Pink lips came over to our table while we ate dinner said hello to her friend in front of me leaned on the table with one hand the other on her hip she told us about her son, job, salad, her tipple and her very old pink vintage bottle. ...
Michael Bloor
Fell at the First Fence Liam limped listlessly into the lift. It was empty. He pressed the button for the seventh floor (Safetyseal Export Sales). There was the usual hiatus, while the mechanism seemed to consider his request. Liam weighed LIFE in...
Shelley Roche-Jacques
Removing the Bouquet The Station Team staff room is just behind Lost Property. There’s a doorway, without a door, connecting the two. If someone rings the bell at Lost Property reception when you’re on a tea break you have to make a judgement call...
Neil Fulwood
Greetings and Salutations “I’ll know that civilisation has completely collapsed when bus drivers stop waving to each other.” - Joanne Limburg Idle thoughts of a bus driver number something-or-other in a series of the infinite: what if the beaky...
Steve Griffiths
New craft I'm taking delivery of a house that flies. Wish us well, and hope it will respond to our touch. The tyres hum on the tarmac, then no longer as all the senses lift. Pull back the stick. The passing light sets you to navigate. Looking down...